English and French Language Centre

English and French Language Centre 2005-2006

ENGLISH AND FRENCH LANGUAGE CENTRE

ANNUAL REPORT

2005-2006

Url address: http://www.mcgill.ca/eflc/annualreport/2005

Submitted by

Hélène Riel-Salvatore

Director

Section I – Description of unit:

The Centre de français was created in 1970 to provide credit courses in French as a Second Language. The unit, now called the English and French Language Centre (EFLC), has undergone many changes over the years, but 1996 marked the beginning of an accelerated evolution. Successive Deans since John McCallum have all underlined the EFLC's productivity and dynamism and, accordingly, have given their support to the gradual and ongoing expansion of its original mission. In response to the EFLC's 1993 annual report, Dean McCallum wrote: “Although I think that yours is one of the best performing units in Arts, the strengths and achievements of your Centre seem to be a well kept secret for many at McGill.” Since then, the EFLC has played a progressively more central role within the Faculty of Arts and the University, and yet few members of the McGill hierarchy and of the faculty in general seem to be aware of what is being done at the EFLC and what language teaching at the university is all about.

Indeed, the question Alan W. France ironically poses about writing applies very well to language teaching in general in higher education and, unfortunately, reflects a commonly shared point of view in the university milieu:

What is there of intellectual substance to composition [language teaching at the university level]? Does our teaching subject, our professional claim to expert knowledge, consist merely in an ensemble of techniques adequately represented as "skills" (such as knowing how to correct or avoid dangling modifiers by embedding agency in introductory verbal phrases)? Even if they are complex, performative, impossible to learn out of context, (…), what do skills have to do with the intellect? With knowledge, aesthetics, sensibility? With character, or ethics? With a liberal education? (France, Alan W. (2000). Dialectics of Self: Structure and Agency as the Subject of English. College English 63, 145-165, p. 146)

The answer to this question explains why the English and French Language Centre has its place in the Faculty of Arts: quite simply, the teaching and learning of languages at the university level relies on significant cultural and intellectual content; it is thus instrumental to the pursuit of knowledge. By the very same token, language instruction also shapes the mind because it requires the critical organization of thought and the constant evaluation of knowledge, discourse, and their entwinement. With such a fundamental role, language teaching and learning asserts itself as the most inter-disciplinary of all university disciplines and performs, as France says, “a crucial synthetic work: the synthesis of experience and culture” (p. 148).

Regrettably, France’s question remains at the heart of the many challenges faced by the EFLC. Presently, the mission of the EFLC is to:

1. provide English and French language courses of a superior quality to students registered in an undergraduate or graduate program at McGill, and to help them develop the linguistic skills, the cultural awareness, and the communicative competence appropriate to the values and academic standards of the university.

2. administer the Faculty of Arts Multimedia Language Facility (AMLF/LLMFA) by seeing to the academic needs of the language lab users and collaborating with FAITS for technological support; through the AMLF, the EFLC is promoting high quality computer assisted language teaching and learning (CALL).

3. play a key role in the development of pedagogical practices, traditional and technology assisted, and to ensure the university's reputation for excellence in the field of applied linguistics.

4. provide training and supervision of language monitors, interns, graduate students with teaching responsibilities, and course lecturers, and to assist in the professional development of the language teaching faculty.

5. lend its expertise to the university and the community in bringing special projects to fruition (the Special English Program for Asian students; the AMLF; the Training and Human Resources Development Project [a Health Canada-McGill University endeavor]; the McGill Quebec Studies Summer Institute [a joint endeavor with the Programme d’études sur le Québec], the Arts Legacy Freshman Program, etc.).

In the immediate future, the EFLC looks forward to the possibility of developing a research agenda in the areas of Second Language Teaching and Learning at the university level and Computer Assisted and Technology Enhanced Language Learning (CALL &TELL). At the moment, it is considered by far too many to be a mere service centre, and is the only academic unit of the Faculty of Arts entirely staffed and administered by Faculty Lecturers. At a time when more and more universities are placing language studies at the forefront of higher education and are developing research agendas accordingly, the EFLC Faculty Lecturers are left to ensure excellence in the field without any of the conditions that would facilitate their activities: tenure-track positions, sabbatical leaves, access to research grants.

Section II – Past Year’s Activities:

Following is a summary of the highlights of the past year taking into account the 5 major dimensions of the EFLC's mission as set out in Section I. These highlights clearly convey the interdisciplinary and collaborative nature of our endeavors and ventures as well as our ongoing efforts to provide innovative and productive solutions to student-centered concerns.

Directorship

In June 2005, Prof. Hélène Riel-Salvatore was confirmed Director of the English and French Language Centre for a third mandate ending May 31, 2007. Dean Hall supported her efforts in requesting a tenure-track position for the EFLC and sounding the alarm for the urgent need to develop a research agenda for the unit.

As Director of the EFLC, Prof. Riel-Salvatore was twice invited to speak to the Principal’s Task Force on Student Life and Learning. Discussions focused on students’ needs and requests and the appropriate and feasible ways of addressing these issues with limited resources. In a subsequent session, the focus shifted to the particular contribution the EFLC could make to students’ Quebec experience.

Teaching and Learning (undergraduate and graduate):

1. Achievements and Innovations:

A. English for Academic Purposes (EAPR) was in the spotlight this year:

1. Dr. Sue Laver, newly hired in July 2005 as a Full Time Faculty Lecturer, opened a new and challenging avenue for the EFLC to share its expertise in Writing Across the Curriculum within the Arts Legacy Freshman Option programme launched in September 2005. Dr. Laver is involved in the ongoing development of all aspects of the programme, but as the English for Academic Purposes specialist, she has primary responsibility for the programme’s intensive writing component.

Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) focuses on “the need to learn the conventions and ideologies of the different disciplines and the importance of voice, audience, context, and language in every academic and cultural situation” (R. Samuels, Re-inventing the modern university with WAC: Post-Modern Composition as Cultural and Intellectual History, 2004). It therefore fits perfectly with the pedagogical approach and objectives of the Legacy Program. Moreover, through its scholarly/research component and library liaison arrangements, the WAC aspect of Legacy concretely supports the will of the University that undergraduates become more involved in the research process.

In the Legacy Program, writing is not an end in itself but a mode of learning through inquiry, an opportunity to explore ideas, and a means of acquiring and developing new knowledge. Students are thus not only learning to write, but writing to learn. The WAC approach helps students to become more aware of, and thus to reflect on, their writing and thinking processes and to develop the necessary skills for written (and, by extension, oral) communication at a level relevant to their university tasks as well as to their postgraduate, professional, and personal lives.

Dr. Laver's role is thus that of a facilitator not only for the students but also for the teachers and TAs who must acquire a new perspective on their students’ writing and adopt the appropriate approach for evaluation purposes.

Dr. Laver received a $14,000 grant for her project proposal to the McGill Teaching and Learning Innovation Fund (MTALIF), $7,000 from the MTALIF and, as matching funds, $3,500 from the AUS startup fund and $3,500 from the Faculty of Arts. The project, entitled "Developing Academic Writing Skills in the Small Tutorial Format: The Arts Legacy Model," aims to assess the effectiveness of the teaching and evaluation methods employed in the small tutorial format of the Arts Legacy Freshman Option.

Dr. Laver devotes half of her teaching time to the Legacy Programme and also teaches three sections of the EFLC course EAPR 250 to native speakers enrolled in various programs in all faculties at McGill. As of May 2006, she is also coordinator of this course.

2. As the quality of writing in English is a growing preoccupation among faculty, discussions with regard to a Writing Centre have connected the EFLC, the English Department, and the Faculty of Education. Dr. Robert Myles was granted a $3,000 award for his project proposal to the Mary H. Brown Fund Award. Entitled Writing Anxiety: A Comparison of the McGill Response with Other Canadian Universities, the project involves collecting information on the writing resources of other Canadian universities hosting a writing centre (e.g., University of Toronto, Queen’s, University of Winnipeg, and Simon Fraser) and comparing their use of resources with those of McGill. The report will lead to specific recommendations for McGill for the rationalization and improvement of resources needed at McGill to deal adequately with writing anxiety and the stress associated with academic writing.

For information purposes: In 2005-2006, the EFLC offered 11 sections of EAPR 250 during the academic year and two sections during the summer session. 301 students were enrolled, almost exclusively undergraduates. We can measure the acute need for such a course when we look at the evolving enrollment since 2001: in five years, it went from 124 to 301, and the number of sections increased from 5 to 12 while the number of students per section remained stable at 25. In 2001, students in this course counted for 18% of the EFLC clientele registered in English courses. They now constitute 32%.

Although the EFLC invests a great deal of energy in addressing the quality of student writing for native speakers, resources are not sufficient to successfully reach all the students who need to take EAPR 250. In the past two years, the EFLC has had to develop strategies to increase the enrollment chances of incoming undergraduate students--those who can benefit from EAPR 250 the most. Even so, many students (returning as well as incoming) are still turned away for lack of space.

On the other hand, enrollment in regular ESLN courses (200, 300, 400, 500) is lower: we offered 7 sections in 2005-2006 compared to 12 in 2001-2002. Our concern is to know why: Are the students now better prepared when they enter McGill or is there an administrative reason why they cannot fit an ESL course into their schedules? Enrollment is down for courses dedicated to graduate students, but the number of sections for ESLN 590: Writing for graduate students (6 sections) and ESLN 650: Pronunciation (5 sections) remains stable.

Overall registration for ESL/EAP this year was 780 for a total of 841 three-credit equivalents.

B.  FRSL: Two New Hires; Successful Strategies to meet Overwhelming Demand for courses in French as a second language (FSL); New Course Offerings; Preparing Students for Internships.

For information purposes: This past year, the EFLC offered 81 sections of its 20 FRSL courses. In all, 1949 students registered for a total of 2239 three-credit equivalents. We offer four options designed to address various student needs: regular courses from beginner to advanced: FRSL 101, 207, 211, 321, 431 (distributed over the fall and winter semesters), and their intensive equivalents: FRSL 105, 208, 215, 325 (6 credits over 1 semester). Option écrit addresses the needs of students who have developed communicative abilities at the expense of linguistic accuracy and of students who wish to improve their writing skills and proficiency: FRSL 332, 333, 445, 446, 455. Conversely, Option oral addresses the needs of students who have good writing skills and an explicit knowledge of French grammar but who have not been sufficiently exposed to spoken French to build their confidence and become orally proficient. Our Option culture provides a second-language approach to courses that focus on a specific content (Discover Montreal or Quebec in French). In fact, all of our second language courses – conventional and computer assisted – adopt a methodology in which the acquisition of language skills is wedded to the development of cultural knowledge, critical thinking, debating skills and the many other forms of intellectual development characteristic of university life.

1. Hiring of two new Full-Time FSL colleagues. For the past two years, the FSL sector of the EFLC has been under undue stress on account of a Full-Time position which could not be filled. To remedy the situation, the EFLC was authorized to advertise the position again this year, plus another which was obtained through EFLC collaboration with Continuing Education (Languages). Professors Marion Vergues and Natallia Liakina have been hired as Full-Time Faculty Lecturers (August 2006). Both are trained in Language Didactics, with a specialization in Phonetics.

2. In FRSL courses, the overwhelming demand for beginner and elementary level courses unfortunately compels us to turn away far too many students. This year, the EFLC was able to offer two additional 6-credit sections for these two levels. Courses taken at these levels account for 30.7% of the total number of FRSL three-credit equivalents over the year and 42% over Fall and Winter. This strategy proved to be very effective both for the 443 students in the two levels and for the teachers of these courses. It also allowed for a much smoother placement testing period.

3. New Courses: FRSL 103, 104; Pilot Project FRSL 332, FRSL333

– The EFLC addressed newly identified student needs and responded to student pressure for increased access to the 20 FSL courses offered. Indeed, as noted in the Principal’s Task Force on Student Life and Learning, our beginner level was the only one for which a 3-credit option was not available. Professors Suzanne Pellerin and Denyse Laniel, respective course coordinators, proposed to the Curriculum Committee two new 3-credit courses: FRSL 103 for Near-beginners and FRSL 104, Corrective Phonetics for Beginners developed for next fall by our newly hired colleagues. Discussions have been initiated about the transformation of beginner level FRSL 101 from a 6-credit course spanning the full year into two 3-credit courses; however, logistical considerations have delayed a suggested September 2006 implementation.