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Dr Susan Mandala will be giving a talk in the Language Research Seminars series on Tuesday 14th November at 5pm in Reg Vardy 113 . She will explore how forms of mass media and popular culture have long been of interest to analysts for what they potentially tell us about ourselves and frequent attention has been paid to representations of gender, race, class, ethnicity and power. An equally potent but lesser explored representation is that of language learners. How are English language learners portrayed in our popular dramas, sitcoms and soap operas and what makes these portraits significant? Ranging widely over programmes such as The Archers and The Big Bang Theory , this paper explores the representation of English language learners in these texts and investigates how they are ‘storied’ in some of our most popular dramas. Dr Mandala argues that these representations frequently construct language learners as ‘other’ and asks what challenges this may pose for practice, te...

Please come along to the next Languages Research Seminar for a talk by Dr. María Alonso Alonso, award winning fiction author, and postdoctoral fellow at the University of St Andrews. Her topic is 'Narco-culture and violence in Latin American literature'. Tuesday 7th March at 5pm in DG313.

Dr Neil Johnson Dr Neil Johnson (Team Leader for TESOL) will be giving a talk in the Languages Research Seminar series at 5pm on Tuesday November 22nd 2016 (Forster 301).   In the increasingly globalized and digital context of higher education, with concomitant pressure to internationalize through raised proficiency standards and greater intercultural understanding, the dominant skills-based, discreet approach to language teaching may not be optimally effective. In his presentation, entitled "Understanding language and culture through multimodal text analysis", Neil will describe the Literacy-based approach to language education that seeks to address these concerns. This approach was used to re-imagine a course for second year undergraduates at a small private university in Japan, and operationalizes both reading and writing as essentially similar processes of meaning making and design (New London Group, 1996). The course was re-structured so that learners are involved in ite...

The third seminar in the language research series will be taking place on Monday 29 th February in Forster 302 at 5.00pm . The talk will be given by a new member of TESOL staff Dr Michael Hepworth. The topic of his talk is 'Argumentation and citizenship in the adult TESOL classroom'. All welcome!

Tower of Babel by Pieter Bruegel the Elder c.1563 The second talk in the new series of Languages Research Seminars will be given by Dr Susan Mandala on the topic of 'ESL and EFL voices in English literature’. It takes place on Monday 8 th February at 6.00pm in FR 302 (Forster building , City Campus). All welcome!

Dr Sheila Walsh (French) is pleased to announce the inaugural event in a new research seminar series. Dr Miguel Gomes (Spanish) will present 'The Challenge of Translating Literature: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Words.' The talk will take place on Monday 30th November at 5pm in Forster 302 . All welcome.