Publication details
Thirty Year of Pour quoi faire? Pour faire quol?*: Steady Expansion or Consonant Indentity Crisis?
| Authors | |
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| Year of publication | 2022 |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | It was at the CercleS founding conference in Bordeaux in 1992 when the search for the meaning and role of language centres began (M. Ruane, 2003). Since that time, we have acknowledged that language centres perform a wide variety of roles and tasks. Language centres differ extensively because they do not exist in isolation from their universities (2018 Wulkow Memorandum), they reflect individual settings of their institutions and keep changing in accordance with the changes their universities undergo, especially once they "have entered an age of endless turmoil" (B. Clarke 1997). While in the 1990s, endless turnmoil might have meant the impressive entrée of ICT or clear focus on internationalisation in higher education, turmoil of today differs. We face sudden forced shifts from face-to-face to online teaching due tu global pandemics or prompt educational support to thousands of refugee students from war zones. Despite appearances, language centres seem to be coping well. This talk focused on reasons of success of language centres. It discussed ways in which language centres have coped with the challenges of the past. It also identified ways which can improve our status and general being. We took a close look at mission statements and everyday activities of language centres, at specificities of our staff and diversity of our target audiences. We addressed and explored questions, such as: In which situations, should language centres play the roles of academic, semi-academic or purely service-providing bodies? Should language centre staff be members of the faculty? Should language centre expertise lie in language teaching, linguistics, communication or even-only-vaguely- language-related soft skills? Considering those questions and other complex factors that enhance (or indeed restrain) the potential of the development of language centres will aim to offer a broad institutional perspective and true understanding of what roles language centre can play and what challenges they need to be ready for in the future. * Des Centres de langues dans l´Enseignement supérieur : Pour quoi faire ? Pour y faire quoi ?, M. Perrin 1993. |