What can Angela Ghadery offer?

• In-sessional courses e.g. general option to focus on higher IELTS grades and portfolio work to support weekly study demands

• Drop-in availability for specific problems• Workshops for EAP skills• Encourage participation in mentoring

Please contact me!

a.m.ghadery@staffs.ac.uk

What can you offer?

• Invite recording of your lectures; provide handouts; be aware of colloquialisms, speed and clarity of language

• Clear briefings and feedback for tasks and assignments

• Check understanding by asking students to explain what they have to do

• Opportunities for befriending

The next step...

• Review your own experience of teaching and working with overseas students

• Review whether your own curriculum is ‘international’

• Advise what further support you think you may need to support you

• Advise what other support for students might be useful

What does IELTS 6.0 mean?

FELT WorkshopWednesday 16th April 2008

Paul Williams

Objectives

• Explain IELTS and what a score of 6.0 actually means

• Provide a forum for discussion of pedagogic issues relating to the learning and teaching of international students

• Review ISC support available

Student Quotes• ‘Sometime, like for some courseworks, I really didn’t

know what to do.’• ‘It’s very difficult to finish my examination because my

English is not good. So I think my college should arrange some time to help us to learn oral or writing English.’

• ‘Home students, I don’t think they have their own idea or something but they get a good score in the coursework. They just quote, quote some words and reference to others’ words. I don’t know what.’

• ‘Another difficult thing for, that is some English teacher, the accent, the accent... We can’t understand.’

Student Quote

‘Tutors are hold my hand through almost all the subjects they taught, and at the end of the day I just show them that I learned what they told me through exams. As students in my country, we don’t have much independence and all we need to do is to do what we’re told’.

Arrival in Staffordshire

• Culture shock of new environment• Highly directed to self-directed learning• Minimal guidance on what to study• Information overload• Comparatively empty timetable• Confusing academic conventions: group

work, tutorials/seminars, assignments• Apparent exclusion from social activities

Setting the Scene

• It’s them not us!• The deficit models - international

students cannot reflect, are not good at critical thinking, lack skills

• Language and cultural issues• Poor at responding in class

(Biggs, 2003)

IELTS 6.0 - what does it mean?

• IELTS score of 6.0 commonly set as the required entry level for overseas students

• How does the English language proficiency of an overseas student with IELTS 6.0 compare to that of a home student?

The IELTS test measures ability to communicate in English for people who intend to work or study where English is the language of communication

(www.ielts.org).

IELTS in Summary

• a test of communicative proficiency

• a test of international English

• at best, IELTS provides a ‘snapshot’ of a student’s ability on the day of the test!

IELTS is not ...

• a test of grammar• a test of a student’s ability to study• a test of knowledge on a topic• a test of ability to apply language to

academic study tasks• a test of ability to cope in a new culture

The IELTS Score

• IELTS classifies students by language proficiency into band scores ranging from 1 (non-user) - 9 (expert user)

• Students are tested in four proficiency areas: listening, reading, writing, and speaking

• All four ‘modules’ are equally weighted• The overall band score is the mean total

of the four individual modules

An IELTS score of 6.0?

Competent User

Has generally effective command of language, though with occasional inaccuracies, inappropriacies and misunderstandings. Can use and understand fairly complex language particularly in familiar situations.

(www.ielts.org)

Assumptions

• The score is adequate for a student on a business course?

• A student with this score is likely to do well academically?

Common Academic Problems

• Unrealistic expectations• Whirlwind induction week• Understanding lectures (and lecturers)• Stamina when using a foreign language daily• Accuracy when expressing familiar concepts• Speaking - speed of reaction• Confidence dip - sense of taking on a new

(childish) personality when speaking in foreign language

• Devalued prior learning styles

Other ‘language’ Problems

• Vocabulary - may know as few as 5000 ‘words’. Home students vocabulary size between 15,000-20,000 ‘word families’

• Overseas students must supplement this with the specialist vocabulary of their subject

• Vocabulary knowledge important - the springboard for learning new vocabulary

• Fluency - EFL students read up to three times more slowly.

• Also write more slowly

Likely (academic) support needs• Understanding abstract vocabulary (especially

in interpreting assignment instructions)• understanding the conventions of academic

writing and speaking• using the language of persuasion and

evaluation effectively• expressing the appropriate degree of caution

in discussing claims• developing a concise style

Speaking from Experience

Postgraduate courses:

PASS 1 / EAP – Academic skills

PASS 2 – Phonology

Undergraduate courses:

Semester 1 – EAP

Semester 2 – Vocabulary building and understanding assignment briefs

Students’ perceived needs:

• Understanding lectures – instructions for tasks in particular, as well as content

• Participating in seminars – fear of being misunderstood or being incorrect

• Managing day to day living – important due to time and stress caused e.g. banks, doctors, etc.

Assessed needs:

• Vocabulary, vocabulary, vocabulary! (General English, EGAP, ESAP)

• Listening and speaking practice

• Macro and micro-writing skills

• Academic conventions