Dear colleagues,
As Head of the Department of Modern Languages at the University of Kent, I am passionate about the importance of modern foreign languages within the secondary and tertiary curriculum.
In addition to the personal benefits that come from having a command of a language other than your own, we all know that language learning is increasingly important for young generations, both as an employability asset and as the path par excellence to developing intercultural skills and empathy.
We are experiencing challenging times for education, both at secondary and tertiary levels, and our hope is that we can work more closely with colleagues in local – and, indeed, not-so-local – schools to support language teaching and to encourage pupils to continue their studies and develop their confidence
In light of these considerations we are delighted to announce that we will be launching a ‘Modern Languages Teaching Forum’ at the University of Kent. The aim of the forum is to bring together teachers of modern languages at all levels to share good practice and discuss the challenges we are facing in this rapidly changing world.
The aim is to run this forum twice per year, each time with a different broad area of language teaching in focus. The forum will last two to three hours, will include some short presentations on the topic, followed by open floor discussion.
The first event will take place on 30 October 2019 starting at 5pm. The theme of this forum will be ‘Speaking’. Attendance is free of charge and light refreshments will be provided.
You are warmly invited to attend and to extend the invitation to colleagues in your organisation or elsewhere who might be interested. We also welcome suggestions for discussion topics, so if you have something in mind, either in the form of good practices that you are successfully deploying or challenges that you are facing or both within the broad theme of ‘speaking (a foreign language)’ please do send a short abstract and a proposed title to my colleague, Dr Wissia Fiorucci.
We will be in touch closer to the date with more details on the event, but wanted to reach out as soon as possible so that we all have plenty of time to plan ahead.
With warm wishes,
Dr Alvise Sforza Tarabochia
Head of Department of Modern Languages