2007 Biennial Cross-Campus Conference in Education

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Browsing 2007 Biennial Cross-Campus Conference in Education by Subject "Centre for Language Learning, UWI, St. Augustine"

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    The importance of learning foreign languages in Trinidad and Tobago
    (School of Education, UWI, St. Augustine, 2008) Kawecki, Regis; Gea-Monera, Maria Pilar
    By learning a foreign language, students are exposed to a new and exciting world and get close to other people and to cultures that possess different systems for explaining and understanding world phenomena. This experience broadens the learners' minds and makes them appreciate other lifestyles that are neither better nor worse, but different. Tolerance and respect for others are highly valued in the world today and we all need to be educated in these values. In this respect, the Centre for Language Learning (CLL) has an important role to play for the university and the larger community of Trinidad and Tobago. These are issues addressed in this paper, which presents and analyses data from questionnaires distributed to CLL students at the beginning of Semester 2, 2006-2007. The purpose of the survey was to have a better picture of our students so that we could design programmes that meet their needs and expectations
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    Reconceptualizing the agenda for language education at the UWI: Languages for all
    (School of Education, UWI, St. Augustine, 2008) Carter, Beverly-Anne
    In 1997, the St. Augustine Campus of The University of the West Indies (UWI) embarked on a programme of languages for all via the establishment of the Centre for Language Learning (CLL). The mission of the unit was clear. The CLL was to be the institutional means for organizing and expanding the teaching of foreign languages at UWI, St. Augustine. Its mission meant that students could now aspire to foreign language competence as a core skill of their "graduateness." At the end of the first decade, it is useful to examine how successfully the CLL has accomplished its mission. Moreover, as it embarks on its second decade, a refocusing of its mission-with reference to current research on non-specialist learning, new societal imperatives such as the Spanish as a First Foreign Language (SAFFL) Initiative, and institutional objectives such as the Campus's adoption of internationalization as a strategic objective-is called for. These are the issues addressed in this paper, which seeks to set out how the CLL, as a UWI centre of excellence for languages, proposes to meet the challenge of teaching, research, innovation, advisory and community services, and intellectual leadership in non-specialist language learning in the next decade