Staff in modern language departments who are responsible for residence
abroad are agreed that, if the period abroad is to fulfil its essential role
in the learning process, the students themselves must be taught how to take
responsibility for their own learning, using as their raw material the new
linguistic and cultural situation in which they find themselves. The
innovative courses and other materials prepared by the members of the
Learning and Residence Abroad (LARA) consortium and distributed to all UK
higher education institutions in 2000 aroused great interest across the
sector, especially the course of training in ethnographic methods designed
to enable the students to build up their intercultural understanding
rigorously and effectively, and the models of learning agreements, a
valuable aid to effective assessment.
LARA is now offering two free regional workshops on these essential topics,
the first at Nottingham Trent University and the second in London at the
Centre for Information on Language Teaching and Research; they are designed
both for those who wish to find out more about the principles involved and
the methods proposed, and for those who wish to exchange ideas about their
own experience in implementing these approaches.
For further details, workshop programme and to register see the Subject
Centre website, http://www.lang.ltsn.ac.uk/events/lara_wkshops.html
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