A holistic approach to progression. For University of Bristol (UoB), there are two routes:

• KCL partner-college route
• Bristol in-house International Foundation Programme (IFP) route.

For both, multidimensional support is required including academic, linguistic and sociocultural and belonging. All can impact early undergraduate sucess. So preparation extends far beyond academic preparation.

UoB in-house IFP

It is based on campus and has close links to the rest of the university though work still be done to make it closer. They are in the process of curriculum revamping, to make more integration between EAP and disciplinary subjects. They also want to connect more with schools to support transitions. They want to introduce students to teaching appraoches at UG level. This revamp has been going on for the last year and will be delivered in September.

They want students to feel more part of the UoB community. There is a unique team on campus called Global Lounge which focuses on community building, and introductory events help the students to learn about it.

KICL Partner-college route

These students are preparing outside the university environment. They need a more intentional transition bridge. They have fewer day-to-day opportunities to build familiarity and sense of belonging. These students are not less capable or prepared but a different route creates different transition needs.

How can this gap be bridged?

1. Align expectations. They are working with UoB so that the Kaplan college is more aligned with them in terms of curriculum and assessment.
2. Build readiness through uni orientaton week workshops
3. Sustain connection through five part summer transition newletter = a structured pre-arrival sequence not a one-off communication: pre arrival preparation, academic transition, Ai and academic practise, suport services, career services.
4. Increase UoB exposuure with a transition week including campus visits and tutor sessions. Students can meet staff, ask questions and get an earlier sense of what support services can be like at the university. This turns Bristol from an abstract destination into a visible and relational place.
5. Review and refine: post-progression outcomes. Student voice and Bristol partner feedback used.

It is embedded, collaborative, multidimensional and transferable. Progresison is not a handover point, it is a process.

Students ask about campus and learning spaces, workload and study hours, unit chocies and assessments, career opportunities. = Students needed clarity on lived reality of year 1 study, not only entry requirements.

Feedback suggests that students valued this. Especially the Q&A and small group discussions. They wanted more time for Q&A and more visual examples of the campus.

They can’t recreate the Bristol experience at the college but they can support that transition.

Post IFP collaboration

Case study: Engineering. Lower progression of ex IFP year 1 students to Year 2. So the academic and pastoral support team was born. They meet ex IFP students every two weeks for small group tutorials and 1-1 on request.

Challenges to progression:

• prior subject knowledge
• language proficiency and confidence
• academic culture; time management/organisation
• independent study skills (maturity?)
• wellbeing
• motivation
• assessment: type, clarity of brief, questions, timing, familiarity.

Academic and Pastoral Support tutor role:

• Identify challenges
• Ensure all students are aware of academic and pastoral support
• Provide support to specific students (who need it)

IFP should be understood as an integrated stage of students wider transition into UK higher education, not as an add-on. Transition is gradual, requiring support before, during and after progression. Collaboration between different teams means there is more connection between different stages, so it is all more joined up. This continuity helps reduce uncertainty and provides a clear route. Progression is not the end of a pathway, it is a shared transition point.

Conclusions:

My thoughts:

Again, interesting to see how other places do things! The transition arc as a whole is not something I have a lot of control over but I know the Student Experience team here have done things involving people from future departments coming and speaking to students and (I think?) students visiting the departments too. I’m not sure what happens to students once in department. I do know there is Deparmental Language Support available via ELTC tutors going into departments and providing support lessons that are open to all students. I don’t know what happens specifically to IFP students who progress to the university.

I suppose challenges to progression are something for us to keep in mind, as perhaps those we can help with e.g. time management/organisation and independent studyskills are something we could scaffold, and by making our assessments reflective of what students will meet at university, including in how AI is treated, we can help them in that way too.

Jake started with a quiz. Apparently he had used it at previous InForm conferences too:

______________________ is the holy grail of learning.

_____________________ is predictive of higher grades.

Engagement is the answer and absolutely crucial when we are considering materials and assessments for EAP students.

He started teaching EAP 15 years ago in Tokyo, using EAP Now book. There was an activity comparing an academic paragraph with noun phrases, passivevoice, lack of personal language with an informal spoken paragraph. He had to check the answer in the teachers notes. So looking back it was quite bad he was put into EAP teaching with so little awareness of academic style.

He learned the rules: avoid personal language, anecdotal evidence, emotion, much creativity. And guided students to remove them. However, in the last 2-3 years, he has come to the conclusion that teaching these rules might actually be detrimental to what we are trying to do as teachers.

Why does EAP need to change focus?

3 main reasons.

1, AI/Technology. The truth is, students now can have a lot more help with writing and academic style. So that isn’t the best place we can add value.

2. A lot of students still really struggle with spoken commnication. However, to play an active role at university they needt o be able to share ideas, speak in seminars, connect with people and make friends with them. If you have a lot of C1/C2 students they can already speak well, but can they deliver a 20 minute engaging, persuasive, academic-backed talk? No. Even WE find that difficult. But we should be helping them to become better communicators. How often do we think “this is a brilliant presentation!”?: not often. If they are brilliant conversationally, how do we push them to deliver such talks?

3. Academia is changing. There is an increasingly transactional relationship between students and universities. They pay high tuition fees and they want to know what they are getting for it. In a 2025 survey, only 37% said they were getting good value for learning. The language is changing. Graduate attributes are commonly talked about. Students want assessments and sessions that feel useful and relevant, practical and connected to the real world. Universities are beginning to respond to this. Paltridge and Starfield (2023) have found that doctorates and academic genres are evolving, often include practical/creative components.

Next we were shown a B2 level student example video project: we had to watch and consider two questions –

1. What skills does this student demonstrate?
2. Does the student seem to care about what they are saying?

What we saw: An engaging hook to get you interested, presents some evidence, uses stress, intonation and pacing, also gestures and facial expressions. Also uses visuals, music and editing to enhance his message. He gives his opinion. He has a strong sense of ownership and is clearly trying to get people to listen. If we wanted to be critical, we could ask where his evidence comes from, he will be more receptive because he is more invested in the task and wants people to listen.

At Birmingham, they have brought in this video project as an assessment:

• 8 minute video and 15 minute viva. Replaced previous take-home assignment.
• students still assessed on argument and critical thinking, research and use of sources, organisation and coherence, spoken communication.
• Writing was assessed in a separate timed writing exam.

Jake feels this project responded to the issues. It is harder to outsource to AI, as you have to appear on screen and present your message. It would be clear if you didn’t understand what you were saying. The project uses relevant, transferable, real-world skills. It reflects the changing nature of undergraduate study.

Video project prompts:

It is important what topics students can choose form. Jake et al wanted accessible topics that students could relate to but also were weighty enough that they had to go out and do research, think critically etc.

Some examples of ones they have used:

1. Is it advisable for young people to invest in cryptocurrencies?
2. Should phones be banned in schools?
3. Does social media do more harm than good to offline friendships?
4. Was life better in the 1990s for teenagers than today?
5. Should energy drinks be banned for under18s?
6. Should comptetitive esports be included in the olympics?
7. Do influencers have too much influence over young people?
8. Is it better for university students to specialise in one subject or study different ones?

Student feedback: 77% rated it highly for helping them develop academic skills. 63% rated it hghly for engagement.

Some comments from students:

• “Video research project is very time-consuming”
• “Don’t do the video research it was hard”

= suggestive that they had to do it themselves rather than just rely on AI?

Teachers liked the opportunity to practice spoken communication, audience awareness, creativity and ownership. Concerns still existed around Academic rigour, AI misuse and difficulty standardising.

Jake reckons this is a step in the direction of co-authoring but retaining a voice. It maintains academic rigour as students have to be critical and provide evidence. Marking was more interesting, of the videos and the vivas where students talked about the choices they had made.

Conclusion: change is happening. Technology is changing. How students learn is changing. For EAP to remain relevant it needs to adapt. Jake thinks it needs to move away from the old academic style rules and move towards engaging activities that develop the necessary skills. EAP doesn’t NEED to be boring.

Question about whether AI was used. Jake doesn’t mind it being used skilfully (much like our coursework essay criteria – poor use of AI is reflected by a poor score in the criteria. Good use or good non-use = good score.)

Question about vivas: any anecdotal evidence to share about students doing the viva? It was a viva tutorial which didn’t feel so far removed from regular tutorials, just speaking to class teacher. It was fun to push and challenge them on their arguments a bit. The vivas of the video project pointed to much more indepth knowledge and understanding compared to the essay vivas that used to be. The viva was worth 5% of overall module score, the video was worth 20%.

Question about marking: how much per student for outline, 3 minute, 8 minute etc. The video project isn’t marked as such, it is used to prepare for the viva. (Unsure how this relates to 20% of score). Agreement that everything we try to put in place add up to more workload!

My thoughts

It was interesting to see an example of what those who have control over their assessment are doing. Our assessments are decided by Studygroup so it isn’t like we can decide, “right, this time we will use video project and see how it goes”. I wonder if our pre-sessional programmes (who do have control over assessment) might at some point though! Then again, is it feasible within the time constraints and workloads of a pre-sessional programme? Not my area of speciality to be able to answer! We’ve used recorded presentations before, but that was during Covid and in place of live presentations rather than in place of a written piece of work. One thing we found, and a reason we were glad to go back to live presentations, is that live presentations are generally done and marked in class time, while the latter is all a drain on time outside of class. (Note: we still had coursework essays to mark as well at that stage, as it wasn’t a replacement for that.)

I liked what Jake said about it being a viva tutorial, that for students had a similar feel to regular tutorials. Also interesting that when related to the video project they were better in terms of depth etc. compared to the vivas that had been attached to the essays. We used to do vivas in relation to an essay when we had a synoptic assessment for pre-masters students. The students did attend individually but they had to stand in front of a panel (AES tutor, module tutor) for the duration so that is a very different feel.

As a teacher, I think I would find video projects quite hard to mark, especially if there were a lot of visual/audio special effects type stuff involved (“visuals, music, editing”), as part of being autistic for me is really struggling with that type of sensory input. I’d also question whether the assessment would disadvantage students who haven’t already got video editing type skills to do the “visuals, music, editing” as it would seem to involve more than just pressing record on yourself (which is what students had to do for our pandemic-time presentations). For sure there wouldn’t be time to teach them such skills in addition to everything else! Who would be disadvantaged and how? How would that compare to standard assessments? Be interesting to know a year down the line how the video projects are working out for these guys – will they manage to deal with/mitigate the concerns? Will AI developments push them to change things further? Also be interesting to know if they come up with/trial any other kinds of potentially more engaging assessment.

AI introduces competing priorities for assessment. AI literacy is part of academic literacy skills but we also assess language profiency: AI may need to be restricted to allow authentic asessment of language skills.

At Edinburgh, they wanted to re-design foundation EAP assessment for Arts, Humanities and Social sciences. They decided it could only be done by looking at their assessment as a whole not only individual parts.

Two lanes approach:

Lane 1 – AI Exclusion – Designed to make GenAI impractical or irrelevant. E.g. live discussions, closed book exams, practice-based tasks.

Lane 2 – AI Collaboration – Lower-order tasks offloaded to AI, higher order and critical thinking promoted. Students interpret, select, adapta and critically engage with materials.

What they did:

Semester 1:

• Take-home essay still there: (AI collaboration – Lane 2) Student unpack, braintosrm, develop and iterate and essay throughout the course. Can’t use AI to translate from L1 (40%)

• Seminar discussion: (AI exclusion – Lane 1) Students discuss self-selected questions on a key text (40%)

• Exam, summary of source text: (AI exclusion – Lane 1) Students summarise a text, unaware of which text it will be until the exam, they do it under exam conditions. (20%).

They wanted to start with doing more Lane 1 in Semester 1 and then do more Lane 2 in Semester 2.

Semester 2:

• Student led project: (AI collaboration – Lane 2) Students brainstorm, investigate and research a topic related to their destination subject. (40%)

• Project presentation: (AI collaboration – Lane 2) Students present an aspect of their project. This is largely lane 2 but the actual delivery is Lane 1. (40%)

• Exam: Project Reflection: (Preparation for AI exclusion Lane 2; Exam Lane 1) Students do a written reflection about their learning experience from the project. (20%)

Positive impacts: academic misconduct referrals way down; students demonstrate awareness of academic integrity in relation to AI and also its limitations.

Factors to consider: AI is always changing, so asessments will have to be agile too. Misuse of AI, when AI use is permitted (e.g. Lane 2), it is hard to identify/judge. It affects teachers’ willingness to report misconduct: uncertainty = less willing to report it.

We did a lot of group discussion in this session. Things we discussed:

• what our institutions have done in response to AI so far
• our experience of student use of AI so far
• what issues there are with student use of AI so far
• ideas for how to improve things going forward

One of the members of my group, a history tutor, was saying that AI literacy is certainly very possible to integrate, as are assessments like those in Lane 2, and students are very ready to use AI in that way, but then if they are using AI in that way, farming out the lower order skills, how do they then develop the skills needed to succeed in the Lane 1 AI exclusion assessments where they have to do it all themselves without AI?

Another, a Journalism tutor, talked about a student who used AI and it was noticeable how their voice was lost from the writing, so this tutor had a talk with the student about the importance of not losing their voice, and is hoping the student won’t use AI in the same way next time. So we talked about the importance of having these conversations with students.

In the wider discussion, I think, there was mention of different levels of AI that students can access, and that in the future there will be more payment barriers than currently. And therefore, if we are building AI use into assessment, then are we designing assessments that students can’t all access equally and biasing assessment and achievement towards those with more money.

My thoughts

My notes for this session were somewhat scant because it was very discussion-based and I struggled to combine note-taking and participating in the discussion. (Which is interesting – it is something we often expect from students, that there will be a note-taker in a discussion who will subsequently summarise the discussion for the whole class! I suppose if there were multiple questions to discuss, students could take it in turns to be the note-taker to spread the load. I ended up writing down what I could remember subsequently – made more difficult as there were other sessions to attend after this one, and then travelling back to Sheffield at the end of the day, so I couldn’t get round to getting down what I could remember til the following day. I could remember most of what the two people either side of me said, but not the person sitting furthest from me in the group.)

The approach to AI (with its Lane 1 AI Exclusion and Lane 2 AI collaboration) is similar yet slightly different to the Sheffield University approach. Here, we have AI-free (corresponds to Lane 1) and AI-required (2 x summative assessments required annually), then for any assessments that don’t fall into either of these categories (and all assessments should be clearly labelled for which category they belong to), fair and appropriate use of AI should be possible (as long as it doesn’t constitute “false [automated] authorship”) in a variety of ways. We should include a statement on AI and academic misconduct on all assessment briefs. Alongside this, we need to teach students what good use of AI is in the context of a given assessment. However, this should not just be a list of what is and isn’t approved, as that is not something we can enforce in terms of the things on the “what isn’t” list. So, it was interesting to see the similarities and differences in the two approaches. Of course, in my foundation context, there isn’t an official approach as such, and we are exempt from following University policy to the letter because of the nature and length of the courses, but we have been working to integrate some AI literacy into our course and there have been changes to the coursework essay assessment criteria to try and make it so that poor/unethical use no longer attracts high scores. Work on the criteria is ongoing so we will see what direction they take next.

Was also interesting to see that the assessment overview included an assessed reflection task in Semester 2 – issues around that were explored in detail in “Reflective Practice or Reflective Performance?: Rethinking reflection in foundation.” I wonder if this will ever be introduced in my context. I’m inclined to hope not as there is already so much assessment and so little time, I can’t imagine having to fit in teaching yet something else meaningfully! I’m not sure how the preparatory phase works at Edinburgh compared to in the session linked to above or what is assessed and how. What do they reward, what do they penalise? I wonder if grammar/vocabulary are given a criterion in the assessment criteria for it. Do they then teach specific language for reflection that they expect to see? Do they teach a particular reflective framework that students are expected to use, like the Gibbs model in the session linked to above? Does it become a hoop-jumping exercise for students rather than a genuine reflection opportunity? So many questions (which I hadn’t thought of yet during the session so wasn’t able to ask!). 20% of Semester 2 marks is not insignificant, more than just a throwaway bolt-on. Our assessments are not percentages of a semester score but instead a skill. So for writing, it is 50% coursework essay and 50% exam. Listening is 100% exam. And all of the skills are worth 25% of the overall progression score. The 50-50 split for writing used to be 60-40 with the coursework essay at 60%, which change is a result of technological developments making at-home writing potentially less reflective of student ability. Will be interesting to see how things continue to develop, both in my context and beyond!

On Saturday 20th June, I attended the one-day InForm Conference hosted by Birmingham International Academy, home of the International Foundation Year at Birmingham University. The whole conference focuses on Foundation Year programmes, and is therefore very relevant to my current role. My notes from all the talks I attended will be tagged InForm2026 for easy location.

Talk no.3 of the day. after a much-needed 30min coffee break!

This is a workshop session. Apparently we wil be talking and doing as well… <Edit: oh, didn’t we just…>

(Notes are a mixture of what I got during the session and what I could remember afterwards – often no time to write during!)

We started with an activity where statements were revealed one by one such as: “I reflect on my teaching regularly”; “I encourage students to reflect regularly”; “I am comfortable teaching students how to reflect”; “I am comfortable assessing reflection”. We had to treat the line from wall to wall as the spectrum between agree and disagree and place ourselves according to our views/experiences. We then had to discuss the statement with whoever was nearest to us.

(Note: I’ve done this with agree/disagree and other such opposites before, before but not as a spectrum – would like to try that sometime. It was interesting that the presenters said afterwards that they were happy that the room was so noisy – and don’t we often as teachers equate noise with engagement and participation. It took me 1 statement to realise that I couldn’t cope with the noise and got my noise-cancelling headphones on. Gamechanger – I could then participate as I could hear what the person nearest to me was saying rather than just freeze in a well of noise. Am now considering how I can help my students all be able to participate fully in such activities.)

Then, there was some input on how to scaffold reflection, with the following ideas shared:

• sentence stems
• reflective models
• end of class slides
• peer reviews
• project debriefs
• tutorials (co-construct the reflection with the student)
• drama techniques e.g. forum theatre

Our next activity combines tutorials and forum theatre. <God help me>.

First, what is forum theatre? Augusto Boal developed this in the 1970s as part of his theatre of the oppressed. He was interested in how or the potential of theatre to help people examine and challege the social structures that were shaping their lives. He felt regular theatre situated people as passive observers but to effect change they need to be more involved. Instead of sitting back and watching a scene unfold, audience is invited to come up, pause the action and change it. He called audience “Spect-actors”. He just wanted people to engage with the problems and explore different possibilities. Boal called this a rehearsal for reality. The scope for rehearsing difficult situations has brought it into contemporary situations e.g. healthcare training and even higher education now. Louise uses it with her students. Forum theatre is reflection in the moment. Everybody is analysing/processing as they go.

Forum theatre process:

1. Watch
2. 2. Stop (at any time)
3. Step in (and make any changes)
4. The scene is replayed with the new intervention
5. Consider what is learned

It is about exploring possibilities, challenging assumptions and imagining change.

Today:

1. Kate and Louise perform a dialogue
2. As we watch, we should notice anything that jarrs and think about what the motibations are of the student and the tutor
3. Then we will have the chance to view the script and identify something we want to do differently (this wouldn’t usually happen).
4. Then they start the dialogue again and you should sto when you want to change the action.
5. You improvise the continuning dialoge.

<Ok, phew, we don’t have to role play, it is optional>

You can take the place of either character.

Context:

• a tutorial after a group presentation on social media
• Students have received feedback and must submit an assessed reflection
• the teacher is helping the student to prepare for a reflection assessment
• Students are required to use Gibbs model of reflection to structure their reflection

It was a really enjoyable activity once it was clear that participation in the role play was optional. Chapeau to those who did have a go. We had a lot of dicussion about the script (below) – there were lots of issues:

• we could see evidence of a time-pressed tutor who is trying to get the student to jump through the hoops correctly
• we could see a student who didn’t necessarily understand what it was they were supposed to do but was making note of what the teacher said to regurgitate at the appropriate moment (the assessment)
• we could see evidence that the focus was on the rubric (“Remember, the rubric says…”) more than the actual process of reflection
• we could see a learning opportunity being lost “Okay. Well remember you’re not supposed to memorise it like a speech, so maybe avoid saying that.” “Okay” …Whether or not it was supposed to happen, it did happen. Evaluating how it helped and hindered would be actual reflection.

Assessed reflections

We’ve looked a bit at reflective practice and started to look at assessed reflections which are a bit more of an issue. In academia, in our setting, there is increasing emphasis on it. Next we are looking at some student reflective writing done in such an assessment. These 4 students did the presentation alluded to in the forum theatre and did the written reflection that was the focus of the forum theatre. We look at four examples from the four students who were in one group for the group presentation:

They had very difference experiences of the group presentation and very different approaches to reflection. We had to consider/discuss the following questions:

After this activity, the presenters shared some thoughts with us:

Deep learning is achieved through thoughtful engagement with experience. But in higher education, it is performative and often assessed. Once reflection is assessed, it has to both support learning and provide evidence of learning. This is where the ethical questions begin to surface.

1. Disclosure: reflection asks students to draw on thoughts and feelings. So what are we asking students to reveal when they are asked to reflect. We want them to be authentic etc but they know they will be judged. If some students are naturally more comfortable sharing than others, then are we creating an assessment that is genuinely fair to everyone? Reflective writing asks students to adopt a very particular voice and in reality experiences don’t come neatly packaged and people don’t make the same sense of the same situations. Whose realities are most likely to fit our academic expectations? How voluntary is disclosure when there are marks attached to it? Students are not only deciding what they can safely disclosed but also what kind of reflection is going to be more rewarded.
2. Performativity: when reflection becomes highly structured, students may begin to focus on what successful reflection is expected to look like rather than on reflection itself. So it becomes performance. And in this case is it still reflective practice or are we just teaching them genre conventions? An activity designed to give students voice actually strips it away. Are we assessing reflectioin or a well-crafted account of reflection?
3. Relationality: understanding our practice requires engagement with multiple perspectives not just our own. Once we understand that other perspectives matter, reflection becomes more than just a private act, it becomes a relational practice. Students might feel pressure to write honestly about any peers who did nothing. On the other hand, other students won’t tell the truth because they want to protect valued relationships. Assessment adds another layer of complexity as the person reading the reflection is the person grading it. The teacher has evaluative power and the students know they are going to be judged. Can reflection happen in isolation? Who benefits from reflective assessment? Students can benefit fro making sense of an experience but reflective assessment is there fore instituational purposes.

We need to reflect critically on the practices we ask students to undertake. We work within intitutional structures and assessment regimes but we can still advocate for pedagogically and ethically sound practices.

Reflection questions:

We were given these to think about at the end of the session:

• what are we asking students to do when we ask them to reflect?
• what kind of spaces are we creating for this reflection?
• What kind of reflection are we rewarding and what might we be overlooking?

My thoughts:

This was a very interesting session. Currently, on our IFY at USIC, we don’t have any assessed reflection tasks. We do encourage regular reflection via reflection slides in lessons and for the coming year there will also be 3 1hr online lessons which are reflection-focused (one following the Reading Report, one following the mock seminar discussion and one following the mock presentation). This year, we had two reflection-focused lessons but we found that the reflection task at the end of the Reading Report got a bit lost so one of the changes to the Reading Report sequence was refocusing the existing reflection-focused lesson onto that and then as that lesson no longer focused on the seminar discussion, we added in a lesson for that.

Just had a vague idea that forum theatre could be an interesting thing to do with a seminar discussion lesson, such that students end up forming an effective seminar discussion. But definitely no obligatory participation – you can learn from watching too. So I guess it would depend on the class and whether you think there are any/enough students who would be up for having a go. The presenters said that usually there isn’t a script, but I wonder if an alternative to the forum theatre would be doing a task like we did with the script, where you look at the script and identify issues/alternatives. Perhaps as a pre-tutorial preparation task. It’s an interesting idea. As ever, the main thing we come up against in our course is lack of time. So much to do, so little time. It’s hard to imagine where such a task could fit in before the tutorial in Semester 1. Semester 2 might be more possible (the tutorial there focuses on their coursework essay). And seminar discussion lessons are few, far between and packed. Still, I will keep it all in the back of my mind.

I’m quite glad we don’t have any assessed reflection at this stage. It does seem to be quite a can of worms! As for regular end of lesson and end of week reflection, I will continue to experiment and try to find more effective and meaningful ways to do it with students.

On Saturday 20th June, I attended the one-day InForm Conference hosted by Birmingham International Academy, home of the International Foundation Year at Birmingham University. The whole conference focuses on Foundation Year programmes, and is therefore very relevant to my current role. My notes from all the talks I attended will be tagged InForm2026 for easy location.

CQ stands for Cultural Intelligence, it turns out. Adam begins the talk by “playfully” changing the title to BBQ (Barbeque). He is going to give us 3 scenarios to think about.

Scenario 1: your friend invites you to a bbq. Your friend tells you the bbq starts at 2pm on Saturday. What time would you arrive at the bbq? (I’m autistic so probably 2pm…if I didn’t call in sick…)

Scenario 2: while at the bbq you suggest to your friend that they do a science fiction themed one next time. Your friend replies by saying “Oh nice idea” – will your friend host that party? (Doubt it! It’s like “We should have lunch sometime”)

Scenario 3: you are introduced to mutual friends but they don’t say anything or make eye contact. What does it mean? How do you think they feel? (Maybe they are autistic!)

The above scenarios incorporate: scheduling a time, deciding when to arrive, sharing ideas, receiving feedback on the ideas, meeting new people and encountering silence/lack of eye contact. All of these could happen in foundation year classrooms. How confident are you that everyone in the room had the same answer as you to these questions? What influenced your answer? What influences how decisions made, how feedback is interpreted or how silence is interpreted? Culture is one answer.

Definition of culture for today is based on the two fish story: Once upon a time 2 fish, swimming in an ocean, met an older, wiser fish. Wise fish said morning kids, how is the water? 2 fish replied, what is water? Like the water to the fish, culture surrounds us. It is vital to our survival but we might not always be aware of it. Refers to all norms, expectations, behaviours that all around us but we might take for granted.

How does that relate to us in our role on IFY programmes? We (teachers and students) need to routinely reflect on our ability to adapt effectivly to new cultural contexts. This is cultural intelligence.

Earley and Ang (2003) coined CQ. It’s not about changing your identity, just about reading the room and being able to build relationships with others. Ang et Al (2007) created the CQ scale= self-assessment tool for measuring CQ.

How does CQ work? CQ is comprised of 4 areas: cognitive (CQ knowledge), motivational (CQ drive), the metacognitive (CQ strategy) and finally behavioural (CQ action). Put more simply, CQ prompts us to ask questions such as what do I know about different cultural expectations and how do I use this to plan interactions? How do i feel in intercultural interactions and why? What am I able to do and say in these situations?

If the goal is working across cultural boundaries, CQ is one tool we can use (not the only way), it is just one way, one tool, that we can use. Much of the early work on CQ is in the area of business and management. What Adam is proposing today is not to measure CQ, but to use it as a tool for reflection, a reflective framework to help us and our students to trigger positive change.

“No one in my group says anything” – use CQ – can be reframed as:

“No one arrives to our meetings on time” use CQ – can be reframed/trigger positive change:

This can be summarised in one word: curiosity. We can help students to foster their sense of curiosity about their peers, the environment they are studying in and the wider world around them.

How could this construct help us/our students? (Those four areas of CQ and the questions we can ask.)

• What do I know about different expectations
• How do I feel?
• What can I say/do?

Curiousity helps prevent you being closed behind a barrier. Stay curious!

Audience question: how would you introduce this to students? He hasn’t settled on an answer to this yet. Maybe alongside other models of reflection. He hasn’t incorporated it into materials yet but works on materials so at some point, hopefully over the next academic year…

Audience question: what about monocultural groups? Can still faciliate reflection, get them thinking about different ways of doing things.

Audience question: what about needs analysis question? Could do anonymous poll questions about the kind of thing we talked about at the start of the session and then reveal and discuss the answers.

Audience comment: about the stereotype of the awkward silence and the value of reflecting on that and remembering that engagement isn’t necessarily visible.

My thoughts:

Another interesting session. “Engagement isn’t necessarily visible” reminded me of the reflection workshop and the line drawn from lots of noise to engagement! Be interesting to ask students “What does engagement look like for you?”. It’s true that part of our role is helping students to adapt to a new cultural context. Both big C culture and small c culture. This also reminds me of the opening plenary and this: “Students need to have the academic language, the way of talking that exists in a university; they need to understand the culture – of the country, the city, the university, the school, the knowledge.” and “What we need to do as EAP practitioner: you don’t need to know about physics to teach physics students but you do need to know about their culture and values, how the discipline behaves; a philosophical understanding: how do they create and think about knowledge?” (Quoting from my blog post and by extension the opening plenary!).

I suppose that is one tricky thing with being an EAP tutor: for the people within the discipline, that is the small c culture that they are immersed in and know, while for us we would ideally need some kind of understanding of it all across a range of different departments/disciplines. Or do we? What about the students’ foundation subject module tutors, are they not better placed for that than we are?

I think curiosity is very important. We should remain curious and always question all the assumptions we make about student behaviour and what it means rather than auto-labelling it. We should also remain curious about our own responses (emotional, verbal) to their behaviour and what assumptions drive them and whether there are alternative interpretations and paths to take. I’d imagine it would be difficult to help students develop their CQ if we never work on our own!

On Saturday 20th June, I attended the one-day InForm Conference hosted by Birmingham International Academy, home of the International Foundation Year at Birmingham University. The whole conference focuses on Foundation Year programmes, and is therefore very relevant to my current role. My notes from all the talks I attended will be tagged InForm2026 for easy location.

The first talk is the plenary: Changing Language(s) and Discourse(s) about and in the International Foundation Year.

What Bee is focusing on today is the language part of the International Foundation Year (IFY) – the EAP bit. The importance of connecting between disciplines and EAP teaching.

She is an outsider but has been aware of IFY, staffing it, talking to people on it. A lot of the thinking is in collaboration with those colleagues at the language centre. Everything in EAP is (or should be) collaborative. These are the questions she will consider:

• What is an IFY?
• What is the role of EAP on an IFY?
• How do we think about language in Higher Ed
• What could the role of EAP be on an IFY?
• Leeds: a work in progress (has been for years)

IFY = one year programme for international students, and it focuses on English language competency in order to succeed at University. The only difference between an IFY and a regular foundation year is the focus on language competence. Language is studied alongside subject modules in IFY while in regular foundation year, only subject modules are studied. This assumes that all international students have language competence issues and all home students do not.

• What is an international student?
• Why do we use this term?
• What does it represent?
• What is the hidden agenda?
• Who stands to gain?

These are important questions to consider. She says it is a category or label with no nuance, either you are or you aren’t. There is some confusion around whether it is about fees or another aspect of the student journey. As a label, it can be counterproductive as it reduces and separates students out. It supports unequal fee structures. International students are seen as cash cows. VCs in universities are open about it now. Lack of international students has led to the financial difficulties that the HE sector are in now. It also supports deeper underlying ideologies and power structures. Theologies around what it means to be a native speaker of English still very prevalent in universities.

When we are working with students who have their support structures in another time zone/country/space, it is a different experience from someone whose parents live two hours away. There is a need for psychological and social adaptation. It is an unfamiliar social environment and educational environment. IFY is an access programme. Students need to have the academic language, the way of talking that exists in a university; they need to understand the culture – of the country, the city, the university, the school, the knowledge. They need disciplinary knowledge and resources. They are not separate needs, but most university structures send students off. The culture is ignored, the language they come to us, the disciplinary knowledge they provide. It would be better if they were all interconnected.

Bea thinks the needs are similar in International Foundation Year and regular Foundation Year. So she isn’t sure what the difference “international” makes. Why should EAP be the alongside bit in IFY but not exist in regular foundation years? She is arguing that EAP should be built into all foundation years. Most people think of international students as those who need an IELTS score but there are also students from Australia, and the Middle East who study in English before they come. What is the difference?

Are there any examples of where language has come of interest or consideration in your teaching or other aspects of your professional life?

E.g.

• disciplinary considerations
• different registers
• different types of English
• different language varieties.

This really hit home for Bea when she sat in a lecture (different subject) and tried to observe in terms of EAP and all she managaed to do is write down a list of words: architecture, expression, density, culture, sequence, transcription, translation. We were asked to guess what discipline this was. It was plant cell biology but these words all have different meanings which might be more likely to be taught/learned outside of that discipline. We need to think about the discipline the students are going into. If you are an international student or student who is being taught the meaning of words in your EAP class, the cognitive load of translating from the way you are taught them into what they mean in a subject discipline is huge.

More questions:

• When and how do some students and staff feel linguistically excluded or disadvantaged?
• How do we make it clearer what proficiency level is expected and what that looks like. Do we know how and where to teach it. The assumptions about language proficiency tests don’t match. Even as EAP practitioners we may not be sure how and where we teach that.
• The “non pedagogy of osmosis” = assumption that language gives immediate access to knowledge and must therefore be transparent. Need to understand that language is integral to the academic learning process not separated out.
• We need to differentiate between communicative and technical proficiency. Students need to know that there will be differences between what we do and what they will do in their disciplines.
• In what ways can we bring students’ other languages into the learning environment, that they can help?

Non-international Student quote: was never taught the style, just “learnt from science”. International student quote: shocked that language wasn’t marked, only disciplnary knowledge. But actually it is assessed because you need it to communicate your knowledge. Lecturer quote: She’s done the presessional course, why is she so bad? When Bea looked at the writing, It was clear that actually it was the understanding the discipline that was the problem, which we don’t teach.

We need to move away from systemic deficit approaches. Academic tutors complain about simultaneous translation, rather than saying to students why are you doing this, and trying to understand and help. Cushing and Snell (2022) say systemic language bias begins at school and rockets at university. We are positioned as meant to be socialising them into higher education, and our entry requirements, language tests etc all support the deficit view.

We need to move from languages as stable, fixed, a skill indiiduals master, neutral, a problem to language as dynamic, evolving and connected, a social resource for meaning-making, a source of cultural and symbolic capital.

Bringing it back to IFY and EAP:

EAP = to give students access to ways of knowing and ways of thinking about knowledge. Hyland, 2018; 390. What we need to do as EAP practitioner: you don’t need to know about physics to teach physics students but you do need to know about their culture and values, how the discipline behaves; a philosophical understanding: how do they create and think about knowledge? And then, knowledge and discourse, which is mainly linguistic in nature, and more familiar to us. Ferguson, 1997 p85.

We also need a better understanding of our own culture and epistemology. We position ourselves in deficit as much as the university does.

Leeds:

• IFY housed in International Pathways Centre
• EAP tutors are also Academic Personal tutor
• Modules taught within disciplinary schools
• Compulsory 40 credit EAP (Academic Study Skills for….) e.g. arts and social sciences, STEM, BUsiness, Medicine and Health.

There are issues around coordinating across modules (everyone is somewhere different) and the way fees work means departments who won’t receive the student, and their fees, in the future are less invested in them at this stage. The title (Academic Study Skills for…) is going to change.

EAP component issues: lack of engagement, lack of connection, assessment workload, integrity, value and trying to do too many things. We need to make clearer the link between these skills and students’ studies. Curriculum entropy: a lof of thought went into the split 8 years ago but a lot has changed since then (added, changed, removed) and the instigators have left, and along the way the meaning has been lost. Need to go back to basics and clarify it all.

Principles for building languages into a curriculum:

• Context (developing intercultural understanding)
• Collaboration (EAP and disciplines) to make it more meaningful
• Co-construction (between EAP, disipline specialists/students)
• Challenge (for all)
• Confidence and self-efficacy (to be developed).

Main question: what does good academic literacies and communication provision on a foundation year really look like? (from a student, tutor and institutional perspective)

Sharing practice: Classroom pedagogies

• How/when/where/why do you take language into consideration while teaching?
• How do we think about it?
• How do we help our students?
• What about feedback?
• Approach to linguistic barriers?

Sharing practice: Expectations around text:

Sharing practice: assessment:

Leeds assessments:

• STEM: students have to write a lab report in S1 but computer science ss don’t do lab work so that is problematic.
• Multiple mini interview for medical students.
• Social sciences: Essay, but also a viva/presentation in response in part to genAI.
• Still an essay in a lot of the programmes

My thoughts:

A very thought-provoking opening plenary. This idea is I think important: “Students need to know that there will be differences between what we do and what they will do in their disciplines”. We can’t be all things to all students, there is a limit to what we can teach them; but alongside that, if they are at least aware of the limitations and the potential differences it can help them. Foundation students might get a sense of that just with the gap between EAP and their subject modules (particularly STEM students). I suppose a tiny example of us making students aware of the differences between we do and what they will do in their disciplines comes in the context of teaching citations. We use APA 7th. We can’t teach every citation method that they might encounter going into their departments but we do ensure that they know that there are many different approaches and that they will need to find out which one their department uses. We also signpost resources they will be able to use to help with that.

Regarding assessment, I’m pretty sure our STEM students write a lab report in one of their subject modules where relevant and I think they may be best placed to teach that. Once upon a time, we had synoptic assessment for pre-masters students, where we focused on linguistic elements of a piece of work they produced with and also for a subject tutor. For Business Studies, Social Sciences and Humanities it was a research project proposal (they didn’t do the actual primary research I don’t think) and for STEM it was a literature review. As there was a presentation element, timetabling it all was something of a nightmare, certainly from the teacher perspective (you could end up doing a great number of them in a row) and I am sure from those doing the timetabling’s perspective too! There is always tension between wanting to make assessments as good as they can be and the potential workload issues that might result.

It was interesting to hear about how things are done in Leeds. It sounds like they have gone through as much change as we have over the years. I know Leeds has a Studygroup centre but Studygroup wasn’t mentioned by name in the talk. I assume it comes under “International Pathways Centre”. That Bee is looking at it all and proposing to apply principles and make changes suggests they have some degree of control over some element(s) of it! In the We’re All in This Together – A Collaborative Approach to Supporting IFP Transition: Preparation, Progression and Early Undergraduate Success’ talk, I learnt about how it works in Bristol. They have a relationship with Kaplan (which includes a centre in London) and also an in-house foundation programme in Bristol University. So that’s different again. Edinburgh University (which I learnt a bit about in ‘A Measured Response to AI and Assessment: Re-designing the ‘Whole’ Rather Than Parts’) seemed to be in-house so they had full control over their assessment programme. So many different approaches to achieving the same general goal (preparing students to study at university and helping them progress on to do that). All with different benefits and constraints.

Ultimately I suppose all we can do is continue to consider how best we can help our students within the institutional constraints of the context in which we find ourselves. All the innovation brought to the conference was examples of efforts to do just that, as far as I can tell!