Incidentally….. building social English into the pre-sessional programme

by Christine Lee

December.  A street in Bristol.  A smiling student stands in front of me.  “Hello Christine!”  I recognise the face but cannot recall the name – I just know he’s one of the many pre-sessional students I had met/taught in the summer.  “Oh hi!” I reply.  “Great to see you!  How’s it going?  Busy?  Going away for the break?”  All standard short questions we employ on a daily basis without thinking, to people in our environment with shared knowledge.  Except that this student doesn’t pick up on colloquial language.  “I am going to Sainsburys” comes the response.

 

The above is but one example of mini conversations I’ve had with students I’ve met following their pre-sessional course.  A course where they’ve been intensively prepared for academic study.  But what about preparation for their day-to-day life as a postgraduate Bristol University student?  A large number of our intake arrive from East Asia, having achieved the required (academic) IELTS grade for entry to either our 14-, 10- or 6-week pre-sessional course.  Many are travelling overseas for the first time.  Most will have picked up some informal language from watching films.  Few will find it easy to instantly adapt to conversational and idiomatic English and some will struggle with this aspect throughout their time in the UK, not helped by the fact that many students come from the same country and, understandably, spend much of their time together and therefore converse in their L1.

 

And yet, as EAP tutors in the business of preparing students for postgraduate study, isn’t there also an opportunity to help prepare them for a year of living in the UK?  Many universities are concerned with student satisfaction surveys and research has reported on Chinese students’ level of satisfaction at social integration (Spencer-Oatey et al, 2016). It could be argued that, as adults, it is up to the students themselves to join societies, mix with peers on their courses and generally throw themselves into university life.  Yet this disregards not only the communicative language element that is required to do this, but also the confidence and cultural adjustment.  Encouraging intercultural contact can only be positive for our international students (Ward, Masgoret, and Gezentsvey, 2009).

 

In recent years, as our numbers on the pre-sessional course crept up from 500 to 700 and beyond, I increasingly felt we could be doing more to build confidence in our students and that the way to do this was to go back to the basics of EFL, i.e. language input, role play and practice.  So, two years ago I produced some materials for use on the pre-sessional, one afternoon each week, covering topics such as cooking, flat-hunting, job-hunting, going to the doctor, restaurant language etc., and also taking in cultural norms/differences.  The response from tutors and students alike was positive, but last year fewer sessions were delivered, due in large part to curriculum pressures and the need to spend more afternoons on coursework and assessment preparation.  Fast forward to 2017, and few tutors have felt able to devote any time at all to these social English sessions.  Feedback from students over the years has been disappointment at the lack of opportunities to interact with students outside the pre-sessional and engage in social English.  Allhouse (2017) reports similar findings from international students arriving at the beginning of the academic year and looking to develop their non-academic English in a relaxed and friendly environment.

 

This year, with pre-sessional student numbers well above 1000 and feeling there was even more of a need to include informal communication skills, a chance comment in a BALEAP Webinar, “EAP in Context” (2017) provided the lead.  Angelo Pitillo of the University of Michigan, gave an insight into Conversation Circles on his campus, running throughout the year and contributing greatly to international student integration into US campus life.  They had been running for 20 years, staffed largely by student ‘facilitators’ and had proved popular and well-supported.  Could we do it in Bristol?  The coordinators here were willing to try it on the pre-sessional but we found ourselves in a very different position from Michigan’s in-sessional situation.   From June to September there are very few Bristol students on campus and those still in the city are deep into dissertation study, so we were reliant on the goodwill of pre-sessional tutors to give up some free time, as all our conversation sessions would be extra-curricular.

 

Did it work?  In a word, yes, thanks largely to the tutors who were prepared to spend an hour with a small group of 6 students, mostly in cafes, leading them through conversations, encouraging them to comment naturally and initiate their own ‘openers’.  One tutor ran a ‘what book are you reading?’ session and another tutor took a group on a photographic walk round Clifton, having pre-taught some specialist vocabulary, and then posted the student photos on Padlet.   We offered students a one hour ‘taster’ session, mostly with tutors, although we were fortunate to have a handful of postgraduate students willing to lead a group also.  Feedback from the students was universally positive.

 

“more frequent circles”

“nice talking to native speakers”

“Organizing this kind of activities frequently and we can gather in different places for different topics”

 

Will we do it again?  Yes.  There are plans to set up something similar for the Autumn semester and involve more student facilitators through departments such as the School of Education.  Research has shown that close cooperation with local students can go some way to combating issues with loneliness in the first few months for international students and can provide an avenue to learn about local activities (Sawir et al, 2008).  With over 400 students trying to sign up for 30 sessions (180 places), it is clear there is a need and the conversation circles involving an activity proved particularly successful, with students subsequently forming their own groups and arranging meetings.  Logistically, however, it has been a learning curve and the student facilitators who volunteered would have benefited from some guidance beforehand.

 

As the Bristol pre-sessional programme grows, the way to prepare students for their postgraduate year in the city may involve extra-curricular language activities, such as regular Conversation Circles, to help our international students have the confidence to engage at all levels with peers and tutors and maximise their experience at an international university.

 

References

Allhouse, M.L. (2017). Creating a Student Union social learning space for international students. ISEJ – International Student Experience Journal

Pitillo, A. (2017, 8^th February).  EAP in Context [Webinar].  Retrieved from https://www.baleap.org/event/baleap-webinar-eap-context

Sawir, E., Marginson, S., Deumert, A., Nyland, C., Ramia, G. (2008), Loneliness and International Students: An Australian Study. Journal of Studies in International Education, Vol 12(2), pp.148-180 DOI: 10.1177/1028315307299699

Spencer-Oatey, H., Dauber, D., Jing, J., & Lifei, W. (2016). Chinese students’ social integration into the university community: Hearing the students’ voices. Higher Education, 1-18.

Ward, C., Masgoret, A.-M. and Gezentsvey, M. (2009), Investigating Attitudes Toward International Students: Program and Policy Implications for Social Integration and International Education. Social Issues and Policy Review, 3: 79–102. doi:10.1111/j.1751-2409.2009.01011.x