The University of Aberdeen School of Education will be represented at the British Academy in London today (Wednesday April 21) at a conference which aims to improve language learning.
Professor Do Coyle, Professor in Learning Innovation, will deliver a presentation at a seminar convened by the UK Project on Language Learner Strategies (UKPOLLS).
UKPOLLS is an established research group of self-funding educationalists/applied linguists working in the universities of Reading, Oxford, Dublin, Aberdeen and Goldsmiths College, London.
Their work has focused on learner strategies within UK foreign language classrooms and on how they can contribute to more effective learning from both learners' and teachers' perspectives.
Professor Coyle will deliver Components of the strategic classroom as part of the conference, which aims to share with language teachers and policy makers how learner strategies contribute to language learning and to suggest how they can be embedded into classroom practice.
The event will also provide a forum for wide consultation and dissemination.
Professor Coyle has an international reputation for her research into bilingual education and CLIL (content and language integrated learning) and in particular 'strategic' classrooms which explore how language can be used as a learning tool.
Her latest work involves learners and teachers as collaborating researchers.
The conference, entitled Improving language learning through the strategic classroom: findings and applications of research, has been organised by Professor Suzanne Graham, who leads the PGCE Secondary MFL course at the University of Reading, where she is also Director of Research within the Institute of Education.
She has worked in the field of language learner strategies since the early 1990s and her publications in this area are well-known both nationally and internationally, offering researchers and practitioners insights into how learner strategies contribute to more effective language learning.
It takes place at the British Academy - the UK’s national body for the humanities and social sciences – today (Wednesday April 21) and will feature contributions from the leading UKPOLL researchers.