Welcome to the ‘Base Page’

for your

ESS Professional English Programme

Structure of this Page

Essentially, this page is a jumping-off point for you in this unit: it sets us up to work together and outlines our aims and objectives.  This page will have the following components which are then offered in different sections hereunder thay you will discover as you scroll down:

1. Welcome … and a bit about me….
2. General Introductory Videos.
3.  Introductory Task.  How many years have you studied English and how is your confidence level after all these years?  I firmly believe that you will be no different to other classes where I find a very high average for years of English studied yet  very much lower average confidence level.  That means I will have to deliver this unit in a rather different manner to that to which you are accustomed!
4. Learning English in the ‘Last Chance Saloon‘ (video explanation!).
5. Applying your English to the domain of ESS and Sustainability.
6. Continuous Assessment.
7. Expectations: yours of me and mine of you
8. Our work programme / projects and assessments in the form of ‘Blocks’
9. The Learning Centre languages facility.

1. Welcome … and a bit about me.

Welcome to you all!  We share a personal and professional interest already: the environment, climate change, sustainability [‘Développement Durable’ (DD)], social responsibility.  I started teaching Environment and Sustainability at Bournemouth University (England) in 1989 – just after the ink was barely dry on the Brundtland Report ( [Notre Avenir à Tous. NB. If you don’t know what this document is then you MUST read it … preferably (for this course) in English where it is known as ‘Our Common Future‘, as it is the bedrock of your course] and before the first global summit on the subject at Rio in 1991.   I am also a member of the Commission de DD of Brunstatt-Didenheim Council,  Secretary to the Préservons Brunstatt-Didenheim Association and a Founder Member of the local Repair Café [which we hope to be able to bring back to the Fonderie soon – probably during the European Week of Waste Reduction in mid November and hope you will participate in it too!] which is, in turn a member of the global Repair Café movement.   So I am not just a native English-speaker [born half Scottish and half English in fact – but now, thankfully, also 100% French], I have a considerable academic, personal and professional interest in sustainable living and business.  Prior to becoming a Senior Lecturer [Maître de Conf.] and Learnin & Teaching Fellow, I was also Head of Research and Development for the regional tourism authority for Southern England working closely with national & local government, national & regional agencies and protection associations etc to make sure that development [if and where permitted] would be as sustainable as possible.

My intention is to use my knowledge and experience and yours to create interesting assignments and work for us to do- particularly in the form of ‘Realistic Work Environments‘ [which put you in circumstances and situations I could see you in during your future career]  through which we all can learn more about our chosen subject and you can apply your English thereto and improve your confidence in its application within a variety of contexts.  I happen to believe that you will enjoy your English more if you can use it in an area in which you are already interested and to which you are evidently personally committed (because you have chosen this Master’s).

At the level of the family, we are trying to become far more ‘sustainable‘ and to adopt a greater zero-waste lifestyle (the founder of this movement, Béa Johnson, is of French origin, you may be pleased to know!) and we have also been inspired by Pam Warhurst (watch her TED talk!) and her ‘Incredible Edible‘ project to develop a ‘Potager Partagé’ locally.

Here is a video overview of my sustainability background:

I look forward to working with you.

2. Introductory Videos

on teaching and learning in this unit.

Please DO watch these by hitting the 2. heading link above and we will talk about them thereafter.  They cover the following areas:

• The Rentrée 2021 (and 2020) if ever we have to revert to a distance-based mode in 23-24)
• the way I like to work (and like you to work),
• the concept of learning delivered and assessed in blocks,
• deadlines,
• reviewing the literature and citing and attributing your sources using a recognised system of referencing,
• plagiarism (its consequences and how to avoid them),
• Use of AI/IA forbidden
• analysing an assignment  question / instruction and devising an appropriate structure within which to deliver it
• working outside class
• team and group work and the marking (‘notation’ Fr) thereof

The above videos cover a LOT of ground and they will help you get used to listening in English – and getting through and past my ever-so-slightly Manchester (‘Mancunian‘) accent!  Certain of these videos will help you considerably and not just in this unit!

3. Introductory Task

for our first meeting together in class or at distance.

Before we start our course ‘proper’ I would like you all to:

1. reflect upon / calculate how many years you have personally been learning English.  What is the group average? Then consider how you feel about the use of your English: are you generally as confident as the number of years of study might suggest? calculate the group average on a scale of 0 to 10 where 0 = no confidence at all and 10 = fully confident.  Also tell me the highest and lowest number of years cited within the group.
2. each of you consider the two workplace examples below:
   • EXAMPLE 1. what is your level of confidence of giving a VIP a tour of your company premises, people and processes: in English?  Calculate the group average on this scale: /10 where:
     • 0/1 = no confidence whatever: ‘find someone else!!’;
     • 2/3 = confidence far too limited to do it;
     • 4/5 = OK, if you can’t find anyone better, I’ll try, but I’m bound to make a lot of mistakes;
     • 6/7  = Yes, I think I can do it, but it will fall far short of perfect;
     • 8/9 = Yes, fine, I’ll do it and it should be pretty good with a few minor errors only; 
     • 10 = no worries, it’ll all be fine…fully confident..
   • EXAMPLE 2. what is your level of confidence in communicating complicated and precise instructions accurately across cultures in English in a fluent, easily-understandable written form in the context of arranging travel and accommodation for your boss on a business and conference tour in the USA?   Calculate the group average on the scale above.

THEN:-

… in this, our first week, would you please find a way to combine average and feedback your results – hopefully in class so we can discuss their implications for learning and teaching. [IF ever we are back in confinement (which doesn’t seem immediately likely as I write)  – or cannot finish this in Week One –  would you please record together a brief standard video or audio file with which to present an overview of your individual and group results … in English of course!  You may be able to share your individual results perhaps via the completion of a file via Google Docs / Drive, then you could do the short video/audio file summary of the overall group results  and remember to make it accessible to me!   You don’t all have to ‘star’ in the video!!] 

NB. It is important that you get a working system of sharing material sorted out from the start as we are going to be using it throughout the course whether in the attendance or distance mode of delivery.  I may sometimes ask you to send things to my email address or (better still) to send me a link/invitation to where you have housed it and I can view/listen/download it.  I’ll only get serious about marking with our first task/ Block, so don’t worry about this one too much!  Normally, however, I will ask you to produce written work in word processed form on paper.

4. Learning English in the ‘Last Chance Saloon‘

I am taking very much the same approach with your IES colleagues: you share this video – any reference to IES  pretty much applies to you!

5. English applied to the domain(s)

of Social Responsibility and Sustainability.

We will be applying our growingconfidence and capabilities in English to many aspects of social responsibility and sustainability.  My Aims & Objectives for us are as follows:

• to offer you the opportunity to consider the personal and professional challenges presented to the modern and future world by the principles, practices and sheer necessity of sustainability
• to set before you the challenge of taking a stance in your personal and professional lives upon the issue of social responsibility and sustainability once in possession of the key facts and arguments and suitable tools of analysis and evaluation.
• to offer you the opportunity to consider your lives, lifestyles, values & beliefs, consumption patterns, attitudes and habitudes and their impact upon others present and future and upon the planet and its resources.
• to enable us to identify the inhibitors to better sustainability performance and compliance and to conceive appropriate strategies and tactics to overcome them at a personal and professional level.
• to provide the opportunity to reflect upon the tensions between a commercial world profit motive and the need to incorporate sustainability within the business model.
• to consider the ancient origins of sustainability and how these were ‘lost’ with the impact of money, population growth, capitalism, intermediaries in the production & supply chain, consumerism and marketing.
• to consider the origins and rationales for the emergeance in the 1980s of the modern concept of Sustainability as originally defined in the World Commission on Environment and Development report of 1987 (‘The Brundtland Report’) also called Our Common Future / Notre Avenir à Tous.
• to analyse and evaluate the systems and processes operating at global, international, national, regional and local levels which can influence (positively or negatively) the advancement of sustainability and social responsibility.
• to consider the respective roles of political systems, key players, activists, influencers, icons and associations & ‘movements‘ in the present and future of sustainability.
• to make things local: consider the role of the M2A, Mulhouse, the Commune of Brunstatt-Didenheim, UHA and the Fonderie in furthering the cause of Sustainability as a positive example of  a suitably joined-up approach.
• …All this with a view to building upon and applying existing and developing knowledge of English in order to consider and learn from worldwide resources in English concerning sustainability and social responsibility in order to set you up for the use of English in your professional career.

6.  Continuous Assessment.

As far as I am aware from Course Management, this unit may be assessed only by means of coursework. This is entirely sensible and appropriate for the learning and assessment of languages because the ability to communicate in a variety of different real-world situations cannot be reduced to a test of essay-style written questions & answers and multiple-choice questions. NB. This does by no means exclude a ‘devoir sur table’ from time to time. Communication involves everything from chatting, discussing, debating, arguing, persuading, presenting in an oral form to a written domain involving letter and email writing, report production, essay writing, web-page production etc.  All of these might be done inividually, in teams or as a group and in a vast array of different situations and contexts like meetings & conferences, informal or formal events and presentations, workshops, negotiations etc.  You need the confidence to know that your language capability will be sufficient to enable you to be understood and to make your point clearly in any of these situations (yes, even if your expression or language isn’t perfect: you need to be sure that it is ‘good enough‘ to be capable of you saying what you mean).

You will therefore engage in various sorts of dimensions of activities which I will assess (usually one item per block) which seek to see you operating, performing and producing output in good English in as many of the above professional contexts as possible.

7. Expectations: yours of me and mine of you

My expectations of You

• That you attend: (whether physical, classoom attendance or via periodic, live Zooms)….I consider this class to be professional and I will treat you accordingly.  Were you at work you would turn up on time every morning and do a full day’s work.  I expect the same from you.  If you really can’t attend an assessment by reason of illness, then fair enough, we are all ill at some time or another, but it will need proper certification and [if you are working as part of a team] you will need to notify me and the other members of the team in advance.  If there are non-medical reasons for your absence, you will need to convince your Head of Year / Course Director. If he/she tells me that I should accept a late submission, I don’t need to know the reason, I will trust his/her judgement. Late submissions of coursework without justification (as above) will, however, be penalised in fairness to other students.
• that you participate: language is first and foremost: spoken, so I will be looking to see and hear you participate in English wherever possible.  I will even try to do this at distance (if we have to) by asking for you to submit videos or audio files and not just hard copies… and by Zooming on occasions too.
• that whenever you furnish me with work, it is in fact your own and not ‘lifted’ [plagiarised] from the www or drawn from Artificial Intelligence (AI/IA).  I am quite adept at catching those who try not only to cheat on their subject, the real author and their tutors but on their own collegues as well.  NB. People have failed M2 here at FSESJ because of plagiarism and /or use of AI/IA.  Be warned – the penalties are becoming dramatic.   You should make very sure you have listened to the videos I supplied and directed you to earlier on this page.  If you don’t think you encountered these,then here are the direct inks:
  • Plagiarism pt 1: what it is and what are its consequences
  • Plagiarism pt 2: plagiarism cases and their outcomes
  • Avoiding plagiarism by citing and attributing your work [using the Harvard or MLA systems] correctly. Learn how to attribute your sources in a bibliography: the website citethisforme is a simple and automated way of doing this.
  • to clarify and be VERY specific:  in the context of English language learning the wholesale use of translation tools like DeepL and Bablefish IS PLAGIARISM – because the tool is doing the work, not you, and you are engaging in ZERO LEARNING. If you think of running the risk and using these anyway because it is quick and effortless, be aware that the penalty is likely to involve a zero for the piece of work and no opportunity to resit and potentially not being invited back to class: ZERO for the unit with a significant impact on your M2.
  • AI / IA  Artificial intelligence ‘outlawed’ (not acceptable / forbidden) in this course.
• that you seek to improve: this will mean taking helpful and positive critique of your work, welcoming it and working with it.
• that you do not consult email or telephones during class  no-one in my role (and certainly not your boss at work!) would find such activity anything less than disrespectful at worst and monumentally distracting at best.
• that submission dates and forms for assignments and presentation dates be respected. In the commercial and professsional world, failure to hit a deadline is a life and death affair. I will operate in the same manner: failure to submit by the designated date will be penalised unless the Course Manager has evidence in his hand and is prepared to confirm that your absence or late submission was justified.  This may seem ‘Draconian’, but that is how business in the Anglophone world and most of the EU works.  Language is part of the cultural context in which I am teaching English and Sustainability.
• that I am not looking for perfection in English first and foremost: I want to massively increase your confidence in using the English you already possess in a variety of situations relating to Sustainability in which you might well find yourself in your career. When you have that confidence, then we can set about improving pronunciation, precision expression grammar etc….and yes, taking a shot at ‘perfection’! What I expect is that you will launch out and try knowing that you might well make a mistake, but that this is OK.
• that we work together in a spirit of ‘professional informality‘: just because we are not in an office or facory and we are not wearing smart work clothes does not mean we can’t act professionally.

Your Expexctations of Me.

First of all I should say that it is only fair that you should have some reasonable expectations of your tutor based upon teaching professionalism and the subject content.  Here is what I believe you can and should expect of me:

• that I will turn up for classes promptly. If for any reason I cannot make the class: illness etc, I will endeavour to get a message to you before the class if humanly possible via the course office and/or your group UHA email.  Give me a margin of 10 minutes – to allow for the occasional traffic jam or over-run of the preceding class and the impossibility of parking!
• that I will do my ‘level best’ to interest and motivate you and to encourage you to consider your subject from a personal and professional perspective
• that I will give you as much help and feedback as is possible (and as instantly as possible too!) to enable you to improve.  I never liked the teacher who wrote on my assignment: “12/20 – could do better”, because I thought I had done my best and I was completely at a loss to understand what the teacher was looking for and where I had lost those crucial 8 points. I will provide ‘formative feedback‘ where possible [helps you in the process of preparing your work but does not normally carry a mark] and will always provide comprehensive ‘summative feedback‘ when the work has been submitted and marked.
• that I will ‘build’ my teaching bridge towards your learning bridge and do my best to ensure that we meet in the middle.  I can’t build your bridge from your ‘side’ though: learning is ultimately your responsibility: no teacher can do it for you!
  
• you should call me ‘Tony’, rather than Mr JOLLEY: in the Anglophone world you will find most of your colleagues and even your bosses will call you by your first name and expect you to do likewise.  This may be more ‘informal’ than you are used to, but it is no excuse for not being entirely professional!

8. Programme and Assessments in the form of ‘Blocks’

Q. So what is a ‘Block’?

A. A themed schedule of activities and learning opportunities resulting in a specific outcome which will be assessed.   It will normally last 3-5 weeks and will comprise a number of components, chronologically being:

1. Phase One: Set-up.  100% Tutor Responsibility: ME!  I explain what we are going to be doing, how it is to be done, the resources that are available to help and the final output that is required and how it will be assessed.
2. Phase Two: 50/50: me/you. You begin work / I offer guidance, support and ‘formative feedback‘ to enable you to improve your work before submitted for final marking (possibly over a two week period – maybe more depending upon the size of the task).
3. Phase Three: 100% student(s) responsibility. Presentation of  the ‘Block output’ required!
4. Phase Four: 100% Tutor responsibility: ME!  ‘Summative feedback‘ [usually individual, team and whole group) plus marks.  I will try to do this as quickly as possible so that it is normally handed back to you in no more than a week or two…. but if you are numerous, it may take a little longer

Q. what sort of  ‘Block’ themes might be involved?

A1.  A Personal Professional Profile.   The writing of an article of two full pages to introduce yourself to colleagues and the stakeholders at your first post after ESS [you may choose what this might be: search for a real post, perhaps, to make it more fun] which shows your personality, character and your commitment to social responsibility and sustainability.  This is NOT a CV/résumé or a covering letter/ lettre de motivation.  I provide FULL details and instructions of this task: HERE

A2. Definition of our terms.  Many terms in the domain of corporate social reponsibility and sustainability are confusing… do we really know what they mean and how they differ?  If we don’t – how would the average consumer know?  Can your English cope with the sometimes subtle differences between these terms, for example?!?

• Sustainability v ‘Développement Durable‘: are they the same?
• shareholders v stakeholders
• ethical v moral
• eco v bio
• green v ‘alternative‘ or ‘environmentally-friendly‘….
• Max Havelaar v Fair Trade
• ‘Circuit court (Fr)‘ v ‘locally-produced‘
• ‘Label Rouge‘ v ‘Transformé en France‘
• etc etc

A3. Can the Planet Afford Me?  A personal, honest and candid evaluation of the degree to which your personal lifestyle fits within the planet’s ecological means backed up by evidence from Carbon Footprint tests etc plus your own experience.  What is stopping you (indeed stopping each one of us) from doing better in this regard.

A4. Overcoming Inhibitors.  What is stopping us as individuals, organisations, corporations, governments and society in general from doing far better in terms of our ability to live within the planet’s ecological means and how can we overcome these things in practice without further delay?  What help may we need to do so?

A5.  Focus on the Fonderie: development of an Action Programme to ensure that students, staff and the institution itself [the Fac AND the UHA perhaps]  are far more aware of and engaged [practically and academically] with the concept of social responsibility and sustainability.  How is it possible that students can leave UHA and any one of its Facs without ever having had to consider responsible citizenship and sustainability in the context of the climate change crisis in which we find ourselves???  What solutions can we come up with!?!

NB. These are more than likely to be elements we will cover on the course provided we have sufficient time.

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9. The Learning Centre languages facility

 The CLAM [as was before it was integrated into the Learning Centre on the Illberg Campus ] is the the university’s language lab centre where you may ‘top up‘ your level of English by taking a personalised programme of computer-aided learning which goes at your own pace and gives you regular feedback.  Students with a level of English much below B1 are recommended to take such a programme in addition to the taught course.  If there happen to be a number of you in this category, I will make a block appointment for you with the centre manager.

That’s all for now – but you will agree, I am sure,

that it is ‘enough to be getting on with’!

T