We’re delighted to announce that the 2022 Sir Robert Taylor Society Modern Languages Teachers’ Conference will be held on Friday 23 and Saturday 24 September at St Anne’s College. This will be the first time in two years that the Conference is delivered in person, and we very much look forward to once again welcoming teachers to Oxford!
2022 Programme
We are pleased to be holding the conference at St Anne’s College this year. St Anne’s was established in 1879 as a hall for women, who were barred from the university at the time, and throughout its history has retained its original aim of allowing women of any financial background to study at Oxford. Today, St Anne’s marries modern architecture with a proud emphasis on inclusivity and academic excellence. The conference dinner on the Friday night will be held in their contemporary dining hall, followed by an opportunity to visit the college bar!
Highlights of our programme this year include a spotlight on an exciting new outreach initiative to develop a Linguistics component in A Level Modern Languages curricula. Dr Alice Corr will be joining us from the University of Birmingham to introduce the project, which is being developed in collaboration with colleagues from the University of Cambridge, Anglia Ruskin University and Queen Mary, University of London. This will be followed by a talk from Professor of Medieval French Studies and Fellow of St Hilda’s College, Professor Helen Swift. Please note that this talk will be presented in a way that is accessible to non-speakers of French. After dinner, our keynote speaker (to be announced) will speak about the ways in which languages have positively affected their career and life more generally.
On the Saturday, we will open with a literary session on ‘The Language of the Text’, where scholars in French, German, Spanish, and Russian will discuss the ways in which an area of language teaching can be used as a starting point for textual analysis in a selection of texts on the A Level syllabus. While not all A Level texts can be represented in the talk, we hope that the material covered will be transferable to alternative texts, and will therefore be of use to colleagues teaching literature with different exam boards and qualifications.
After a coffee break, we will hold our annual ‘Building Bridges’ session which involves a roundtable discussion with a panel of academics, students and teachers, as well as contributions from the floor. This year’s theme is ‘Schools and Universities Working Together’, which will focus on a slate of issues of current interest and concern within language learning from Key Stage 3 to degree level. We would be delighted to hear your views on this topic and look forward to bettering our understanding of collaborative approaches to improving language learning at all stages.
We will close the conference with an admissions session. There will be a brief introduction to the Oxford application process as well as to our new academic programme, Opportunity Oxford, followed by a mock interview with a current student. Finally, we will finish with a Q&A discussion with Oxford tutors about applying for and studying Modern Languages at Oxford, including picking up languages from scratch and studying languages in combination with other subjects.
Delegate rates and booking
Please visit our online booking webpage to view the various rates available for both state and independent school teachers, as well as to book your place. You will need to create an account (or log in if you’ve used our website before) and select the right rate for your school type and length of attendance.
If you have any questions or concerns, don’t hesitate to contact Nicola at schools.liaison@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk.
We look forward to seeing you in September!