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Teachers who are interested in attending and those who are interested in giving a presentation, running a workshop or offering a poster presentation are invited to visit https://icc-languages.eu/conferences for full information on topics for discussion and conference enrolment.

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You can visit https://ledentsovaward.org for more details on the award.

RUDN University has also strengthened its position in Employer Reputation, Graduates Achievements, Partnership with Employers, and Student-Employer Interaction.

‘Thousands of people in our country are engaged in science to bring more comfort into our lives. I sincerely believe that Technosreda will contribute greatly to the development of science,’ said Valery Falkov. Technosreda hosted three sites (500 R&D projects, 20 Russian inventors, 30 technology companies) exhibiting medical exoskeletons, delivery robots, talking robots (some of them already working as museum guides, consultants and concierges), a prototype of a flying car, cyber prosthetic devises, and more.

Project partners included Brooklyn College (USA), Kola Science Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Southern Federal University, and many others. The school welcomed over 30 students and young scientists from Austria, Algeria, Germany, Mozambique, Russia, the USA, the Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. The participants learned about new approaches in modelling of urban ecosystems and eco-monitoring, studied the biochemistry of urban soils and plantations, analysed the issues of ecosystem services and urban climate, and got acquainted with technical innovations in the study of urban soundscape. RUDN University’s Smart Technologies for Sustainable Development lab worked side by side with 15 well-known soil scientists, climatologists, biologists, and ecologists from Australia, Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, India, and the USA.

We have also run a programme of monthly webinars featuring experts on a variety of language and cultural topics. The seminars which take place towards the end of each month are recorded. You can visit https://icc-languages.eu/webinars for details.

In April, Ian McMaster, Editor-in-Chief, Business Spotlight magazine, spoke on Authenticity in Language and Leadership: What Is It and Why Do We Need It? As he wrote in his summary, ‘Authenticity is everywhere in business books and articles nowadays. Leaders and other professionals are urged to ‘be more authentic’ or ‘be themselves’. But what exactly is authenticity? In this talk, we will discuss various dimensions of authenticity in relation to both language and leadership’.

In May, Rebecca Oxford and Maria Matilde Olivero led a discussion on Peacebuilding in Language Education, which they summarised as follows. ‘Language teachers become peacebuilders when they weave flexible peace activities into the current curriculum, thus increasing students’ competencies in both language and peace’. In the webinar, they describe crucial peace dimensions and lead several brief, experiential peace activities designed for language teachers and learners. The webinar demonstrates the simplicity and importance of integrating the activities into language instruction.

In her webinar in June, Gabrielle Hogan-Brun posed the question Why Study Languages? and answered it by showing how languages have the power to shape our life and the future. She told the real-life stories of how ordinary and famous people learned languages to help them find their place and become successful in the world.

In July, Geoff Tranter warned teachers to Beware the Comfort Zone, arguing that, ‘if in the language classroom either the teacher and/or the students have a tendency to remain within their individual comfort zones, the chances of progress in language proficiency will diminish accordingly’, and exploring counterstrategies to improve teaching and learning.

Finally, in her August webinar entitled From Cheating to E-cheating in Language Assessment: (How) Should We Care? Anna Soltyska examined how online cheating in exams can take place and how best to prevent it.

If any of these topics interest you, please feel free to follow them up on our website.

Other papers explored blended learning, how to introduce variety into online teaching, a holistic approach to online learning, how to build community into online classes and the role of neuroscience. A successful combination of theory and classroom practice. You can access the conference for more details at https://icc-languages.eu/conferences.

The project, which ran from 2017 to 2020, had four main outputs; first, a situational survey of LSP teaching, secondly, a common competence framework, third, a 6-module MOOC for training teachers in the theory and practice of LSP teaching, including upskilling in language learning online technologies and fourthly, a Community of Practice (CoP) to provide a toolkit to build competences, along with a Job/Client toolkit to help teachers be more competitive in the educational market.

For more information about the CATAPULT project, its objectives, milestones, outcomes, and policy recommendations, please visit the project’s website at http://catapult-project.eu.

EUROLTA Online is a part-time course of 120 hours, consisting of 80 hours live synchronous sessions with a tutor and 40 hours self-study for extra reading, lesson planning and the writing of assignments. This six-month course will allow participants to pursue a career in language teaching and to gain the qualifications, the skills and knowledge one needs as a language teacher. It is open to teachers of all languages. The programme is scheduled to run from October 2021 to March 2022.

For more details about the programme please visit https://icc-languages.eu/eurolta.

This short training programme is designed for all teachers and trainers who would like to acquire new skills and gain experience in online teaching. The programme is spread over four weeks and comprises two face-to-face online sessions with a tutor and fourteen hours of home assignments and self-study.

By the end of the course teachers will develop the key skills needed to enable them to plan and deliver online lessons. They will be able to adapt the face-to-face teaching skills they already have to the online environment and will be able to use technology with confidence in their classrooms. For more information visit https://icc-languages.eu/ teacher-training.

You can also visit https://icc-languages.eu to learn more about ICC and EUROLTA.

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Particular success is seen in recognition from employers. RUDN University has 750 internship bases. Among university’s partners are Mars, Nestle, Hyundai motor, Renault Group, SBER bank, VTB bank, Miratorg and other companies. RUDN University gives particular emphasis to internship and employment of foreign students in international organizations. RUDN University doctors from Egypt worked at the Ain Shams University Hospital in Cairo. Students from Bolivia, El Salvador, Palestine, Myanmar, Chad and 26 other countries took up internships at the embassies of their countries in Russia. Geologists of RUDN University from Angola and Guinea work in West Africa at enterprises to search for alluvial diamonds and evaluate deposits. RUDN University graduates work in the ministries and embassies of Colombia, Ecuador, Nigeria, Ghana, Greece, etc. The main employers of RUDN University graduates are KPMG, P&G, Renault Group, Huawei, Unilever, Brunel and other large companies.

Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia is in TOP 100 in the International Students category. This year, 160 countries are represented at RUDN University – for the first time, citizens of Malawi, Norway, Swaziland, Trinidad and Tobago have become students of the university.

Among the key objectives are:

• stimulating and aiding the implementation and promotion of innovative projects aimed at obtaining financial and other types of support from third-party organisations within the framework of the priority areas of modernisation and technological development of the Russian economy and development areas of the RUDN University;
• identifying talented young scientists to work as teams for the benefit of practice-oriented research, further commercialisation and practical implementation of the results;
• developing an innovative and entrepreneurial culture among students of all levels, young scientists, and research teams of RUDN University.

Details on contest requirements and details are available at http://engr.rudn.ru/?p=16081.

Conference participants discussed the issues of the development of smart cities in the EU states, the prospects of using modern technologies to support the concept of smart cities, the policies adopted to maintain their sustainability, and measures taken by states to achieve sustainable development goals. The conference welcomed attendees from the Financial University, the State University of Management, Higher School of Economis, Foro Italico University of Rome, Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, as well as colleagues from Indonesia. Experts representing the business community also presented their reports. The conference was opened by the Dean of the Faculty of Economics Yuri Moseikin, moderated by Head of Marketing Alexander Zobov.

At our recent committee meeting we finalised the details of our Annual Conference to take place online on June 5th from 10:00-17:00 CET. The title of the conference is Language Teaching and Learning in a New Era and features presentations and discussions on remote classroom practice, blended learning and how to involve students in an online class.

ICC-Languages is delighted to have a keynote speech by Frank Heyworth from The Council of Europe’s European Centre for Modern Languages (ECML) and presentations on Building Community in online classes by Dana Kampmann, a holistic approach to learning by Claudia Schuhbeck, strategies for involving everybody in the classroom and online by Geoff Tranter, the contribution of neuroscience to language learning by Angela Martinez, the value of blended learning by Silke Riegler, and how to maximise meaningful communication with Neil Anderson. The conference closes with Edith Huerta Trejo on flexible learning in the face of pandemic. More details are available at https://icc-languages.eu/conferences/2019-berlin/conference-review.

Ian McMaster, Editor-in-Chief of Business Spotlight Magazine gave a seminar on April 23rd on Authenticity in Language and Leadership: What is It and Do We Need It? In his webinar he showed how authenticity is everywhere in business books and articles, and leaders and other professionals are urged to ‘be more authentic’ or ‘be themselves’. However, he asked what exactly is authenticity and discussed various dimensions of authenticity in relation to both language and leadership. You can access the webinar at https://icc-languages.eu/webinars.

Another important conference on April 17th was the EU CATAPULT workshop on Teaching Languages for Specific Purposes in Adult and Higher Education. CATAPULT is the name of an EU project in which members of ICC-Languages are partners. The conference welcomed a keynote by Professor Thomas Tinnefeld of Saarbruchen University in Germany on the Changing role of the LSP (Language for Special Purposes) Instructor and Helen Bulluck from Ireland now living in Germany on how to tackle new topics in ESP (English for Special Purposes) in working for new companies when you are unfamiliar with the business or its products. The workshop also addressed the issue of orienting the curriculum to students’ needs and the importance to satisfying participants’ business requirements in teaching LSP. A useful day concluded with a panel discussion on how to improve LSP, to be complemented by participation in ECML and other workshops. You can access the presentations and slides at the webinars page at https://icc-languages.eu/webinars.

ICC-Languages has just launched a new 30- hour course on How to Teach Languages Online. The aim of this certified course is to enable teachers to adapt the face-to-face teaching skills they already have to the online environment and to give them confidence in using technology in their classroom.

For more details, please contact Myriam Fischer Callus at myriam.fischer@icc-languages.eu.

There is no question that as refugees and asylum seekers in Europe increase, the role of the EUROLTA language teacher training programme is a major resource, especially in the practical training and qualifying of teachers working with immigrants and refugees.

EUROLTA is European Certificate in Language Teaching to Adults, developed by ICC. It is an internationally recognised teacher training programme to train you to teach languages using up to date methodologies.

You can learn more about EUROLTA at http://icc-languages.eu/eurolta.

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Research indicators cover the number of publications per one academic staff member, income from research per one academician, and research reputation. Internationalisation score is calculated based on the share of foreign faculty members and students, as well as publications authored in collaboration with foreign scholars. RUDN University has shown steady growth in these groups of indicators – over the span of one year, the results increased by 3.7 and 5.6 points, respectively.

Industry Rankings: Arts & Humanities (ranked 245 compared to 345 in 2020); Social Sciences & Management (ranked 256 compared to 401-450 in 2020).

Ekaterina Martina, Head of International Project Activities at RUDN University, presented the tasks for the resource centres to be addressed in the upcoming year. Because of the lockdown, the key task is to provide thoroughly managed online classes for students, as well as refresher courses for teachers. Other priorities include holding the Time to Study in Russia contest, consolidating the benefits for those entering Russian universities upon completing their courses at resource centres, promoting the centres abroad, developing a comprehensive brand identity, and improving social media presence.

Oleg Yastrebov, Rector of RUDN University: ‘We have this good tradition to celebrate our anniversaries by looking at the outstanding achievements of RUDN University contributing to the ongoing development of its research potential and educational strength. The university passed the test of the pandemic with flying colours and managed to keep up the quality and pace of the educational services it set out to provide. In 2020, we didn’t just retain, but actually managed to increase the rate of admission of foreign citizens with over 160 states sending their applicants to study at RUDN University’.

Konstantin Kosachev, Chairman of the Federation Council Committee on International Affairs: ‘Training of highly qualified staff for the world is of paramount importance today and is reaching a qualitatively new level. Russia is actively participating in the race for talented international applicants. The multidimensional strategy here includes a wide range of measures: from simplifying the visa regime to rebranding the country’s universities. RUDN University has managed to define its identity as a research-oriented global educational community. Highly qualified graduates of RUDN University are in great demand on the international labour market and are widely recognised in the academic community. Ongoing communication and joint teamwork involving students and alumni from other countries turned the university into a unique centre that unites the ever so valuable expertise of people of different cultural backgrounds’.

Petr Kucherenko, Deputy Minister of Science and Higher Education of Russia: ‘RUDN University is not just a leading university in Russia, but also a place of power. Its spirit remains unchanged – it rests in the diversity of languages, clothing styles and even ethnic national cuisines. Over the past years, the university has trained over 200 thousand specialists for more than 170 states, strengthening and developing the regions of Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Europe, Latin America and the CIS countries. Many outstanding alumni have become heads of ministries, governments and states’.

Another focus of attention was RUDN University’s volunteer movement. From the start of the epidemic, the university’s volunteers have joined the all-Russian campaign #WeAreTogether. Over 500 medical students worked in Moscow hospitals. In total, well over 1000 students have helped treat Coronavirus patients. Volunteers represented African countries (40%), the CIS (30%), Latin America (20%), and European states (10%).

As part of the campaign EUROLTA is redesigning its website. In doing so it expects to reach many more practising teachers who need to improve their skills and achieve EUROLTA language teaching certification. A brand new online EUROLTA course in English is now available. For more information, visit https://icc-languages.eu/eurolta or contact Ifigenia Georgiadou at ifigenia.georgiadou@icc-languages.eu.

Following a series of successful webinars at the end of 2020 featuring Geoff Tranter’s highly enjoyable Smiles and More examining the use of humour to help language teaching and learning, and Elizabeth Mickiewicz of the University of Coventry on COIL (Collaborative Online International Learning) in language teaching, our first webinar of 2021 featured Kataryna Palcu of the VHS (Deutsche Volkhochschule) in Augsburg, Germany, on the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) focusing on mediation.

Mediation is the latest buzzword in the teaching of languages but what exactly is it? Why should teachers teach it? How should they teach it? How can teachers promote mediation and plurilingual/pluricultural competence? The webinar focused on the changes to the 2001 published CEFR and explored the concept of mediation and its application in the language classroom. For more background information please visit https://icc-languages.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/CEFR-Companion-Volume-with-new-descriptors-2018.docx.pdf.

In March 2021, Geoff Tranter once again will inform and entertain us with A Comedy of Errors and Ian McMaster will talk about Authenticity in Language and Leadership: What Is It and Do We Need It? in our April webinar. For dates and abstracts of each talk please go to https://icc-languages.eu/webinars. ICC-Languages webinars are open to everyone, not just members, and to view our past webinars and future webinars as they are delivered simply go to https://icc-languages.eu and click on Webinars.

Expect more on this in our next ICC-Languages and EUROLTA news.

ECML publishes a quarterly newsletter entitled The European Language Gazette. The latest issue can be accessed at https://www.ecml.at/news/newsletter/gazette54/tabid/4424/default.aspx.

ICC-Languages looks forward to ever closer collaboration with ECML as the year progresses, particular in the area of studying and working in European language education.