Student Rep Meeting with Head of MLANG, Cardiff University, 10.12.14

On 10th December I attended a meeting with Head of MLANG School, Professor Claire Gorrara. She was giving a presentation about developments in the school and there followed a Q&A session. As student rep for first year Translation I felt that I would take this opportunity to briefly report on this meeting to the students.

Claire began by stating the strategic vision for MLANG. It is:

‘Laying the foundations for learning and teaching, research and impact and international engagement within our new school’.

MLANG is a new department that consolidates the teaching of foreign languages at Cardiff University. The old EUROP makes way for MLANG. Politics moves departments and the school incorporates Japanese that was previously taught at the Business School. The foreign languages taught to 4000 adult learners at Cardiff Centre for Lifelong Learning (LEARN) are drawn into MLANG and the new school allows for an expansion in languages, introducing Portuguese to the main degree program this year with a full degree in Mandarin Chinese (in partnership with Beijing Normal University) to follow in 2016.

It was an interesting footnote for us, as translation students, that the translation department is the big success story for MLANG. Enrollment of Translation courses is massively increasing year on year and the future of this section looks very bright. The trend of students to want Translation courses means that this is a growth area and the demand will be met with supply.

One of the key challenges to MLANG has been the new Languages for All (LFA) program. This has been introduced as a university-wide scheme, allowing ALL students access to free teaching of foreign languages to compliment their degree studies. The enthusiasm of students for LFA in its inaugural year has been overwhelming with over 2000 attempting to enroll for the only 900 places that were available. There are plans to increase capacity of LFA in future years. The business school will be made available for teaching after 5pm, expanding classroom space and more tutors will be brought in.