Educational Symbiosis: Designing English Language Learning Courses to Support Syntegrative Education

Educational Symbiosis: Designing English Language Learning Courses to Support Syntegrative Education

Gareth Richard Morris, Simon Matthew Sheridan, Jiaxin Xu, Wenjuan Liang, Fenfen Lv, Rick Foster, Shengjia Di, Chenyan Zhang, Stuart Perrin
Copyright: © 2021 |Pages: 21
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-7226-9.ch010
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Abstract

This chapter considers how practitioners at a Sino-British institution have developed English language learning pathways and courses for students enrolled on industry-themed programmes to support a new syntegrative educational model. The chapter considers some of the challenges these educators have faced, not only because of the need to create offerings from the ground up, but also because of the difficulties COVID-19 and broader institutional provisional evolutions have presented. With this in mind, how the staff overcame the challenges they faced in responding to the foundation year developments, creating year two modules and business courses, whilst also providing ongoing continuing language and study skills support for students, along with administrative support, will be presented in the form of solutions and recommendations. It is hoped that others can learn from these experiences and reflections.
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Background

Xi’an Jiao Tong-Liverpool University (XJTLU)

XJTLU is the largest educational joint venture in China, opening in 2006 (XJTLU, 2019), and is situated within the city and broad metropolitan area of Suzhou within the Yangtze river delta. It is independent of its founding institutions, enabling the university to develop at a faster rate than other higher education providers. Located within Suzhou Industrial Park (SIP), it has grown exponentially in the intervening fifteen years and in 2022 will open a second campus in a satellite city, where the recently established Entrepreneur College (Taicang) will be situated. XJTLU is an English Medium of Instruction (EMI) institution, and English is an essential feature of academic success at the university, with the English Language Centre, a part of the School of Languages, tasked with providing language pathways and courses to support students academically and to facilitate their English language learning endeavours. Recent years have seen a number of challenges arise within the ELC (Morris, 2021). Some of these have been caused by global developments, such as COVID-19, whereas others are the result of institutional provisional advances. Some of the subsequent changes have included the overhaul of the first year language pathways as a new approach to teaching undergraduates, initiated institutionally through an undergraduate foundation year.

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