Reconceptualizing the agenda for language education at the UWI: Languages for all

Abstract

In 1997, the St. Augustine Campus of The University of the West Indies (UWI) embarked on a programme of languages for all via the establishment of the Centre for Language Learning (CLL). The mission of the unit was clear. The CLL was to be the institutional means for organizing and expanding the teaching of foreign languages at UWI, St. Augustine. Its mission meant that students could now aspire to foreign language competence as a core skill of their "graduateness." At the end of the first decade, it is useful to examine how successfully the Centre has accomplished its mission. Moreover, as the Centre embarks on its second decade, a refocusing of its mission-with reference to current research on non-specialist learning, new societal imperatives such as the Spanish as a First Foreign Language (SAFFL) Initiative, and institutional objectives such as the Campus's adoption of internationalization as a strategic objective-is called for. These are the issues addressed in this paper, which seeks to set out how the CLL, as a UWI centre of excellence for languages, proposes to meet the challenge of teaching, research, innovation, advisory and community services, and intellectual leadership in non-specialist language learning in the next decade