MFL Teachers – there’s still time to sign up for our Language Teachers’ Conference!

This year’s Conference will be held at St Anne’s College, Oxford on Friday 29th and Saturday 30th September and will welcome teachers from across the country for an exciting couple of days involving roundtable discussions, learning on all sides, and networking opportunities!

Since our last post about the Conference, we have been liaising with speakers from within and outside of the University and firming up the event programme, the updated version of which can be found here.

We are delighted to welcome Lindsay Johns, writer and broadcaster (and Oxford MML alumnus), who will be joining us as our keynote speaker to talk about his experiences of studying languages at Oxford and how language learning has shaped his personal and professional life. Likewise, we look forward to an exciting taster lecture from Prof. Jonathan Thacker, King Alfonso XIII Professor of Spanish Studies, as well as hearing from a range of wonderful academics from the Faculty across the two-day event.

Online bookings are still open until Wednesday 13th September, and can be found here.

Please don’t hesitate to contact Nicola at schools.liaison@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk with any questions. We look forward to meeting you at the end of the month!

We’re delighted to announce that the 2023 Oxford Language Teachers’ Conference will be held on Friday 29 and Saturday 30 September at St Anne’s College. We very much look forward to once again welcoming teachers to Oxford!

2023 Programme

We are pleased to be holding the conference at St Anne’s College once again 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 students of any financial background to study at Oxford. Today, St Anne’s marries modern architecture with a proud emphasis on inclusivity and academic excellence.

This year, we have altered the programme slightly in order to focus in on the ever-growing issues facing the teaching and learning of languages, and to dedicate more time to the ways in which we might overcome these challenges. For instance, after a welcome lunch on the Friday afternoon, 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 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.

Other highlights of this year’s programme include spotlights on the increasing accessibility of beginners’ languages degrees at university, the wonderful and varied career opportunities experienced by languages graduates, and the exciting new and existing languages-focused outreach projects currently occurring across Oxford. We will also be treated to a taster lecture from an academic in the Faculty – a hard act to follow after Prof. Helen Swift’s entertaining lecture on Medieval French last year – before we enjoy a drinks reception and sit down for dinner. This will all be followed by a chance to socialise and network with fellow MFL Teachers and colleagues from the Faculty in the College bar!

The full provisional programme can be found here.

Delegate rates and booking

Please find the various conference rates in the table below.

	State school rate	Independent school rate
Full conference, including accommodation and breakfast	£180	£280
Full conference, excluding accommodation	£110	£200
Friday only	£80	£120
Saturday only	£50	£90

Please visit our online booking webpage 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. Please note that bookings will close on Wednesday 13th September.

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!

We’re over the moon to be holding our Modern Languages Teachers’ Conference in person for the first time in two years… MFL Teachers, book your place now!

After two years of online conferences, we’re delighted to be hosting our annual Modern Languages Teachers’ Conference on Friday 23 and Saturday 24 September at St Anne’s College, Oxford.

To provide some context, our annual teachers’ conference is run by the Sir Robert Taylor Society (named after the founder of our Languages Library), which is a network of teachers of Modern Foreign Languages in secondary schools, academics from the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages at the University of Oxford, and others interested in MFL.

This conference is the heart of the Society’s activity, and provides a unique forum for interaction and exchange between the University and teachers. We offer teachers the chance to spend a night in an Oxford college, to attend various taster lectures, and to ask our academics and admissions team questions about supporting students’ applications to Oxford.

2022 Programme

Alongside a drinks reception and delicious dinner at St Anne’s, highlights of our Friday evening programme this year include:

• a spotlight on an exciting new outreach initiative to develop a Linguistics component in A Level Modern Languages curricula;
• a lecture from Professor of Medieval French Studies and Fellow of St Hilda’s College, Professor Helen Swift;
• a talk from our keynote speaker (to be announced) 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.

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.

Before lunch, we will close the conference with an admissions session which will include information about our new academic programme – Opportunity Oxford – and a mock interview with a current student, and finish with a Q&A discussion 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

You can view the various rates available for both state and independent school teachers, as well as book your place on our online booking webpage. 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!