Advanced English Skills for Higher Education Professionals

Course Description

The focus of this course is to develop the requisite writing and presentation skills required by academic professionals to support their undertakings in an academic setting and improve their language skills. Specifically, this course aims to provide the necessary skills and techniques to write in an academic format, and be cognisant of academic form and structure.

Who Should Take This Course

This course is ideal for higher education professionals in a variety of roles from auxiliary staff and administrative staff to early-career lecturers and researchers, with a special focus on the functional language necessary for effective and impactful communication with multiple key stakeholders in an academic setting.

Day 1: Functional Language in the Workplace

• Identifying communicative situations in the workplace, e.g. dealing with student or institutional partner queries and/or feedback.
• Comparing and contrasting interactional and transactional communicative purposes, e.g.: making small talk in an academic setting vs demanding and offering specific information.
• Matching communicative situations with the appropriate language functions.
• Language aspects considered:

1. - Classifying language functions, e.g. expressing degrees of (dis)agreement or (dis)satisfaction

Day 2: A Structured Approach to Communicative Success

• Determining a text’s purpose and structure.
• Inferring intent and profiling the target audience.
• Evaluating communicative success and formal accuracy.
• Language aspects considered:

1. - Signposting and sequencing, e.g. organising events by time frames.

Day 3: Stance and Perspective

• Recognising the difference between fact and opinion to assess how evidence is presented to support an argument.
• Exploring academic tone and stylistic nuances.
• Demonstrating cultural awareness while considering both the national culture and the company culture, e.g. when drafting an invitation to an international event.
• Language aspects considered:

1. - Using persuasive and emphasizing communicative strategies.

Day 4: Adapting Language in Context

• Effective note-taking during meetings and based on reading texts from one’s specialised field of knowledge, including making annotations on graphs or charts.
• Expanding notes into a written text or an oral presentation.
• Paraphrasing a text to emphasize different elements, e.g. from the active voice into the passive voice to focus on the result rather than the agent.
• Language aspects considered: 

1. - Reported speech

Day 5: Conflict Management Workshop

• This final-day workshop will provide participants with a holistic and practical toolkit to effectively manage conflict in the workplace, identifying diverging stakes and/or perspectives to reach a compromise by setting new goals that facilitate the transition from the comfort zone to the growth zone.
• Dramatising real-life scenarios of conflict in a higher education setting in pairs and developing a strategy to respond appropriately both orally and in writing.
• Individual feedback focusing on style, register, and overall communicative effectiveness.
• Course conclusion with tips for continuous stylistic and register development.

Materials provided

All photocopies/handouts and powerpoint presentations provided

Minimum Level of English: CEFR B1+/B2 level (Intermediate Plus/Upper-intermediate level)

To Register: Click HERE 

Delivery: in person at Dorset College. 

Active Social Programme: We have an active social programme at the college which changes each month.  

Accommodation Options: We have a number of options that participants can choose from.  You can book your own accommodation or apply for Dorset College accommodation at enquiry stage.  We offer student apartments or a host family.  Accommodation prices are available upon request.