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08 December 2021 | Story Nonsindiso Qwabe
Dr Bernard
Dr Eleanor Bernard heads the Centre for Teaching and Learning on the Qwaqwa Campus.

“I realised that our students are not regularly exposed to and immersed in an English first language environment. So, for two years, I created control groups and tested how to implement a film club to support their language learning as well as engage them. In the end, I created a framework that university language teachers can use, with very specific guidelines as to how to make it successful.”

For her PhD study in Higher Education Studies, Dr Eleanor Bernard created a play on traditional learning by implementing a film club as a way of enhancing the basic interpersonal communicative and English literacy skills of non-native speakers on the Qwaqwa Campus. Dr Bernard is the Assistant Director of the Centre for Teaching and Learning on the Qwaqwa Campus. She will be graduating with her PhD in Higher Education Studies during the December 2021 graduations. The title of her study is: Implementing a film club to enhance English second-language students’ basic interpersonal communicative and basic English literacy skills.

Building on her passion for language learning and acquisition, Dr Bernard wanted her study to be a fun and interesting way of enhancing the already existing General English language module by creating a space for exposure and social interaction. She did this by forming student groups that would regularly watch films and opened spaces for engagement as a way of focusing on the language development of the students.

“The highlight for me was sitting in a university lecture venue, while watching Tsotsi or Pitch Perfect with students, and seeing them interacting, laughing, and enjoying a usually very serious space. Also, the wonderful discussions they shared on Blackboard around elements such as lobola, or stereotypes. Lastly, seeing how by the end of the year, they would walk into my office and interact with me more confidently in English,” she said.

Language studies has been a part of her academic journey from her Honours qualification. She has an MA degree in Language Studies from the UFS. She said working on the Qwaqwa Campus with language and literacy modules, she loved the process of watching students blossom as they gained more confidence in using the English language. “I especially love receiving a student at the beginning of the year, who you can see struggling and almost battling through the content and the skills. And then to see the change by the end of the year, and how their confidence increased.”

‘No learning can take place without engaging students’
She said she hoped faculties would also see the value of focusing on the language development of students as a baseline for academic literacy skills development.

“No learning can take place without engaging students, and there are so many guidelines and practical ways to ensure this engagement, including in language learning. Student success is not just about performance or final marks, but also about students completing a year where they have interacted with others and learned to care for them, where they have been changed to want to impact societies and communities, and where they have acquired skills that they will use when they enter the world of work.”

News Archive

UFS awards honorary degree to Justice Richard Goldstone
2012-01-26

 
Justice Richard Goldstone

A huge honour will be bestowed upon the University of the Free State (UFS) when the world renowned Justice Richard Goldstone will be receiving an honorary degree at the official opening of our university.

The Doctor of Laws (honoris causa) degree will be conferred on Justice Goldstone on Friday 3 February 2012 at 10:00 on our Bloemfontein Campus.

Mr Richard Freedman, Director of the South African Holocaust and Genocide Foundation, and Judge Mahube Molemela, Justice of the Free State High Court, are amongst the prominent figures expected to attend this event.

Justice Goldstone served in the Constitutional Court from 1995 to 2003. Prior to that, he was a judge of the High Court and from 1989 a judge of the Supreme Court of Appeal. From 1994 to 1996 he was the first Chief Prosecutor of the United Nations Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. He is presently a Senior Fellow at the Jackson Institute at Yale University in the United States. Over the past 18 years he has become a leading expert on international criminal law.

Prof. Neels Swanepoel, Head of the Department of Law of Procedure and Law of Evidence, said the faculty is proud to honour Judge Richard Goldstone for his outstanding legal career and in particular for his contribution to the development of international criminal justice.

“As Chief Prosecutor for both the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) as well as the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), he has contributed to precedent-setting judgments on genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. His publications on various aspects of International Criminal Justice have contributed towards the stage where those bearing the greatest responsibility for human and humanitarian rights violations, will face justice.”

Prof. Swanepoel says judge Goldstone has contributed towards laying the foundations for conflict resolution in societies that have transformed from repressive to democratic rule and to what is now referred to as ‘transitional justice’.

On Thursday 2 February 2012 at 19:00, Judge Goldstone will deliver a Prestige Lecture on ‘The Future of International Criminal Justice’ in the Auditorium of the C.R Swart Building on the UFS Bloemfontein Campus.

 

Media Release
26 January 2012
Issued by: Lacea Loader
Director: Strategic Communication
Tel: 051 401 2584
Cell: 083 645 2454
E-mail: news@ufs.ac.za

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