Paper Details

Paper	Session 1c: English Paper 6
Title	Language Learning Independence and the Provincial Chinese University - A Short History of the Center for Independent Language Learning at Shantou University
Speaker	Mr. Scott Fisher (Shantou University) Ms. Jiin Yap (Shantou University)
Time	10:00am - 10:30am
Venue	YIA 410
Abstract	The Center for Independent Language Learning at Shantou University opened in June of 2011 as the second of the learning and activities facilities under the management of the ELC, STU’s English Language Center. Its intention—stated plainly in its name but also implied in its physical layout—was the entrusting of the STU student’s extra-curricular language learning to the center’s assembled resources and their physical organization, and to, fundamentally, the student’s own devices. The focus of the physical facility was on, in short, utility—a utility that would, it was assumed, require little hard explanation or selling to its future user. And a utility that could get by on a minimum of HR. This talk will address these two assumptions as elements within the larger topic of the independent learning environment—both generally and in the special context of the provincial Chinese university, a context we would argue offers, for now at least, quite different challenges from those faced by similar facilities in more developed, cosmopolitan locations. It will discuss the development of STU’s CILL by highlighting a number of design decisions—major and minor—that have given CILL its present form and function and also its present resonance and even meaning in the STU community.