在社会工作学生群体中，有相当一部分西非裔学生将英语作为第二或第三语言。这些学生主要是女性，有照顾他人的责任。他们主要住在伦敦南部，通勤到梅德韦校区。文学士和文学硕士阶段的社会工作课程是一门要求很高的课程，既有学术性又有专业性。它要求学生理解社会学、社会政策和法律等广泛学科的理论观点。学生必须学会写标准的学术论文，案例研究–将他们的专业实践与理论和反思作品相结合，他们利用他们的工作经验来反思他们在反压迫实践等关键领域的专业发展。这意味着学生必须学习许多不同的学术写作格式，他们在大学学期和实习期间非常忙碌。开云体育主頁(欢迎您)这种忙碌的结果是，把英语作为第二语言的学生可能会不知所措，试图满足所有的最后期限，他们经常没有时间来解决他们的书面语言需求，即使他们得到了反复的反馈，这是一个他们需要努力的问题。 This can result in students becoming quite frustrated because they know that their marks are suffering as a result of their written language skills. For many years the Student Learning Advice Service (SLAS) has worked with social work students and have considered putting on extra summer classes, but this has always been prevented by logistics because the students are carers, commuters and wage earners.
However, this year lockdown provided an opportunity; everyone was suddenly at home and living life through their computer screens. Therefore, it was possible for SLAS to offer an online course to support students’ writing skills. The online course was initially planned to last for 5-weeks and be delivered via Moodle and TEAMS. Topics included:

• Sentence structure,
• Tenses
• Punctuation
• Academic style
• Paragraphs
After 5 weeks the group was strong and keen to continue, so 3 additional sessions were added:
• Paraphrasing
• Summarising
• Writing conclusions

Twenty five students enrolled for the course and seventeen attended regularly. The classes were interactive using web resources and question and answer format. They were delivered in TEAMS and the last 4 sessions were recorded (prior to that the record function was not working). Feedback on the course was overwhelmingly positive students reported that they felt supported by the course and their confidence in academic writing improved. Due to the positive feedback, the summer school will be repeated next summer.