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Elaine Minett

Senior Lecturer

Elaine Minett

About

Senior Lecturer (Modern Foreign Languages). Elaine is route leader for the Primary PGCE MFL specialism, and also teaches the MFL subject study for the BA Primary Teaching with Subject Specialism degree. Elaine has been teaching at the University of Chichester since 2006 and has been responsible for the development of the Primary PGCE with Languages route, which enables students to develop a specialism in teaching languages in the primary school.

Experience

Elaine gained her undergraduate degree at the University of Exeter and completed her PGCE in Modern Foreign Languages (French and German) at the University of Southampton. Elaine went on to complete her MA (Education) at the University of Chichester, which she passed with distinction. Elaine taught foreign languages for 18 years in mainstream secondary and primary schools. Elaine also worked as an Advisory Teacher for Primary Languages in West Sussex for six years. Elaine’s work involves training specialist and non-specialist primary teachers to deliver the Modern Languages entitlement effectively, both locally and nationally. She has presented regularly at conferences across the country since 2006, including the Primary Languages Show and the Languages Show.

Elaine is a member of ALL (the Association for Language Learning), and was part of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Languages and the Expert Subject Advisory Group for Languages. She has been an external examiner for four universities for both primary and secondary MFL routes. Elaine obtained the National Primary Languages Leader Award in January 2011 and was a ‘Links into Languages’ trainer for Languages.

Interests

Elaine is particularly interested in ways in which languages can be linked to other areas of the curriculum and how they can be delivered as part of the creative primary curriculum. She is also interested in developing non-specialists’ confidence and competence to teach languages in the primary school and appropriate resources to support this. Her current PhD research evaluates two approaches to teaching primary French when taught by non-specialist teachers.

Elaine coordinated a LinkedUp Award Research Project: Understanding others; understanding ourselves – maximising the benefits of school partnerships which ran from January – November 2010.

Elaine also led a project in West Sussex on Aligning Languages & Literacy working with CILT, the National centre for Languages (2009-2011).

She also led the MFL creative curriculum project in West Sussex in 2007 and disseminated results nationally from 2008-2010.

Key Publications

  • From Empires and Eruptions to Lost Worlds: placing languages at the heart of the primary curriculum’ in Hood, P. (2019) (ed)Teaching Languages Creatively
  • ‘Ahoy there, me hearties! Combining foreign languages and dance in the primary curriculum’ in Hood, P. (2019) (ed)Teaching Languages Creatively
  • Get Clued up! April 2005 CILT ELL Bulletin (CILT, London)
  • Getting creative! Embedding languages in an enriched primary curriculum, Links Bulletin – CILT ITT MFL publication Issue 38 Nov 2008
  • Oct 2009 Case-study for TDA on effective collaboration between University and Local Authority

Conference or Research output

  • Minett, E. & Marsden, E. (2023) Comme ci, comme ca ? A comparison of two approaches to teaching French to 7-8 year olds in England. Presentation at the annual conference of the British Association of Applied Linguistics, 23-25 August 2023 at the University of York.
  • Presentation at Research in Primary Languages Early Career Research webinar (6.6.22): Comme ci ou comme ça ? An evaluation of two approaches to teaching primary French
  • Workshop on Cross-curricular approaches in Primary Languages at the East Midlands Languages Conference, December 2017
  • Workshop on ‘Ahoy there, me hearties’ Dance and MFL at the 2017 Inaugural International Conference: Cross-curricular Language Learning (CLIL) at Sheffield Hallam University
  • Workshop at the Association for Language Learning 2017 on ‘Ahoy there, me hearties’ Dance and MFL

Research Output

Conference or Workshop Items

Minett, E. (2010) Down on the farm! In: Herefordshire Primary Languages Conference, 8 Nov 2010, Herefordshire. (Submitted)

Minett, E. (2010) La sortie de Monsieur Grumpy - using big books in primary modern foreign languages. In: Sutton Primary Languages Conference, 15 Oct 2010, Sutton. (Submitted)

Other department members

Bex Drummond
Lecturer in Primary Education (Mathematics and Computing)
Caroline Rickard
Associate Link Tutor
Carys Wreyford
Carys Wreyford
Senior Lecturer in Education, Special Needs and Disability (SEND) Studies

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