25 Teaching evaluations reveal that students appreciate the efforts and abilities of LanCSAL lecturers and thoroughly enjoy the courses we offer. The pass rate is close to 90%, but without compromising quality or standards. LanCSAL is a teaching-heavy department. A quick count reveals that we teach about 124 semester modules at undergraduate and Honours levels. LanCSAL currently has 20 permanent academic staff members, which means that the average workload is about six semester modules per permanent staff member per year. To alleviate this workload, I have been appointing as many temporary staff members as possible, making use of vacant posts, departmental funds, and research cost centres. This juggling act is not a long-term solution. During the second semester of this year, we have interviewed candidates to fill four vacant posts in LanCSAL. We are confident that these appointments will alleviate the teaching loads of all Applied Communicative Skills lecturers on APB, DFC, and SWC campuses. One of the appointments will also alleviate the teaching load of Applied Linguistics lecturers, albeit not sufficiently so. The dean and I are in negotiations to create another post for LanCSAL to compensate for Prof Marne Pienaar moving from LanCSAL to the MLSO. This new post will also be in Applied Linguistics. In addition, an assistant lecturer will also be appointed in Applied Linguistics. If all these plans work out, Applied Linguistics will be sorted for the immediate and longer-term future. The only areas in LanCSAL that then continue to require teaching relief are Modern Greek (MDG) and Classical Culture and Mythologies (CLC), both of which have only one permanent lecturer for all under-graduate and Honours modules. The lecturer for CLC is also the HoD of LanCSAL. In the beginning of the year, we delivered two MA students and one doctoral student. Unfortunately, COVID-19 and other circumstances prevented the other candidates from submitting this year. On the positive side, we introduced four new post-graduate degrees in LanCSAL, namely MPhil in Afrikaans, DPhil in Afrikaans, MPhil in Mythology and Ancient Cultural Studies, DPhil in Mythology and Ancient Cultural Studies. Research LanCSAL made it onto the Faculty’s list of Top Ten Departments in terms of research outputs this year. This is an amazing achievement, especially considering that most of our staff are up-and-coming researchers. Some of these outputs address issues directly relevant to UJ. For example, Simba Yafele published an article in the Taylor & Francis journal Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, entitled “Translanguaging for academic reading at a South African university”. The article identifies poor reading achievement as a pressing problem among multilingual students in South Africa. In addition to articles and book chapters, Prof Llewellyn Howes published the book, The Formative Stratum of the Sayings Gospel Q: Reconsidering Its Extent, Message, and Unity, with the internationally recognised German publisher, Mohr Siebeck. Some of the papers presented at national and international conferences were relevant to both UJ and tertiary pedagogy. For example, Dr Cindy Ramhurry presented an online paper titled “Taking Foucault Seriously in Educational Assessment: A Case Study in South African Higher Education” during the 8th International Conference on Teaching, Education and Learning (ICTEL), which took place during 23-24 June in Singapore. Dr Ronnie Ramhurry presented the paper “Electronic Mentoring in the Digital Age: The Role of Social Media as a ‘Gamechanger’ in Mentoring Practices within Higher Education” during the 3rd International Academic Conference on Teaching, Learning and Education. Prof Karen de Wet was an invited speaker at the bi-annual national conference of the Afrikaans Literary Association in September, where her contribution focused on
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