Jim Donohue: PhD Linguistics

Jim Donohue

PhD Linguistics, 2002

"I am a Senior Tutor, Language & Learning, at Hillcroft Residential College."

"It was in 1998 when I was working for a bank in Amsterdam as an English Language Tutor and Consultant that I saw an advert in the Guardian for a research studentship in linguistics at Luton.

I was ready to deal with some of the questions that had come up during 20 years of teaching - so the possibility of getting into some in-depth research really appealed to me.

The title of my thesis was Genre Based Literacy Pedagogy: The nature and value of genre knowledge in teaching and learning writing on a university first year media studies course.

It was research into how to support student writing at university and involved working closely with staff and students in the Media Arts department.

In my final year as a research student I took up a teaching post at the Institute of Education, London University.

The Institute of Education is a leader in this field of research so teaching in the School of Culture,Communications and Language at the Institute meant working alongside many of the authorities in the field that I had spent the previous three years reading.

In the summer of 2002 I took up my present post at Hillcroft, in Surbiton, Surrey. Hillcroft is the only women's residential college in the UK."

It was set up in 1922 at the same time as John Ruskin College, in Oxford, to provide education for disadvantaged working class students.

At that time Ruskin college was an all-male college and Hillcroft provided similar opportunities for women. During the century Ruskin ceased to be a single-sex college but Hillcroft has continued to provide educational opportunities exclusively for women.

The mission of the college is to provide access to education for women who would not otherwise have such an opportunity. Women can study, without charge, for up to a year, living and working within the college.

For many this period provides them with a certificate in higher education which is the equivalent to a first year of study at a university and enables them to enter either the second year or first year of a three year degree course at a British university.

Many of the women who come to study at Hillcroft have had very little previous educational experience and for some this experience has been very negative. Living and working in the company of other women is usually found to be highly positive.

In recent years, a wide range of other courses have been developed at the college, including Women into Management, Personal Development, English to Speakers of Other Languages and Basic Skills.

"I'm employed as Senior Tutor for Language and Learning Development and am responsible (in conjunction with a range of other staff) for ESOL, basic skills courses, and for the provision of additional learning support across all the courses at the college. This has been a very practical application of the findings of the PhD.

The Hillcroft job is very demanding but I'm continuing the research activity I was involved in at Luton.

I'm collaborating with Professor Martha Pennington towards the creation of an academic literacy website, and with Adrian Page and Professor Geoffrey Nowell-Smith in the Media Arts department towards the embedding of academic literacy provision within the curriculum of the department.

My time at Luton was a very powerful opportunity for me to develop my understanding of the literacy and language teaching I've been doing for many years and I'm grateful to have had the chance of studying here."

Interview took place in 2003.