Activities

Current activities

The language committee meets three times each semester. The committee lobbies to get a translator from Swedish to English to be employed by KTH.

28 April 2015 we organized a lunch seminar about translation and proofreading and a workshop on the same topic a month later.

A questionnaire on language use has been developed and sent to the administrators at KTH.

The language committee tries to spread awareness and knowledge of the language policy at KTH, for example by informing through these web pages and by inviting to discussions on the use of language.

The members of the committee regularly go to conferences on language in higher education and research.

Activities 2013-2014

A group web site describing the activities of the Language committee has been created. Students and employees of KTH are welcome to discuss language and comment the web site. The web site exists in parallel in Swedish and English. The Language committee also, since 2014, posts information on the KTH intranet under Communication.

Each semester since 2013 the Language committee has organized a lunch seminar and a workshop. A summary of the seminar and the results of the workshop has been pubished on the group web. The following topics has been treated:

• Fall 2013 a seminar on subject-specific terminology was organized in cooperation with TNC, and a workshop on parallel terminology in the education was held.
• Spring 2014 there was a seminar (with John Airey from Uppsala university and Olle Josephson from Stockholm university) and workshop on teaching in English. 
• Fall 2014 the topic of the seminar and workshop was clear language.  Ingrid Olsson from the Swedish language council presented at the seminar.

We have updated the official list of English designations of academic positions KTH. The designations in Swedish and English has also been added to the revised version of the KTH Swedish-English dictionary, that the Language committee is maintaining. The dictionary now consists of 1000 Swedish terms with English translations.

During 2014 we inspected how the decision that there have to be both Swedish and English abstracts in every bachelor's thesis, master's theses and Ph.D. thesis has been observed at different schools. The results was presented to the groups of Directors of First and Second Cycle Education and Directors of Third Cycle Education.

Recommended translations in Japanese and Chinese of "KTH" has been developed and are published on the group web and intranet.

The language committee monitors that the process of automatic translation of the official course syllabi using the Convertus system works well. We have trained the school's proofreaders of the translations.

The Language committee sent a participant to the Nordic conference on Parallel linguism and internationalisation in Nordic universities in Copenhagen in May 2013. At the teaching and learning in higher education conference NU2014 in Umeå in October 2014 the Language committee participated with a poster (Hur kan en språkpolicy bli verklighet?) A technical report about the Language committee and its activities was written by Viggo Kann and Richard Nordberg: Policy implementation through a language committee.

The Language committee represents KTH in the reference group of the Swedish-English higher education dictionary of the Swedish Council for Higher Education. 

The Language committee have met three times each semester. We answer questions about language at KTH. We have informed about our activities at the groups and networks of the KTH Program Directors, Directors of First and Second Cycle Education and Directors of Third Cycle Education, and at each seminar and workshop that we have organised. We report to the management group of ECE each year.

Activities 2011-2012

The activities of the language committee 2011-2012 are summarized (in Swedish) here.

The language committee has constructed a Swedish-English dictionary of KTH terms. The dictionary can be downloaded at the page Language resources and tools.

Questionnaires

The language committee has carried out two questionnaires on the language use at KTH, one directed to teachers in 2011, and one directed to students and doctoral students in 2012. Summaries of the most important finding are reported in Policy implementation through a language committee. More detailed summaries can be found below.

Questionnaire to the teachers at KTH

During Spring 2011 the questionnaire was sent out. All teachers, including teaching PhD students, were invited to answer. 524 teachers answered the questionnaire. 434 of them answered the Swedish version and 90 answered the English version. This means that about a third of all active teachers answered.

Summary of the results of the Swedish questionnaire.

Summary of the results of the English questionnaire.

Questionnaire to the students at KTH

During Spring 2012 a similar questionnaire was sent to all students and PhD students at KTH. 2480 answered the Swedish version and 797 answered the English version.

Summary of the results of the Swedish questionnaire.

Summary of the results of the English questionnaire (most of the open answers removed).

Answers to the question about the outcome of the teaching.

Answers in Swedish and in English on language courses in the education.

Other comments in  Swedish and in English.