Date: Sat, 5 Apr 2025 17:33:28 +0100 From: Eleanor Clifford To: Imperial College Centre for Academic English (CfAE) Subject: On the proposed changes to the academic english training requirements of doctoral students

Dear [redacted],

I greatly appreciate the work that CfAE does. I have not found a need to make use of it myself, but I do believe research communication is an incredibly important skill, so championing it and teaching it is a very worthwhile cause. That said, I would like to present a number of reasons why I oppose the proposed extension of the requirement to all students.

Firstly, and this is primarily a semantic issue, it took me a number of readings to understand what the proposed reforms actually were. I do not believe this to be a sign that I should take a CfAE course, but rather that it stems from the sentence, “Assessment 1 will be replaced with a research communication training and feedback opportunity for all doctoral students” (emphasis mine). After getting halfway through the questionnaire, I realised from the phrasing of a question that you don’t actually mean “opportunity” at all, you mean requirement. After all, an opportunity is only an opportunity if taking it is a choice. I fear this phrasing will skew your survey results in a direction that is unrepresentative of students’ real views.

Secondly, I think making this a requirement for any student is a bad decision, let alone for all. The way I see it, when choosing PhD students Imperial requires (or should require) a certain level of general competence, and part of that is the ability to recognise our own shortcomings and decide for ourselves what actions to take or not take to improve them. We are not rowdy schoolchildren who need to be corralled by force into making good decisions, we are adults, some of us already a significant way through our research careers. Certainly, some external constructive criticism is warranted to prompt self-reflection, but that is part of the role of the supervisor – they have a direct connection to the student, and are best placed to encourage (or even, in rare cases, require) the students to do courses like this. In contrast, I find a mandate from on high like this to be out of touch and frankly patronising.

Thirdly, if there is a “risk of students only realising at the writing-up stage how they could have benefitted from CfAE training and feedback”, which there may well be, then what needs to be done is to provide their supervisors with training, because in those cases it is my belief that the supervisor has failed in their responsibility to recognise the student’s shortcomings and direct them to useful help. I don’t believe this is CfAE’s responsibility to judge. Even if the proposed course did indeed end up only taking 30 minutes for a very competent student, it would still be adding to an ever growing pile of putatively formative assessments before the Early Stage Assessment: the Initial Research Plan, the Risk Assessment Foundation Training, the Plagiarism Awareness Course, and now this.

I think your proposal is almost a great one. A short self-diagnostic for people who think they might need it is a great idea. Expanding the personalised training to anyone who wants it is fantastic. But I firmly believe that no part of this should be a requirement.

Many Thanks,
Eleanor Clifford, 2nd year PhD student in EEE

The person responsible for this proposal responded, thanking me for my honesty and the level of detail in my response, and saying that it was very valuable feedback.