Teaching Series: an Interview with Beatrice Venturin, Senior Tutor at SoLL  

Felicia Lee

Beatrice Venturin is a senior tutor at the School of Languages and Linguistics, University of Melbourne. Her research interests lie in multilingualism, intercultural communication and emotionality in language. She is also a polyglot and a sports enthusiast.

Felicia interviewed Beatrice about her experience as Senior Tutor at SOLL, and how she navigates her academic life teaching and doing research at the same time.  

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Hi Beatrice, I appreciate you speaking with me. You’re the first person I’ve interviewed for the staff series this year, so could you tell us more about your background before you joined SOLL as Senior Tutor?

I did my undergraduate studies and then my master’s degree in my hometown Genoa, Italy. I focussed on languages for intercultural communication, specifically Russian and French. After I completed my master’s degree, I taught languages to learners of a range of ages from pre-schools, primary and secondary schools, and adults at language schools. 

Then I started my PhD in 2016 and I completed it in 2020. My PhD was on bilingualism and emotions. Specifically, I explored a specific generation of migrants who moved to Australia in childhood and the different ways they use emotional words. I was also interested in their language preferences when expressing emotions, as well as their feelings towards the languages they speak.  While I was completing my PhD, I started tutoring at SoLL and I taught different subjects in the languages and linguistics departments. 

Right now, I’m Senior Tutor focussing on subjects in applied linguistics, for example, bilingualism. I also taught Arts Discovery, a foundational subject for all students enrolled in the Faculty of Arts.

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Could you describe what a typical day looks like for you as Senior Tutor? 

I think it’s hard to say  what a typical day is because it depends on the day. Some days I’ve got a lot of teaching, so that’s the only thing I do. On other days I don’t have teaching so I do a lot of preparation for the lessons. I could be doing some of the readings as preparation or looking at the slides before the lesson. Sometimes I meet with colleagues to organise the subject or moderate assignments before marking. Then of course, there’ll be marking during assignment season. 

In terms of my teaching load, I have to fulfil 80 percent of my time to teaching, and the other 20 percent as part of service and research.  Therefore, in practice, I teach during the semester, while the other 20 percent of my time is spent on other administrative work and research tasks.

In your opinion, what makes a good and effective tutor at the tertiary level?  

It’s good to connect with the students and build rapport with them. I feel that there should be balance between being someone who can teach them, yet at the same time, understand them. We need them to understand that we are here to help them, and not to judge them, or inhibit them from succeeding with obstacles.  

The other thing is to communicate to the students the importance of education. Some people take it for granted for whatever reason, for instance, they may have come from a privileged family where life is easy. But they need to understand that getting an education is not just about the grades, but how they shape their minds or become life-long learners in the course of their lives, not just at university.

Given that your responsibilities are mainly in teaching, how do you find time to conduct your own research? 

I don’t find the time to conduct my own research during the semester. However, during the semester, I might find some ideas to work on or select the conferences that I should attend. Now we are establishing an early career researcher network within my field so I try to network during semester time too. I don’t want to lose connection with my research field; I don’t have that ‘publish and perish’ mentality so I’m invested in my research because I’m passionate about it. This is what’s important for me so I’m very disciplined about this. 

At the end of the semester, I can go back to writing or revising my research articles. Some of the comments and feedback from the reviewers or editors may have been communicated to me months ago, but I simply don’t have the headspace to revise my work while teaching. 

I also prefer to work with people but not too many because it can get rather messy. I think it’s good to find someone that you work well with, not only in terms of research interests, but also in terms of working style. For example, I’m quite structured and organised so I prefer to work with other scholars who are compatible with my working style.

How do you view your career progression as Senior Tutor?

I do want to see that I am progressing, but my idea of progression is a bit different from the environment where we work in. What I mean is my idea of progression isn’t just being promoted from Level A and all the way to Level E, but rather, I need to grow as an academic within the field. I want to try to teach different subjects to learn more; I want to have more responsibilities, for instance, being a subject coordinator; I want to expand my network in terms of research to do more of it. 

All in all, my idea of progression is more having collected more experience in different aspects of my teaching and research life. I’m more interested to see how I have evolved, not just working towards a specific job title. 

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That’s so inspirational. I hope I have that kind of energy too! How do you usually relieve stress then?

I participate in many sports and that’s something that keeps me sane. I cycle, swim, do a lot of yoga, play volleyball, and do some body combat. To make sure I also take care of my mental health, I meditate as well.

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Thank you for sharing your experiences as Senior Tutor with us!

Thank you, Felicia.