Academic Cultural Briefing

This sub-project was designed to help institutions towards the goal of integrating the period of residence abroad for modern language degree students into the curriculum of the degree as a whole.

Its main output is a course, with versions in French, German, Italian and Spanish, which prepares students to function more effectively in the foreign academic culture by familiarising them with the education system in which they will be operating, training them in the necessary academic skills and enabling them to develop their linguistic and intercultural skills.

The materials for the version of the course in each language are presented in a booklet, Academic Cultural Briefing. Each version of the course consists of five units and each unit contains one or two main texts with a full set of exercises in reading, structural competence, communicative awareness, speaking and writing, as well as additional materials and an answer key. The units have been developed so that they can be used individually or in sequence, as class or open-learning materials. The latter is facilitated by answer keys.

An initial analysis of student needs was carried out at Anglia Polytechnic University, together with an audit of existing modules in the year before the period abroad and a survey of student attitudes by questionnaire. Decisions were then made about the contents and the unit structure of the materials on the basis of the student-needs analysis, the survey of existing materials and consultations with colleagues in the field.

As there are many guides and materials available on practical aspects of residence abroad, such as opening a bank account, travelling and enrolling at a university, we decided, within the remit of the project, to focus on European education systems and academic and student life. In all units, academic skills essential to studying in a particular country such as note-taking and essay-writing are introduced and practised. These academic skills can also be used as part of the course assessment. The course is intended as a credit-rated course at A-level + 2.

All units have been trialled and evaluated with students at APU and a selection of units with students in other HE institutions. We should like to thank those who helped with that aspect of the sub-project: Jim Jordan (Nottingham Trent), Richard Littlejohn (Leicester), Ed Moffatt (Lancaster), Anna Proudfoot (Oxford Brookes), Sylvie Toll (Central Lancashire) and Kim Willis (Sunderland).

Uwe Richter
Anglia Polytechnic University