Each semester, university language centres prepare thousands of students for the language and cultures they have chosen. The reasons students have for joining these courses are diverse, but the main objective remains the same: to equip them with the skills they need to thrive in academic and professional environments in other countries and other languages. In the classroom, we strive to simulate real communicative situations as closely as possible. However, the diversity of each student’s background – different fields of study, host universities and lengths of stay – means that we can only cover the essentials. And then at some point, the students set out on their exchange programmes and end up diving head first into the experience.
Although this cultural immersion brings many positive effects, it is also crucial for students to feel prepared, to understand what their stay will look like and to know what will be expected of them in specific academic contexts. In the Spanish Department of the Language Center at Leipzig University, we therefore decided to create a blended-learning programme to help students become familiar with academic discourse in Spanish before their study abroad.
In collaboration with the Modern Language Center (CLM) and the Office for Linguistic Policy and Internationalization at the University of Granada, we launched the pilot programme Spanish for Academic Purposes: Understanding and Constructing Academic Discourse at the University Level. This innovative hybrid mobility programme brought together five German students and five Spanish students in a unique experience of academic and language immersion. It was made possible within the framework of the Arqus European University Alliance and with funding from the DAAD mobility programme.
