Building bridges to Europe: languages for students of other disciplines

Abstract

British Higher Education institutions have for some time now been promoting Europeanisation policies, offering languages and foreign exchanges as part of their undergraduate programmes. However, the organisation of such programmes and the question of how integrated languages should and can be remain problematic, and the commitment to such programmes varies considerably from institution to institution. This paper argues the case for vocationally relevant language courses for students of other disciplines — focussing on architecture as an example — to enable them to compete successfully as future employees of the Single European Market. It also describes the process involved in developing a vocational or subject-specific language course.