REF:66-2010-977315 - No year abroad

Your comment: I am a final year student in the Modern Languages department. The other students in my year and I missed a significant proportion of our year abroad due to COVID-19. For those of us studying more than one language (which is the vast majority of us), for many of us this meant only one week in a country of one of our target languages, and for some no time at all. The year abroad is the year where our language skills are supposed to develop most considerably, meaning that we are now lacking the necessary skills for our final year. We are in desperate need of more contact time with our lecturers as individual study is by far less effective. Without additional in person support, I fear that we will graduate without the necessary knowledge and language abilities to work in our field.

Our response: 

Many thanks for your comments. It is unfortunate that some ML students missed out on their year abroad experience through no fault of their own or of the university. During the period from April-September students were given access to all Level 2 material in order to help them revise and prepare for final year as much as possible, although I understand that this does not replace the year abroad experience as nothing can. The ML department is adding one extra hour of contact time (through MS Teams) in order to help students catch up with their language learning. This will start next week. You will therefore have 5 contact hours per week for SP/FR/GE/IT30130 plus a host of material created by dedicated staff members and presented on BlackBoard. You also have the opportunity to contact any of your tutors during their feedback and advisory hours for one-to-one conversations (in the target language for practice if you prefer) or for advice on any aspect of your learning.