Results from the pilot projects

One of the main tasks of the Language Strategy was to initiate, develop and evaluate pilot projects with a focus on foreign language competence development and integrate them into the disciplinary courses. The overall aim was to identify the specific needs for language support, both by developing stand-alone language courses for specific purposes and by integrating language components into existing courses in a variety of disciplines.

The majority of the pilot projects have focused on finding the most effective solution to a language need within a specific academic discipline while others have generated best-practice solutions that can benefit the entire university. The various experiences are described below.

The Language Strategy has completed 36 pilot projects that can be summarised as follows:

  • The projects have involved around 4.500 students and around 170 teaching staff.
  • Nine of the pilot projects were stand-alone language courses, e.g., courses in Spanish or Arabic with a focus on fieldwork, or reading courses in German and French.
  • Twenty-seven projects integrated a language component into existing course content, typically by focusing on a specific skill, e.g. reading or writing. This made the language support more practical to handle and directly relevant to the students’ needs.
  • Twelve of the projects dealt with reading skills in a foreign language, 11 on writing, 5 on speaking, 7 on a combination of skills and 1 project focused on the vocabulary of parallel language use.
  • Eighteen projects worked with academic English while the remaining 18 focused on a range of other languages: French, German, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, Latin, Ancient Greek and Danish as a second language.
  • Seven projects offered language-related activities to all students across the University. Fifteen projects were aimed specifically at bachelor level, 12 at master’s level, and 2 at PhD students.
  • The projects were distributed across the faculties as follows: Humanities 14, Health 8, SCIENCE 6, Social Sciences 6, Law 1, Theology 1.

For an overview of the projects by faculty, click here.

If you need more detailed information about the pilot projects, you may find it in Danish on our Danish website (https://cip.ku.dk/sprogstrategisk-satsning/udviklingsmidler/ ), or you may contact the Centre for Internationalisation and Parallel Language Use at cip@hum.ku.dk.