All Language Centre courses

If you are learning a language to be able to read academic text, this workshop can help you to work on your method. No single way is right for everyone: come prepared to make your own. With support, explore some helpful reading strategies and the choices you can make in how you approach your text.

Bring: a typical text in your target language that you need to read.

What are the strengths and weaknesses of your current approach? How could you develop it further? How could your language learning, and by extension your reading, be more efficient?

This workshop aims to help you to:

1.) Use a tool to evaluate your current reading technique.

2.) Bridge the gap between your current level of proficiency and your text.

3.) Tackle frequent challenges such as: increasing your reading speed, dealing with volume/quantity, measuring your progress.

This informal workshop is open to learners of any language, at any level.

In this workshop we will practise reading techniques that will support you in understanding and interpreting your key texts. The beginning of Der Kleine Herr Friedemann will be the text we practise with, but it is not necessary to have read this in advance.

The strategies will help build your reading towards extracting key points/moments from a text for commentary, and reading for translation.

We'll break reading down into manageable steps and look at how you can develop your technique for both the personal stage that you feel you have reached with your reading and for the text that you have in hand. The session is entirely flexible, depending on what you would like to discuss and to work on.

Come to this session if you would like to explore developing your personal method for practising listening to French, particularly for progressing with challenging audio-visual clips from documentaries and films. Different listening strategies work for different people, and improvement is all about diversifying your own practice. We will try out practical strategies and evaluate their helpfulness against the questions that you are asked in the FRAV exam.

Please note this workshop will take place in LB 11 on the Sidgwick site.

Administered by the Language Centre, the AJ Pressland Fund offers bursaries of up to £1,000 to support language study abroad for students within the Schools of Biological Science, Clinical Medicine, Physical Science and Technology.

The aim of this optional advising appointment is to support with choosing a short language course abroad. Come along to find out more about other language learner experiences and get ready to explore course providers and programmes for your language.

Students should be planning to study a language overseas for up to 4 weeks during the Long Vacation and funds awarded may be used to support course fees, accommodation and travel as required.

Please note that we have a maximum of two students per appointment so you may share your appointment with another student.

Bring: a typical text in your target language that you need to read.

This one-off session is for learner readers of any languages.

Do you need to diversify your strategies for academic reading in your target language? Maybe for areas such as reading with speed or identifying which are significant moments in a text and which aren't? Come and evaluate your method, then experiment with practical steps for all kinds of texts.

This is a change of concept: of course we will consider your target language, but giving greater emphasis to how you read and learning strategies to make it manageable and satisfying. Learners at all levels welcome.

Speaking practice with an Arabic native-speaker volunteer

A one-to-one practice speaking session with a volunteer native Arabic speaker. The session will take place over Zoom Communication Software

A relaxed and informal speaking practice session with a volunteer native Basque speaker.

Speaking practice with a Bengali native-speaker volunteer

Speaking practice with a Brazilian Portuguese native-speaker volunteer.