Language and content in the modern foreign languages degree: a students' perspective

Abstract

This paper reports on a small-scale qualitative study of students' experience of their Modern Foreign Languages (MFL) degrees with particular regard to the relationship between language and content learning. It is framed by the identification in the recent Worton Report on MFL studies in UK higher education and elsewhere of a dualism between language and culture in MFL degrees, which is reflected in the structure of the curriculum, its delivery and staffing. While this study reports the views of only a small number of students in one university, it adds to our understanding of how students' expectations on entering the degree programme (mainly being that they will improve their linguistic competence) are linked to their experience of the degree and their evaluation of what they have gained from it. Their weak appreciation of connections between language form, language use and moments of culture (whether textual, cognitive or in the form of cultural practices) and intercultural communication, and of other beneficial outcomes of a modern languages degree, appears to be associated with a curriculum that does not promote an integration of language and content. To this extent the dualism identified in the literature appears to be associated with a negative aspect of these students' experience. Some suggestions are made for what could be done to manage the separation between language and cultural content.

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