Language graduates in the 21th century need to have intercultural skills and language awareness as well as language skills.
The OU is addressing this in a brand-new course, L161 Exploring languages and cultures, which will be a 30-credit compulsory module in the new Certificate in Language Studies (T21) due to launch in October 2014.
“We believe L161 is unique, in that there are courses that focus on the culture of a particular language, and there are general cultural studies courses, but we have not found another course which teaches intercultural communication and language awareness alongside traditional language skills,” says module chair Dr Maria Fernandez-Toro.
“We visit ordinary people in multilingual life situations, ask academic experts for their opinions, and encourage students to reflect on their own experiences of intercultural communication.
“To promote employability, an entire block is devoted to intercultural communication at the workplace, and there is another one about communication in the digital age.”
The 30-credit L161 module is not aimed at a specific language, but lays the groundwork for the study of any language and can be studied alongside a beginners language module. It will be available from October next year.
To see ‘intercultural communication’ in action, check out the Hairy Bikers Bakeation on the OU’s OpenLearn website.
Travelling through 12 European countries to indulge their passion for baking, the Bikers were forced to deploy various intercultural communication strategies to learn from local chefs. Some of the OpenLearn clips will be used in L161.
Posted 19 July 2013
Photo shows the Hairy Bikers on their culinary tour of Europe. Courtesy BBC
