The exchange takes place between students of German / French / Spanish at the University of Nottingham and students studying English at partner universities in a country where the target language is spoken. This project will run as a pilot scheme involving second and third year Language Centre students at stages 5 and 6 in the first instance with voluntary participation on the students’ part.  If successful, the exchange will be extended to the academic departments and compulsory participation (including assessment) will be considered.

The aim of the pilot is to facilitate authentic spoken and written communication between language learners and native speakers of the target languages involved. Each student in the pilot group here in Nottingham will be matched with a student from the respective university abroad. Engineering students on a “with language degree” go out in their third year of study so the partner university could be one of Nottingham’s established contacts (e.g. TU Ilmenau, INSA Toulouse, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid).

The exchange will be supported by a dedicated website hosted by the University of Nottingham. The website, for which password protected guest accounts will be set up for all participating students and staff, will be divided into three sections:

    i) “Who is Who?”: here students and staff from both universities  can introduce themselves with short video/audio presentations and/or photo/text.

    ii) “Syllabus”: this section displays which topic will be discussed when and what resources will be used for which topic.

iii)“Communication”: this forum represents an extension to the discussions taking place in class. Together with their peers abroad, students continue to develop and reflect on their views on such topics areas as “student life – accommodation, fees, careers etc” (stage 5) and “alternative energy” (stage 6)

The exchange does, however, not end there: Each week or fortnight (to be decided by the participating tutors), at a prearranged time, students will link up with their respective partner(s) via individual webcams in order to follow up on class discussions or to carry out set tasks.