Press Releases

University puts accent on learning foreign languages

Release Date : 22 February 2008

On Friday 8th February, local school children saw the value of being multi-lingual in the world of international business, when they attended the first World of Work (WOW) event, hosted by the University's School of Languages and European Studies.

Fifty Year Nine students from five schools spent a fascinating day in the University Language Centre, attending workshops from local companies and learning about the importance of foreign languages in an increasingly international business world.

Contributors from BBC Monitoring, Novotel, Microsoft and the Goethe-Institute, used a variety of activities to help the students learn about international companies, cross-cultural communication, the global market place, international politics and national security.

The students were treated to an international buffet lunch where they discussed university life with student language ambassadors from four countries. In the afternoon the students had taster sessions of languages they had not encountered in school: Mandarin, Arabic, Modern Greek and Italian.

"I'm thrilled that the day was an enormous success," said Dr Kris Spelman Miller, Director of Teaching and Learning at the University's Faculty of Arts and Humanities. "Unquestionably the students gained an enormous insight into the benefits of choosing to study languages throughout their education, and the event was also a wonderful opportunity to strengthen links between the University, local schools and local companies."

Colleagues from the University of Surrey and Oxford Brookes University also came to observe the event, which they described as "a perfect model" and will now be running their own WOW events next year. There will be a second WOW event at Reading in June, focussing on sixth-form students.

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Notes for Editors:

The WOW event is part of the ongoing routes into Languages programme, an £8 million group of projects funded by Higher Education Funding Council for England and the Department for Children, Schools and Families, which has been set up to reverse the decline in language learning that has taken place in schools in England. Reading's involvement in Routes into Languages is led by Dr Kris Spelman Miller and Project Officer Mrs Barbara King (SLES)

For media enquiries only, please contact James Barr, the University's Press Assistant on: 0118 378 7115 or by email j.w.barr@reading.ac.uk