Our main aims are to enable our students to develop their language skills to a high level and to increase their knowledge of the countries in which their chosen languages are spoken.
There is an international flavour with many students from continental Europe here, mostly on exchange programmes.
We have established excellent links in Europe and beyond for study and work-based learning placements. Languages students get two opportunities for placements abroad.
Facilities
The multi-media language facilities primarily serve our 350 students coming to the University of Chester to study Chinese, French, German and Spanish, although it also provides a range of distance-learning language materials for students outside the Department to study on an open access basis. Languages students have regular access both in lectures and during self-study to three digital language laboratories with over 70 computer workstations where they can listen to a wide-range of audio and visual recordings at their own pace, complete worksheets on listening tasks, record their own input on student tracks or even create their own subtitles.
There are also two self-study areas for students with language specific magazines, newspapers and journals from Africa, China, France, Germany and Spain.
As part of an independent learning programme the languages laboratories also house a range of language-learning software as well as providing access to further software on the University network and on an on-line language learning database. Students are encouraged to assess their strengths and weaknesses and set themselves language learning objectives which they are able to target by selecting the most appropriate learning materials.