This is an intensive language course for beginners. Five hours per week are devoted to developing practical language skills alongside basic grammatical competence, to enable students to participate in a wide variety of language exchanges and transactions. By the end of the first year students should be able to communicate fluently in basic written and spoken Dutch, expressing ideas and feelings about non-specialist topics.
Attention is paid to developing a critical language awareness.
Two hours per week are set aside for self-study, over and above homework tasks and course assessments, in order to consolidate and complement classroom work. The course offers a cultural studies approach to the modern Low Countries. It introduces students to various aspects of social organisation in the Netherlands and Flanders, and initiates them in cultural analysis, information retrieval and the critical processing of both visual and verbal texts. The course provides a general survey of economic, social, political and cultural developments in Dutch and Belgian history from the late Middle Ages to the First World War. The emphasis is on developing knowledge of major themes in the history of the Low Countries and on information-gathering and analytical skills.