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  1. Academic preparation

    Language Courses for Academic Purposes

    Programs Guide



    You want to study at a university where the language spoken is not your native language. To do this you need to show that you’re capable of communicating to a particular standard in that language and so you’ll study a language course for academic purposes. Taking a university access programme will help you improve your language level to the required standard.



    What are Language Courses for Academic Purposes?


    While learning a foreign language can be a very fun and rewarding experience, not everybody learns a foreign language for the fun of it! Nowadays it’s very common for students to study further education courses at a university overseas, and often this will involve studying in a language other than your native language. Obviously the university wants to make sure that you’re going to be able to keep up with the pace of study and that you will be able to contribute to the classes, so they will usually insist that you complete a language course.



    How do Language Courses for Academic Purposes Differ to Other Courses?


    Language courses for academic purposes aren’t vastly different to the more standard English language courses, though there are a few distinct differences.



    The Level of Language Course


    Unless you’re planning to study your language course very intensely for a long period of time, it would usually be assumed that you already have a certain level of knowledge of the foreign language you need, which would include speaking, listening, writing and reading. This is because a language course for academic purposes would generally be at a higher level than and standard language course.



    Studying Towards Certification


    It’s all very well studying a foreign language for academic purposes, but the university needs to know for sure that you are going to be able to keep up in your classes. For this reason, language courses for academic purposes will be helping you to study towards gaining a certification which states that you have passed a certain level in that language.



    The Types of Certification


    The actual certification you will be studying for depends on what language you are learning, but the whole point of this type of course is that the testing is based on universal standards. By this we mean that everybody around the world will take the same test and be graded in the same way. This gives the university the assurance that you are language capable in that particular language.


    As an example, students taking an English language course for academic purposes will be studying towards getting an IELTS certificate. An IELTS Academic Version is accepted in most British, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, South African, Irish and United States academic institutions.