Language Centres at a Crossroads

The purpose of this presentation is to give listeners an overview of recently organized new types of Norwegian language courses tailored for international academic staff employed by the University of Oslo. The talk deals with the specificity of the courses due to their highly tailored dynamic perspective as well as university policy which requires international academic staff to attain good command of Norwegian to be able to communicate in the workplace, take an active part in meetings and discussions, and eventually start teaching and lecturing in Norwegian.

The courses differ from ordinary Norwegian language courses taught at our university due to such aspects as intensity and short duration of the courses in addition to tailored teaching materials from the participants' current work-related contexts, literature and authentic articles, and no textbook.

Furthermore, particular emphasis is placed on stimulating the learners to oral activity and prepare them to take initiative to communicate actively, make requests, exchange opinions or assess the students, and ultimately profit from pedagogically appropriate target language use instead of English. The dynamic content of the teaching also prepares international academic employees to give context-based presentations on various topics which deal with their own professional fields of interest as well as comparative insights into Norwegian daily life and society.

Finally, the teaching and learning approach takes advantage of the employees' multilingual and multicultural competencies and utilizes a contrastive perspective in the teaching. The courses also emphasize the participants' oral and written activities in Norwegian together with linguistically and culturally suitable mediation strategies and profession-related language practices which include extensive vocabulary use and idiomatic expressions, intertwined with context- or task-specific strategies and culturally adapted communication.

Last but not least, the content of this presentation will address both the benefits and some challenges of this type of tailored language courses which nevertheless appear to be worthwhile attention for further exploration to enhance successful learning and teaching practices for academic staff.

Lo scopo di questa presentazione è fornire agli ascoltatori una panoramica dei nuovi tipi di corsi di lingua norvegese recentemente progettati dall’Università di Oslo e pensati per il personale accademico internazionale assunto dall'Università. La presentazione illustra la specificità sia dei corsi, con la loro prospettiva dinamica altamente personalizzata, sia della politica universitaria che richiede al personale accademico internazionale di raggiungere una buona padronanza della lingua norvegese per essere in grado di comunicare sul posto di lavoro, prendere parte attiva in riunioni e discussioni, e infine iniziare ad insegnare e a tenere conferenze in norvegese.

Ewa Wapinska is a university lecturer in the Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies at the University of Oslo and has been teaching Norwegian for International Students since 2003. Her professional experience includes ten years of teaching at the International Summer School (ISS), University of Oslo, teaching Norwegian abroad, and working in adult education. In 2004 she launched a pilot project, Norwegian for Construction Workers – hybrid courses, introducing the CEFR and the ELP to vocational courses in Norwegian for Polish construction workers.

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