Elaine Rees, Université Rennes 2 Language degrees and careers Developing the specific assets of our students

Outline  How things have changed for language graduates  Situation at Université Rennes 2  Experience of the Multicom project  Example of a new course in Multilingual Communication

Changes and specific assets  Increasing ‘competition’ from other courses  Language backgrounds are changing  Mobility programme students  Students whose native language is not French (this year: major European languages + Albanian, Estonian, Icelandic…)  Challenge: How to identify and develop specific skills of language students  Specific asset: multilingual communication

Situation at Rennes 2  Langues Etrangères Appliquées  A: French  B: English  C: German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Chinese  (+ other language ?)  2 degree options:  Languages and Business  Languages, Translation and Multilingual Communication

Multicom survey Typology of professional fields which our students enter:  Sales and marketing management  Public relations and events management  International corporate or organisational management  Translation, technical writing, content management

Multilingual Communication Course in L3  Bringing together specific assets and career skills needed  Multilingual communication course  Set up in  Final year of the degree programme

How the course works  Students are given a professional remit  They research sources in all their working languages  They produce a document/or give the required oral response in one of the languages

Example  You are on a placement at the London Chamber of Commerce. You have been asked to research innovative ideas for improving the well-being of office workers in their professional environment.  Study the documents provided in English and French, then search for other examples in your working languages  Write a short report describing briefly what you have found and recommend one idea which you think s particularly pertinent

So far…  Positive student reaction:  « savoir utiliser 3 langues en même temps »  « Searching for solutions to a problem in other languages and seeing how this problem is dealt with in other countries »  « We learnt how to switch from one language to another »  Important that students recognise their own skills

Questions raised  Organisation of ‘multilingual’ courses in compliance with institutional requirements  How to give students more confidence in highlighting their specific assets when entering the job market

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