French and International Communication with Foundation BA Honours

Critical thinking is fundamental to our ability to progress in an increasingly complex and changing world. It is an essential skill across a range of academic and practice-based disciplines.

This module helps you understand the importance and function of critical thinking both at university and beyond. By working in partnership with academic staff and peers, you will explore how critical thinking aligns with disciplinary practices, shapes scholarly knowledge, and addresses inequalities. Through problem-posing education and anti-racist practices, you will engage with real-world problems, fostering the ability to create a more just and sustainable world.

This module introduces contemporary political questions in the global context. Current political issues such as statelessness, politics of underdevelopment, power and inequality, and climate change will be discussed and analysed. The idea of nations and nationhood features prominently in the module, as do the issues related to faith, religion and ideological belief. The module is designed to introduce concepts and themes such as democracy, power and politics, inequality, global society, human rights and states, territories and statelessness.

This module provides a foundation in the theory and practice of intercultural communication, to help you better understand the complexities of communicating with people from other cultures. You'll explore what is meant by culture and the relationship between cultures and identities and examine how culture influences you and others. You will reflect on how the language and non-verbal communication you use can impact understandings and what strategies you can develop to manage misunderstandings both socially and in more formal contexts. Throughout the module, you are given the opportunity to practice your communication skills through a range of activities.

This module introduces you to the key academic, professional, and personal skills essential for success at university. It encourages good practices in writing, presentation, and time management, while also fostering reflection to help you build confidence as you transition to higher education. Open to all students enrolled in courses delivered through Westminster Foundation Pathways, the module provides a creative and supportive environment where you can reflect on and develop your academic and professional journey. You'll work with specialist facilitators who play a crucial role in guiding your academic and professional development.

With a focus on managing academic choices in a higher education setting, the module emphasises the importance of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), using methodologies that prioritise equality, diversity, and inclusion. Through these lenses, you'll explore topics that prepare you to address real-world challenges as highlighted in the SDGs in a socially conscious, inclusive, and responsible manner.

This module explores some of the issues and intersections of identity through written and spoken expressions. It will include aspects such as language and gender, writing auto/biography, forms of writing, cultural identity and linguistic identity, and reading and writing about ‘others’ in fiction and non-fiction.

The module provides you with an introduction to the relevant theories of interpersonal and intercultural communication. By exploring these theories and linking them to practical everyday situations, you will have the opportunity to reflect on how these apply to your own communicative contexts. Focus will be placed on gaining practical strategies for enhancing your own competences as a communicator.

The module introduces the core theoretical knowledge, methodologies and fundamental skills required for the study of language and culture. This includes developing a sound understanding of key terms and concepts in addition to the skills needed to produce clear and competent written English in a range of registers and styles appropriate for undergraduate academic study. The module lectures emphasise the interconnectedness of the study of language and culture and introduce you to a variety of methodological approaches, including textual and visual analysis, semiotics, and adaptation. The lectures encourage you to think critically about the construction of meaning in different languages, cultural contexts, and media. 

Beginners, false beginners and intermediate students of French will learn a range of language skills, cultural competencies and critical abilities to enable them to function with a limited to fair degree of linguistic and cultural autonomy in French-speaking countries and the learning environment. Language and culture are taught in an integrated way through task-based and enquiry-based approaches to learning. Student will achieve levels upper A2 (beginners or false beginners) or lower B2 (intermediate) on the CEFR; cultural elements focus on key concepts. Proficiency levels provide an indicative framework only.

This module examines English around the world as an international, intra-national, native, second, and foreign language. It considers the distinctive features of these varieties and the social and cultural implications of English as a global language. British varieties of English may be referred to as examples in the introductory part of the module but are not the main content or part of the assessment.

This module develops the practical and conceptual foundations of the translation process. In addition to language-specific translation seminars that focus on real-world texts of a gradually more complex but mostly factual and explicit nature, in the translation workshops, you'll be introduced to a range of translation-specific skills, including IT skills as well as basic theoretical concepts as a means of identifying, understanding and resolving translation issues in a practical manner.

This module introduces the study of contemporary and ancient material culture and examines its meaning in social, political and historical perspectives. You'll acquire skills of object analysis and visit London galleries and museums to apply them. You'll examine the social and cultural lives of objects, and how their meaning changes depending on their context and use, by assessing their production, the impact of trade, war and migration on their circulation, and their provenance and politics of ownership and access.

The module examines the relationship between representation and the production of meaning through the analysis of a wide range of contemporary socio-cultural topics, including gender, ethnicity and language, through different media. In this module students are encouraged to challenge and develop an understanding of the critical links between representation, meaning and identity in a global frame. The analysis focuses primarily on the representation of cultural difference and 'othering' in the public space and aims to answer a fundamental question: How can textual and visual media help to develop an understanding of cultural diversity and cultural difference, and help advance intercultural awareness? Examples are drawn from a wide array of media and cultural narratives, including advertising, literature, film and the internet.

Second-year post-beginner and post-intermediate students of French will learn a range of language skills, cultural competencies and critical abilities to enable you to function with an intermediate to good level of linguistic and cultural autonomy in French-speaking environments. Language and culture are taught through task-based and enquiry-based approaches with special emphasis on the promotion of intercultural understanding. You'll achieve levels upper B1 (post-beginners) or upper B2 (post-intermediates) on the CEFR; cultural elements focus on key events and ideas that have shaped the modern and contemporary French and Francophone world. Proficiency levels provide an indicative framework only.

In this module you will examine how those in positions of power use language to create narratives, values and beliefs held by different groups of people in the world. You will explore how language found in the public space reflects values and conventions and how this can change across different societies. The module focuses on the role and purpose of different kinds of social institutions and analyses the means through which they maintain their identity in the international public space and the language they use to do so. You will be shown methods of reading between the lines and how to evaluate the success or otherwise of their communications. This will also be applied to the specific languages you are studying through seminar sessions.

This blended module – which combines lectures, workshops, and online student-to-student collaboration – introduces professional language transposition skills relevant to the communication of current affairs in an increasingly globalised and digitised world. You take ownership of learning, choosing the topics studied and how to manage the synchronous online sessions. International collaborations develop interpersonal and organisational skills, as well as interlingual, intermodal, and intercultural competences. The module prepares you for the year abroad and, for those not going overseas, enables language practice in authentic, professional settings, such as subtitling, voiceover, and interpreting.

This module focuses on key cultural developments that have impacted the Francophone world through the analysis of pertinent cultural artefacts. It considers the development of each cultural and linguistic area over time up to and including the present day. To do so, the module will identify and focus on cultural artefacts that include text, objects, and audiovisual media such as – but not exclusively – literature, film, individual testimonies, political material, music, museum pieces, and artwork. The module aims to support students’ language learning through the study of these artefacts in the target language. It will also introduce students to key concepts relevant to their culture of study, such as gender, sexuality, race, class, language, and society, thereby developing their research, analytical, and critical thinking skills.

The Final Year Project offers you a choice of three pathways to complete an independent project. (1) The Professional Transcreation Project pathway provides the opportunity to work on a professional brief, creating materials for an organisation's expansion into new markets, with a focus on localisation and transcreation processes. (2) The Translation Project pathway prepares you for translation in a professional context through the completion of an extended translation as well as a critical commentary. It is available to any student who began their studies at Level 4 as an intermediate or proficient speaker of their language of study. (3) The Dissertation pathway offers you the opportunity to propose, research, and write your own project in the form of an extended essay on any topic related to your language and/or culture of study. You are supported in your chosen pathway through the development and application of skills needed for your project, via pathway-specific workshops and tutorials. Additionally, you will be further guided in your own work by your own project supervisor.

In this module students will further expand their knowledge of and expertise in functioning as communicators in an international environment. Students will analyse the use of language and culture in professional contexts from a range of perspectives including translational communication and working in a multilingual, multicultural environment. Students will apply current theories of discourse, interpersonal and intercultural communication to real world contexts and improve their own practical competencies as international communicators.

In this module students will expand their knowledge of and expertise in functioning as communicators in an international environment. Students will analyse the use of language and culture in professional contexts from a range of perspectives including working in a multilingual, multicultural environment. Students will apply current theories of discourse and interpersonal and intercultural communication to real world contexts and improve their own practical competencies as international communicators.

This module is designed for final-year students. Students will learn a range of language-specific structures and skills, cultural competencies and critical abilities appropriate to this level which will enable them to function with linguistic and cultural autonomy in a French-speaking environment. Language and culture are taught through task-based and enquiry-based approaches with special focus on intercultural understanding. Students will achieve upper B2 (post-beginners without year abroad), C1 (post-beginners with year abroad or post-intermediates without year abroad) or upper C1- lower C2 level (post-intermediates with year abroad) on the CEFR; cultural content focuses on contemporary topics and issues. Proficiency levels provide an indicative framework only.  

This module explores various forms of cultural and political representation from the Arabic/Chinese/Francophone/Hispanic worlds, according to your chosen language. In particular, it examines core themes and issues, such as identity, belonging, and social movements, that are pertinent to the culture of study, considering how local, national, and transnational landscapes have influenced these issues. The module will develop your knowledge of key concepts and theories relevant to the culture of study and encourage the analysis of a wide range of texts, including, but not limited to, literature, film, popular culture, documentary, non-fiction, art, and other visual images.

The way that we talk tells us something about the way we interact with the world around us; it also explains to a certain extent the behaviour of those who see and hear us. Why, for instance, are some types of multilingualism seen as 'good' ('Trump’s grandchildren can already speak Mandarin, aren’t they clever'), while others are seen as 'bad' ('Spanish should be abolished in American primary schools')? In the sorts of contexts that we live in, society is structured in such a way that it benefits those who talk a certain way ('Speak the Queen’s English to get on in life'), and systematically disadvantages others who do not talk a certain way ('You’ll never get anywhere talking like that'). This has consequences that affect us as individuals, and language as a whole. In this module on multilingualism, you'll be asked to interrogate these processes. The module will introduce seminal texts that provide the analytical framework for exploring languages and language use in very disparate societies and cultures. At the same time, the module has a strong practical component: you'll draw on a range of empirical data (both quantitative and qualitative), as well as your own lived experiences, in order to model the relationships between language and society. In the lectures and language-specific seminars, there will be a particular emphasis on the interface between language use and ideologies, policy, the media, education and wider socio-political and cultural formations.

Across the globe, gender is a key principle of social organisation which defines the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion in both domestic and public life. Gender is fundamental to ideas about social order and power. Protest is a vital force for political and social change, particularly for changing conversations about gender. As such, this module considers the relationship between gender and protest. In particular, it considers the importance of protest in shaping both popular and theoretical constructions of gender across a range of cultural contexts, including, but not limited to, Latin America, East Asia, and Europe.

This is a work experience placement associated with employment with an appropriate employer that you as a graduate might eventually join, such as a small or large business, an arts organisation or a subject-based placement in a school.

Assessment consists of a portfolio which you'll complete. You'll need to source your own placement. Support is provided via three face-to-face teaching sessions: one introductory session, one session focused on the assessment, and one drop-in session to discuss work towards the assessment. You are also strongly encouraged to make full use of the support offered by discussing your placement and coursework with the module leader during the semester. In cases where you are unable to secure a placement by the end of the first week of the semester, or where a placement has fallen through, the University will support and facilitate a change in module.