What is Academic Teaching Excellence?
The ATE course has been specifically designed to improve the effectiveness of communication in lectures and seminars which take place in the medium of English and thereby improve the overall quality of academic teaching.
Developed in close co-operation with the University of Oxford, the course draws on the latest research in the field of English as Medium of Instruction (EMI). It is delivered by very experienced teaching staff who have received special training at Oxford University for teaching ATE.
Background
Higher education institutions in non-English-speaking countries are increasingly offering academic degree courses in the English language. The main driver for this is often to internationalise the institution; be it in order to prepare students for the globalised arena of research, or to improve their competitiveness in attracting the best student and staff talent. At Master’s level alone, the number of EMI courses across Europe has almost doubled within the past two years.
However, teaching a degree course in English can be quite a challenge for someone who is not a native speaker of the language; especially when most of the students on the course are also non-native speakers. In addition to being a confident speaker of the English language, a good understanding of the underlying communication processes between foreign-language speakers is important when planning lectures and seminars.
This is where English as Medium of Instruction (EMI) comes into play. EMI has become the focus of academic research, and we have ensured that our ATE course takes this research into account with the methodology it offers for successful lecturer-student communication in English.
