The Linguist

12 The Linguist Vol/60 No/2 2021 thelinguist.uberflip.com How can universities provide a meaningful 'year abroad' during a global pandemic, asks James Illingworth T he year abroad has long been a mainstay of the UK's modern language degree programmes. In a survey of almost 600 languages graduates carried out by the British Academy and University Council of Modern Languages (UCML) in 2012, 86% stated that the year abroad was the most valuable part of their degree. We know too that employers recognise the transferable skills, in addition to language competency, that our undergraduates gain from the experience. Since March 2020, however, the UK's 7,000 year abroad students have faced unprecedented challenges. The combination of the pandemic and Brexit has restricted mobility and generated bureaucratic hurdles that have made travel for study or work placements extremely difficult. The potential impact of Covid-19 was identified very early on, and thanks to the initiative of Professor Helen Abbott (University of Birmingham), a loose grouping of 23 institutions came together in March 2020 to discuss how the repercussions for year abroad students might be mitigated. This grouping approached the UCML shortly after its first meeting, and the UCML Year Abroad Special Interest Group was born, expanding to 54 institutions offering degree programmes in modern languages with a mobility component. The group also includes representatives of the British Council, who operate the UK's language assistantship programme and oversaw administration of Erasmus+, and Universities UK international (UUKi). The group is chaired by Professor Jonathan Long (Durham University). Initially the core aim was to coordinate a sector-wide response to the crisis, in the hope that as few institutions as possible would 'cancel' the year abroad. Departments were already stretched to capacity with the switch to remote/blended teaching and the additional support students needed, not to mention the pressure placed on staff as people trying to work through a global pandemic. Having to accommodate 7,000 students we had expected to be abroad would have pushed an already strained system to breaking point. As disruption from the pandemic continued and countries moved in and out of lockdowns, with travel bans imposed, lifted and reimposed, the group swiftly became forward-looking. UCML curated a pack of virtual resources for language teaching in the 11 most commonly taught languages (Arabic, Chinese, Czech, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Thai). These resources were made available to all departments in the group, along with examples of best practice in virtual language immersion. The group also became a forum for exchange, where colleagues share issues in the hope that others may have found solutions. We have also benefited from presentations on virtual language immersion from the Open University and demonstrations of different forms of virtual mobility from the European Association for Computer Assisted Language Learning (EUROCALL). Intercultural interactions Although the year abroad is an important way for our students to develop their linguistic skills, it is also about intercultural competence, and this skill is a key component of most institutions' year abroad assessment. We therefore needed to support institutions in providing students who were unable to travel abroad with ways of honing their intercultural skills. The solution UCML proposed is a programme of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) that would encourage students to reflect critically on interactions with other cultures. The programme includes three MOOCs that ran using the FutureLearn platform between November 2020 and March 2021: 'Working with Translation' (Cardiff University), 'Understanding Language: Learning and teaching' (University of Southampton and the British Council), and 'Introduction Third year at home JOURNEY ONLINE Universities and students are having to recreate the 'year abroad' experience at home, as best they can LOCKDOWN LEARNING

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