International Foundation Year.

You will learn through a mixture of face-to-face sessions of different kinds, and also very importantly, through study in your own time. 

The aim of these is not just to expand your grammar, vocabulary etc., but also to improve the skills you need to use your English in university study. As a result much of class time is spent on tasks: actively doing things with your language. These may be small in-class exercises (reading & analysing a text, listening to a recorded conversation, writing a paragraph etc.); or they may be part of a larger preparation for a final product: e.g. reading several texts to produce a written assignment or inform a group discussion. A normal part of doing these tasks is working with other students, in pairs or groups; so learning to communicate effectively with other students is an essential part of what you learn.

Different subjects are taught in different ways, so you may well not just experience a normal ‘lecture’ where the teacher presents and you take notes; even these will include questions to answer, short tasks to discuss in groups etc. There may also be:

• seminars: a chance to present and discuss prepared material (e.g. your analysis of an important text; solutions to a problem) in whole-class or in smaller groups
• tutorials: an opportunity to discuss individually or in very small groups specific things in the course: e.g. helping you plan and write an assignment
• practicals: these may vary from lab work in sciences to field trips or even making a short video; again, they may well involve working with other students

The focus will be on the knowledge, theories, methods etc. of particular subjects such as the study of contemporary media or analysing business processes. In other words, you will experience teaching as you will expect to experience it in your main degree course.

The IFY core module tutors are experienced teachers specialising in English for Academic Purposes. In the subject modules you may also be taught by tutors from the relevant academic departments.

For more language-focused modules, a lot of the learning needs to be done in class. Therefore, in Semester 1, you should expect to be on campus 4 days per week (although not usually for the whole day), and on many days classes may begin at 9.00am. In Semester you may have fewer hours on campus, but you may well still need to attend at some point 3 days per week. If you are concerned about your ability to attend, you should discuss this when you apply.

A 40% pass mark is required to proceed to Year 1 of undergraduate study. However, for degree courses in Law and English Literature 60% is required, and 70% is required for Psychology and Multimedia Journalism.