Summary

The project “Students as Co-teachers in Language Learning Studios”, was led by Zhiyan Guo and Alexandra Kulikova, the Language Centre, School of Modern Languages and Cultures.

This IATL-funded project achieved its primary aim; to enhance SMLC and PAIS UG language degree students’ learning experience in both their linguistic skills and cultural understanding of China and Russia. It provided student, teachers, Warwick's international students and native speakers of Chinese or Russian with experience of using their inside knowledge of the language and culture to support students learning it as a foreign language. Students developed their employability skills and their intercultural competence while improving linguistic skills fundamental to their language proficiency. In the challenging period with the Covid-19, the participants engaged with their peers actively from different departments and countries during the weekly sessions which were beneficial to both their overall well-being and to their language learning as a very helpful complement particularly for areas of linguistic difficulty such as tonal pronunciation in Chinese and grammar in Russian.

The project provided a timely support to classroom teaching and increased foreign language students’ interaction with native speakers. In the longer term, using native speaking resources among undergraduates can become crucial to international learning on campus, fostering a mutually beneficial learning community for home and international students. The project has proven to be a good opportunity to initiate new developments for the future learning community at Warwick.