Dutch Language and Culture programme for Chinese students a success

Literature from Max Havelaar to Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer, excursions to the Randstad and a trip round the Zuiderzee, lectures about low literacy and the Golden Age in the North, interviews with earthquake victims in Groningen, literary columns and poems – this is what the year-long Dutch course jointly organized by Dutch Studies and the Language Centre of the University of Groningen covers.

On 7 June a closing ceremony was held to conclude the intensive programme in Dutch Language and Culture for students of Dutch from the Communication University of China (CUC). The sixteen third-year students started in Groningen in September 2017 at level A2/B1 (in the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, CEFR) and finished the programme at level B2/C1. Most of them passed the Level II State Examination in Dutch as a Second Language in the spring of 2018. In addition to general language courses, the students also followed courses in oral and writing skills, vocabulary and Dutch history and literature.

The Dutch Language and Culture programme is the result of a collaboration between the Department of Dutch Studies and the Dutch Section of the Language Centre of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Groningen. The programme not only pays extensive attention to language acquisition and proficiency, but also to content-related subjects in the field of Dutch Language and Culture. The programme comprises a total of 600 contact hours, followed by the same number of self-study hours, with an average of 20 contact hours a week.

There are currently four universities in China that offer Dutch: Shanghai, Shijiazhuang and two universities in Beijing, the Beijing Foreign Studies University and the Communication University of China. The Communication University of China offers a full-time degree programme in Dutch. This is the second edition of the programme in Groningen. The first group of students studied in Groningen in 2013-2014. The partnership between the UG and the CUC was established partly thanks to the Groningen Confucius Institute (GCI).