Professional contexts for modern languages:work experience and academic reflection in a multilingual context

In the second year module ‘Professional Contexts for Modern Languages’ at Lancaster University, students take 20-25 hour placements, and using a multimodal forum, they articulate their challenges, development and understanding of the varying contexts in which they are working. In summative assessment, students across languages and types of activity communicate and learn from each other so as to foster a broad, cross cultural understanding of language-based professional and business contexts (mainly in educational, digital marketing and translation sectors both in the UK and abroad). The module establishes a mutually productive engagement between a university languages department, faculty employability and central careers staff, the Lancaster University Students Union (that source teaching placements) and local and European employers. Inspired by a vision of modern languages degrees as fostering a global mind-set and cultural intelligence, the course allows us to rethink language learning within a framework of skills for employability

The political economy of high skills:Higher Education in knowledge-based labour markets

<p>A successful transition into the knowledge economy depends upon higher level skills, creating unprecedented pressure on university systems to provide labour markets with the skills needed. But what are the political economy dynamics underlying national patterns of high skill formation? The article proposes a framework to theorize the relationship between higher education systems and knowledge-based labour markets based on two dimensions: the type of knowledge economy predominant in a given country and the extent of inter-university competition. It is argued that the former explains what type of higher level skills will be sought by employers and cultivated by governments, while the latter helps us understanding why some higher education systems are more open to satisfying labour market demands compared to others. A set of diverse country case studies (Britain, Germany, South Korea and the Netherlands) is employed to illustrate the theory.</p