A Journey Through Online
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Resources > Business Dutch Reading Skills
Introduction
This is a tutor-supported online course teaching reading skills in a specialised form of Dutch, i.e. Business Dutch. It can be taken by learners with a minimal knowledge of the language. The course enables students to build up a reading knowledge of Dutch sufficient to cope with reading the business pages of Dutch and Flemish newspapers and magazines. It runs over a thirty-two weeks study period.
The course consists of two parts. The first part is a general module with twenty lessons. It uses English as its medium of instruction and comprises general texts on economic and social aspects of the Low Countries. Part two is a specialist module of ten lessons. This part is entirely in Dutch and covers more specialised texts on finance, business, entrepreneurship, and insurance. All text material is authentic. The activities are designed to develop the language skill of reading. Some exercises are self-scoring and self-correcting, but the majority needs to be mailed to the course tutor for feedback. An important feature of the course are the videoconferences between the student and tutor. They allow students to interact directly with the tutor and to get one to one feedback, advice and guidance.
Business Dutch is taught as part of the Postgraduate Certificate in Dutch Cultural Studies (from September 2010 also as part of the Diploma in Dutch Cultural Studies) at University College London.
Mode of Delivery
Blended Learning
The learning materials of the Online Reading Skills Course in Business Dutch are all web-based and all content - such as the text fragments, grammar and syntax explanations, and all activities - is presented online. Students find all exercises and tasks described in detail there and they complete them in their own time. Some of the exercises are self-correcting and do not involve tutor-support. The majority of the exercises are emailed to the tutor on a weekly basis. The role of the tutor is to provide detailed feedback, either in writing or orally during web calls, on these exercises and to post model answers online. Written feedback is given at the start of every week, oral feedback once every month during a web call. These web calls with the tutor are also an important part of the social, human aspect of the course.
It is also the tutor’s task to guarantee the smooth running of the course. Therefore the on-line content offers a lot of information and help files on the technological and practical aspects of the course, including a detailed weekly time table with deadlines for submission of exercises and appointments for web calls.
Course Types
Specific Skills
The courses teaches reading skills in a specialised form of Dutch, i.e. Business Dutch. All activities are designed to develop the language skill of reading. At the end of the course students have the ability to read authentic financial and business texts from Dutch and Flemish newspapers and magazines.
Syllabus Types
Skills-based
The course teaches its students, who have only a minimal starting knowledge of Dutch, the skills needed to read Dutch and Flemish newspapers and magazines. The Business Dutch course is divided into two parts. The first part, which consists of twenty lessons, teaches students the skills needed to read authentic Dutch texts of a general nature. This division allowed for the selection of appropriate text material for beginners, development of exercises that focus on the basics of Dutch and that have a clear progress, and a gradual introduction of more complex levels of the language. The focus of the activities in the first part of the course is mainly on a) receptive grammar and syntax knowledge (for explanations students are referred to the wholly on-line Beginners Dutch Grammar that comes complete with extra self-correcting exercises), b) word and sentence analysis (e.g. dividing sentences into word groups), c) use of (mono and bilingual) dictionary (e.g. also looking for word form that is used in dictionary), d) acquiring a basic vocabulary. All activities come complete with detailed explanations, learning tips and learning objectives. The majority of the skills taught in this module are transferable and can be used in new contexts and other languages (e.g. ‘what is a subject?’, ‘how do I look for words in a dictionary?’). At the end of the twenty lessons in the first part of the course, students reach the linguistic level required and have the necessary skills to start reading authentic texts of a financial and economic nature.
The ten lessons in the second part of the course are fully geared towards reading and analysing authentic financial and economic Dutch texts, and the activities focus on skills that are useful in this context, such as translations skills, advanced reading skills (exercises on text analysis, cohesion, comprehension, style), and advanced vocabulary skills (i.e. economic and financial language usage with exercises on derivations, compound words, set expressions etc)
Business Dutch also offers a set of tools to further improve students’ reading knowledge of Dutch. There is a glossary with Dutch explanations and English translations of all the vocabulary of the texts in the General Module. The Index of Grammar and Syntax Terms contains short explanations in English of all terminology of Dutch grammar and syntax encountered in the lessons.
Activities
Reading
All activities are geared at developing reading skills. The activities in the General Module focus on providing the skills needed to read general Dutch texts and differ from those in the Specialist Module that are specifically designed to develop advanced reading skills in a specific specialised domain. Activities in the General Module of the course include: exercises on word groups, word forms, sentence structure, word order, etc; on the use of monolingual and bilingual dictionaries; basic comprehension exercises, etc.
Activities in the Specialist Module of the course are: exercises on specific language usage, on text analysis (cohesion, style), translation into English etc.
Vocabulary
Vocabulary exercises return in every lesson and take many forms, such as deriving the meaning of a new word from the text’s context, or even from its antonym or Dutch definition, or by splitting the word into word parts. Every lesson ends with a glossary of the new words in the lesson. The glossary comes complete with a self-correcting vocabulary test that takes the form of a gap-fill exercise, matching exercise or quiz.
The course also offers a glossary of all Dutch words encountered in the texts with an explanation in Dutch and an English translation.
Grammar
Every lesson in the General Module contains a section on grammar/syntax that is particularly relevant to the text of the lesson. New grammar and syntax topics are introduced gradually. The course offers a short introduction and links to the Beginners Dutch Grammar of Virtual Dutch for further reading and self-correcting exercises, as well as a series of grammatical/syntactical questions on the text with specific focus on the newly introduced topic.
Example of a grammar exercise in the Beginners Dutch Grammar
Transferable Skills
Many of the skills taught in the course are transferable and can be used in new contexts and when studying other languages,. Examples are: analysing syntax to deduce meaning (‘what is a subject?’) or more general language learning skills (‘how do I look for words in a dictionary?) and etymological insight ( ‘how do I split a compound word’).
Activities using authentic materials
All activities in the course are based on text materials that are as authentic as possible. In the first ten lessons students read simplified, existing (newspaper) texts, from lesson 11 onwards texts are really authentic as they are no longer simplified. The texts in the Specialist Module are borrowed from financial and economic newspapers and magazines.
Levels
Beginners
Students should preferably have a minimal knowledge of Dutch at the start of the course, but with a bit of effort on their part they can start the course without any knowledge of Dutch.
The reading level students reach at the end of the course is equivalent to level B2 as defined by the Council of Europe ('advanced', according to ACTFL (American Council for the Teaching of Foreign Languages) proficiency guidelines).
Progression
Linear
Progression is linear. In general terms, students first need to work through the first part of the course, which consists of twenty lessons and teaches students the skills needed to read authentic Dutch texts of a general nature, before they are ready to tackle the ten lessons of the Specialist Module which is fully geared to reading and analysing authentic financial and economic Dutch texts. From lesson to lesson there is a clear and gradual progression, in terms of the authenticity, length and complexity of the text materials that students read and the language skills they learn.
Assessment
Assignments
Students are assessed on three assignments spread over the two terms of the course. Every assignment includes a series of exercises testing the students’ reading skills at that point in the course. Practically this means that students are assessed on all activities they do over a two/three weeks’ period. The activities are part of the regular tasks/exercises of three different lessons and are similar to the ones students have been doing in earlier lessons. The assessed activities are accessible to students at all time – i.e. students know well in advance what activities will be assessed and what the activities consist of.
All other tasks and exercises in the course are corrected and commented on by the tutor, but are for practice only.
Plagiarism
Every assignment may be followed by a so-called follow-up web call; i.e. if plagiarism is suspected, the tutor may decide to organise a web call in which further questions are asked about the tasks in the assignment to determine whether the submitted assignment is the student’s own work.
Web applications
Freeware
All self-correcting exercises were developed with Hot Potatoes freeware. The course was developed using the freeware Content Management System and Website Builder LightNEasy.
CMS
Business Dutch was developed using the freeware Content Management System and Website Builder LightNEasy. This CMS automatically converts HTML pages into PHP templates. Some knowledge of HTML code is required.
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