Dutch for refugees

The Language Centre will start a special teacher-training track for Dutch language and culture instructors who will teach highly educated people entering the Netherlands. That includes international RUG students, staff from abroad, and academically accomplished refugees.

The courses will begin in mid-February and run through the beginning of the summer, according to a press release from the Language Centre.

The goal of the special teacher-training track is to prepare participants to work as Dutch language and culture instructors with well-educated students who are learning Dutch as a second language.

Academically accomplished

‘We are looking for people who have done a language programme already and who can teach about didactics or educational competence’, says Margaret van der Kamp, an instructor at the Language Centre and coordinator of the new specialised track, in the press release.

Instructors who complete the course will be equipped to work with incoming international students and university staff from abroad. The Language Centre course also aims to increase the number of educators who can teach academically accomplished refugees.

Qualified

‘There are many highly-educated people who are entering our country, and that is the group that the university is most familiar with. That is why we as a university are also qualified par excellence to train instructors for this group’, Van der Kamp says.

The courses will be taught by experienced instructors of Dutch as a second language from the Language Centre, as well as other university instructors and RUG researchers.

Update:

According to the RUG webpage about the course, the specialization track will last eight months and the second block of the track will consist of an internship.

Van der Kamp says that there is not yet any indication of exactly how many students will enroll in the course, but the ‘Specialisation for instructors of Dutch as a second language’ page says the courses need a minimum of six and a maximum of 20 enrolments.

11-01-2016