Every year, around 120 students of French at the University of Manchester (UoM) prepare to go on their compulsory Year Abroad (YA). They are free to choose between different options: studying in France and the French-speaking world, working in diverse sectors throughout the French-speaking world, or becoming a language assistant. This wealth of…

This article describes the extra support required for outgoing students on their Year Abroad (YA) journey. It highlights the increasing need for and relevance of peer mentoring of YA students in preparing them to deal with different structures and organisations where external support might be insufficient or even non-existent. It also outlines…

The use of innovative language in education is a current and pressing issue in a digital landscape where knowledge and skills are acquired in much more complex and fragmented ways than in the past (Di Blas, 2016; Selvaggi, Sicignano, & Vollono, 2007). We are experiencing a lot of interest in flipped classrooms, interactive learning…

UK universities are increasingly focusing on employability and internationalisation strategies, resulting in the promotion and integration of an optional or compulsory Professional Training Year (PTY) within degree programmes. The University of Surrey encourages students to undertake a PTY in the third year of undergraduate study, either in the UK…

Corona Virus Disease or known as COVID-19 has had a profound impact that has spread among every cycle of educational context in a short period of time. In the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak, foreign language education, which was one of those affected cycles of educational context, had to be conducted by quitting physical settings, and the new…

This chapter will discuss how a Year Abroad (YA) assessment can incorporate language progress, cultural understanding, and personal development by showcasing the Interim Self-Reflection Evaluation Report (ISER), which was introduced in 2017-2018 as a piece of assessment for the YA in Japan at the University of Leeds. At the end of their first…

This chapter deals with the year spent abroad by language students and its impact on their employability skills, with a focus on students at the School of Modern Languages and Cultures (MLAC), Durham University, who spend the third year of their four-year Bachelor of Arts programme abroad. The chapter reviews selected studies on Study Abroad (SA)…

This volume draws together a selection of papers from YAC2018, the first meeting in the annual Year Abroad Conference series, which took place at Newcastle University in September 2018. The contributions collected here examine some of the opportunities, gains, and challenges the Year Abroad brings for both students and staff. They are presented…

This chapter examines a student-led internship project to repurpose a Residence Abroad (RA) reflective survey in order to achieve better meta-cognitive self-analysis and more productive communication between outgoing and returning students and staff. Evidence from the project and from scholarships pointed to the limitations of free-text reflective…

The Year Abroad (YA) is one of the most valuable parts of our language degree programmes. Here we discuss some of the elements that constitute the assessment Nottingham Trent University students carry out to earn a YA diploma. More specifically we compare the two elements (blog and dossier) that we think contribute most to reflective practice, by…

In the pursuit of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), universities play a pivotal role in driving transformative change. This paper focuses on innovative approaches centered around the role of the English language and the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in English language education. The goal is to empower and prepare…

The purpose of this study was evaluating international office services at the university level considering potential improvement for English proficiency and assimilation in the American community for English as a Foreign Language (EFL) or English as a Second Language (ESL) students. Programs provided by these offices target different cultural…

This paper will detail the introduction of the open-source content creation tool H5P in a first year university French language module with 115 students in autumn 2019 and its evaluation in early spring 2020. The aim of this project is to analyse what happens when students are given access to an authoring tool traditionally intended for and used…

In line with the rapid advancement in educational technology, and the application of artificial intelligence (AI) in particular, the teaching and learning of the English language has undergone a significant transformation. This paper aims to explore students' perceptions of integrating AI into the English as a foreign language (EFL) learning…

In language courses, oral skills are frequently a source of anxiety for students. Moreover, in some occasions, students are unfamiliar with the evaluation criteria used to assess their performances, increasing their level of stress when facing the oral exam. This article describes a series of activities based on the introduction of several…