As a lecturer, you can boost your students' academic language acquisition. This language-nurturing approach rests on three pillars: creating a context, interacting with your students and offering language support. This Education Tip explains the three pillars and illustrates them with practical examples. 

How to Create a Context? 

Students' interest and motivation (in Dutch) will increase when they can place the learning content in a wider context and see its importance, linked to professional competencies (if applicable). This also applies to (academic) language use, often in the context of communication skills. Therefore, explain the language course competencies in your course sheet, and communicate them to students when you assign a language task.  

How to Interact with Students? 

High-quality interaction occurs when you provide students with a nurturing language environment, leave room for language production, and then give language feedback.   

Language Input 

• As a lecturer, you are expected to use language carefully. Ghent University strives for standard language use in course materials, lectures and syllabi. 
• However important, proper language use is only part of your language input. For example, be mindful of the complexity of academic language: students cannot understand and adopt abstract, formal language overnight. Speak academically (raise the bar slightly), but do not make it unnecessarily difficult. Provide synonyms for more difficult terms. 
• Read the Education Tip on ‘Language Use as a Lecturer: what should you pay attention to?’ for concrete tips on how to optimise your language input in Dutch or another language. 

Language Production 

• Ensure students produce language, both written and spoken, during lectures and seminars. With the widespread use of GenAI, students must produce language themselves. Only in such a controlled setting can you gain meaningful insight into their actual writing proficiency.
• Find inspiration in the following lecture tips: 
  • writing to learn: ask students to write a brief answer to a question, summarise it, write down the core of the lecture, and go through some answers. This should only take five minutes, possibly at the end of the lecture. 
  • activating questions: Ensure all students think when a question is asked. Always ask open-ended questions. When someone answers, designate a fellow student and ask whether they agree. If necessary, have them write down the answers. Alternatively, first let the students 'buzz' in small groups before one of them presents the answer. 
• Apply the following seminar tips:   
  • peer feedback: let students give peer feedback on each other's written assignments or oral presentations. Provide a checklist (e.g., Ghent University's writing guide), training in giving feedback, and adequate guidance. This video (in Dutch) shows how you or your students can use the Writing Guide concretely. Monitor the quality of feedback students give to each other. Students usually can't give quality feedback on their own. Emphasise that students also learn from giving feedback, and not just from receiving it. 
  • collaborative writing: let students produce a written assignment in groups of two or more. This encourages them to think about the wording and find solutions to content and language-related problems collaboratively. This type of written assignment ensures that students learn to reflect on (their own) tasks and develop their collaboration competencies. Read more about it in the Education Tip ‘Group work: How to coach students?’. 

Language Feedback 

• In addition to content-related feedback, provide language feedback. Without feedback, students do not know what they need to work on and will not develop their language. 
• Provide language feedback throughout the process, especially formative feedback that assesses where a student is in the process, so that students can take it on board and apply it to optimise their language task. 
• You can read more about it in the Education Tip on 'Feedback: (Almost) Everything You Need to Know'. 

How to Provide Language Support? 

An integral language policy for all students, regardless of background, is only successful when there is room for language support, both curricular and extracurricular. 

How to provide language support within the curriculum? 

Point students to language learning strategies. You do this by paying extra attention to: 

• expansion of their vocabulary. Let them deduce new words from context. Ask them to create a word file where they record new words in context. 
• feedforward. Ensure students apply feedback from a previous language assignment to subsequent assignments. You can do this by using a rubric, such as the Ghent University writing guide, and having them use it when writing a new assignment. This video shows how you or your students can use the Writing Guide in practice. You can also apply this principle to email correspondence. The Education Tip on 'Students' Language Skills: What to Expect?' elaborates on the requirements for student emails. 
• provide interim steps for complex language assignments 
• support structures in written assignments, which are tapered through the curriculum. For example, use templates: pre-structured written assignments that help inexperienced writers draft business documents. Make agreements within the programme. You can also opt for a language skills curricular strand in which you gradually build up language assignments (both spoken and written) throughout the curriculum. 
• Integrate an info session on academic writing in your lectures. 

How to Offer Language Support Outside the Curriculum? 

Refer students to: 

• www.ugent.be/taaladvies, a website that specifies academic language expectations for Dutch and English at Ghent University. 
• the general lecture series Academisch schrijven and Academic Writing by the Student Counselling Team. 
• the online exercise platform ALICE, where students can brush up on their academic vocabulary, improve their understanding of text structure and comprehension, and refresh their knowledge of Dutch spelling, grammar and language competency. 
• the online Writing Support provided by our colleagues at KULeuven. Students can upload their written assignments and receive feedback on style, structure, and language form. Ghent University has purchased a licence for both Dutch and English. The login details are available on  https://www.ugent.be/student/nl/studeren/taaladvies/schrijfhulp.htm. 
• courses at the University Language Centre. 

Want to Know More? 

• Contact the language policy staff whenever you need inspiration for your teaching practice. 
• Request a workshop ‘Taalontwikkelend lesgeven’ from onderwijs@ugent.be. 
• Our colleagues at Artevelde University of Applied Sciences have developed a set of guidelines (in Dutch) to promote language nurturing in teaching.