Faculty
BLC

Course Coordinator
Birgit Stöber (German), Maribel Blasco (Spanish) and Mette Zølner (French)

SiteScape is used to facilitate students' group work, lectures, learning processes and student-student/student-teacher communication.

The course is evaluated by students via an electronic questionnaire.

Note: Exchange students must take the full year - both Autumn and Spring semesters. (Exchange students are awarded a maximum of 3.75 ECTS credits, which are Pass/Fail)

French studies: The French studies aims to develop students' knowledge and understanding of the French-speaking areas. The first module addresses political, economic and social aspects of the Francophone world, with a special focus on a limited number of French-speaking countries. The second module elaborates on the economic system and economic cultures in France, with a specific view to exploring key sectors and economic performance in terms of international and regional competitiveness.

German Studies: In the first module the course will intensify the study of political and economic culture in Germany with a special emphasis on institutional characteristics and structural features of the political system. The course will deal with the modernisation and democratisation of the German state and society, reflecting historical change and contemporary challenges, and with a particular focus also on the German unification process. In the second module, the particular features of the German economic system will be analysed using a comparative perspective, emphasising both institutional structures and ideological interpretation. Relating to debates on globalisation and competitiveness, the course will also analyse selected business areas and sectors.

Spanish/Spanish American Studies: Spanish/Spanish American Studies focuses on economic development in Spain and Spanish America from a historical perspective, and explores how these two regions are performing in terms of international and regional competitiveness, as well as the changing role of the private sector. Module One (third semester) addresses key aspects of Spain’s recent political and economic history and development, including franquismo, autarky, the transition to democracy and the modern political system. Module Two (third semester) addresses key themes in Spanish American recent political and economic history and development, including populism and authoritarianism, ISI, structuralism and dependency theory and democratisation. Module Three (fourth semester) addresses Spain’s competitiveness in the world economy. Key topics include: SMEs, e-business, I+D and technological development, and key sectors such as tourism. Module Four (fourth semester) deals with Latin America’s competitiveness in the world economy, with specific topics including: the role of multinationals, industrial clusters, SMEs and family businesses, and the role of business as an increasingly important political force in the region. Students will look at the human development in Spanish America in terms of its implications for economic development. Emphasis in the language classes will be on improving students’ grammar, communicative competence and fluency in Spanish.

Content:

At the end of the course, the students should be able to:

Language:

At the end of the course, the students should be able to:

Integration
These courses build on the CSC French, German and Spanish/Spanish American courses of the 1st year. They also complement the themes of the parallel course teaching in International Economics and Competitiveness, Communication and Organization and British and American Studies.

Class teaching involving lectures, student presentations, group work, exercises concerning oral and written proficiency training, and discussions. All teaching will be in French, Spanish or German, and all readings will also be in the foreign language.

The combination of lectures, class discussions and student presentations has the aim of developing the students' knowledge and abilities to analyse and understand current cultural and social processes in the chosen region. Language training takes its point of departure in the topics dealt with throughout the course, and, in addition, a number of classes will be specifically devoted to improving language skills.

The examination is oral and based on the material from the third and fourth semesters. At the exam, the student will pick a page from the 300-pages (German) or 200-pages (French and Spanish/Spanish American) exam syllabus, and he/she has 30 minutes, in which to prepare a summary of the text and discuss it in terms of the overall context of the topic that it addresses. This is an open book examination, where students can consult reference works, class notes and dictionaries during the preparation session. Two grades are given: one for content and one for language.

The exam is scheduled for week 17.

Particularly for the French exam: Before students can present themselves for the examination, two individual assignments have to be approved: 1) one oral class presentation in either Module 1 (weeks 38-48) or Module 2 (weeks 2-11); and 2) a written language test in Module 3 (week 49).

Before students can take the examination, they must have passed the three 1st year compulsory tasks (multiple choice test, written language test and oral presentation); and the two compulsory tasks in 2nd year (written language test and oral presentation).