In 2009, as part of the move towards increased internationalisation, the Department of Human Nutrition (IHE) at the Faculty of Natural and Life Sciences at the University of Copenhagen (KU) changed the language of instruction on its MSc programmes in Human Nutrition, Clinical Nutrition and Gastronomy & Health from Danish to English. This change proved in many cases to be a struggle for students and teaching staff alike, apparently leading to considerable increases in exam failure rates and a decline in the number of students applying for the MSc programmes.
These results prompted the IHE to consider how to tackle the language problems the students evidently had. They decided to enlist the services of the Centre for Internationalisation and Parallel Language Use (CIP) at the University of Copenhagen to pilot a workshop for students on how to successfully participate in English Medium Instruction (EMI) courses. In 2010, the workshop took place for the first time, aimed at equipping students with tools and strategies to help them meet the challenges of EMI. Consequently, the exam results seemed to improve almost to their pre-EMI levels and the number of students applying increased.
Encouraged by these results and the overwhelmingly positive feedback from the students, the IHE decided to run the student workshop again in 2011. Besides the student workshop, a one-day workshop for teachers was added aimed at giving teachers similar tools and strategies to enable them to both help students and themselves cope more easily with the challenges of teaching through the medium of English.
In 2012, with the funds from DGU , CIP was able to offer the workshops at the Department for Media, Cognition and Communication (IMEF) and the Faculty of Law (JURA).
The article deals with the structure and content of the student and teacher workshops as they were held at IHE, JURA and MEF.