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Tuesday, 20 April 2010

More West Australian students will be able to study European and Asian languages as a result of an exciting new collaboration between The University of Western Australia and Curtin University of Technology.

Under the agreement, students who wish to study at Curtin University as well as taking modern European languages or Indonesian, which are not offered there, will be guaranteed a place in a UWA language course, subject to meeting course prerequisites.

UWA Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Professor Bill Louden, said UWA had a long standing policy of encouraging students to take up languages other than English as part of their undergraduate studies.

"UWA offers bonus points on ATAR (Australian Tertiary Admissions Rank) scores to encourage students to take up and maintain the study of languages in their senior years.  UWA's New Courses 2012 will also encourage students to take up languages.

"It is of great benefit to many more students that we collaborate with Curtin in an effort to produce more rounded and multilingual citizens of the world," he said.

Deputy Vice-Chancellor Academic, Professor Jane den Hollander believes that Curtin's initiative in extending the language options available to its students reflects Curtin's commitment to providing students with a broad liberal education.

"There is increasing interest in Chinese and Japanese at Curtin, but for those students wanting to pursue a European language as a ‘breadth' subject alongside their primary area of study, Curtin is pleased to work in partnership with UWA.  It is also important to ensure that students in Western Australia have access to a more comprehensive set of languages and so this partnership is important to our wider community," she said.

Dean of UWA's Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, Professor Krishna Sen, said the collaboration with Curtin was the first serious attempt in this State to reverse the downward trend in numbers of students learning foreign languages.

"The agreement expands the teaching of modern European languages - French, German and Italian - which will be offered for the first time to students at WA's largest university, Curtin," she said.

UWA and Curtin will promote tertiary level study in Asian and European languages to ensure these language programs remain viable.  They will also work together to seek government support for the continued teaching of languages in WA and hope to expand the language offerings over time.

Media references

Julia Nicol (Curtin Public Relations)  (+61 8)  9266 7711  /  (+61 4) 09 202 134
Janine MacDonald (UWA Public Affairs)  (+61 8)  6488 5563  /  (+61 4) 32 637 716

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