A first in Europe: an English-based bachelor in linguistics and literary studies

Creating multilingual and multicultural fusion in the heart of Europe.

The next academic year (2022-2023) will see an English-taught bachelor programme in the course offering in the faculty of languages and humanities. To say it is a new programme isn’t quite correct; it’s a completely revamped version of the current Dutch-taught bachelor, that now will have an English-taught mirror: the multilingual bachelor in linguistics and literary studies. Both programmes foster and enhance a thoroughly multilingual focus, allowing students to specialise in six languages. These multilingual bachelor programmes are quite unique in Belgium and in Europe.

“We took the approach to start from our university’s research areas in literature and linguistics, and build up from there,” says Wim Vandenbussche, professor in Dutch linguistics. “All the colleagues in the department who teach the disciplines and languages, put our heads together to build on our own research and language strengths, and offer students a structure that would ensure they would move through their education with us seamlessly, from BA to MA, and beyond.”

The department’s weight in terms of research sits across two disciplines – linguistics and literary studies -, with for literature a focus on intermediality and urbanism, and in the field of linguistics a focus on multilingualism, language variation and the relationship between language and the brain. This is then combined with the six languages that are on offer to students throughout their academic career: English, Dutch, German, Italian, French, and Spanish. “Bring in the city of Brussels with its engrained cosmopolitan character, and we have a completely interwoven programme for students, from Belgium, across Europe, and far beyond,” adds Professor Vandenbussche.

The programme is revolutionary in several ways. It aims to bring together the Dutch-taught course students with those from the new English-taught ones. In fact, saying the programmes are ‘Dutch’ or ‘English’-taught isn’t quite accurate. Apart from general courses, all courses are taught in the chosen languages, so if a student in the Dutch-taught programme choses German and Italian, then their general classes will be in Dutch, but courses (be it literary studies or linguistics) connected to German and Italian will be taught in German and Italian, and those classes will include the students who opted for German and Italian from the English-taught programme too. In other words, fusion between what are normally two separate tracks (either Dutch or English).

The winning factors for this revamped programme and this new English/multilingual programme are clear from studies carried out in Belgium, but equally across Europe: multilingualism and multiculturalism are in high demand in the workplaces across Europe. Businesses emphasise time and again that they need employees and colleagues with not just language skills, but with a clear understanding of the finer nuances multilingualism brings in terms of multicultural knowledge. It follows a decline across Europe in language teaching and in interest in studying languages. And this detrimental decline has been echoed on the work floor, and is something businesses are very keen to change.

Another exciting aspect of the programme is that research features through the programme, and so sets itself up in directly alignment with the incredibly popular Multilingual Master in Linguistics and Literary Studies. Boasting 200 students a year nowadays, the master programme, often dubbed ‘the MuMa’, was at the heart of the revamped bachelor programme and the new English-taught track. “Our international students in the MuMa programme asked for a bachelor to lead into this MuMa. The question came from them,” Vandenbussche clarifies. “Also because the language programmes across Europe are in decline, and the existing ones are under pressure, what our MuMa students were asking made sense. And we can’t deny the role geography plays in all this: we are in Brussels, at the very heart of Europe, with an ease of access that is unsurpassed, and a city that is commonly described as being the 2nd most cosmopolitan city in the world (after Dubai).”

In terms of audiences, the programme was devised with the average international student in mind, but also with another specific group: “It was the average international student from across and outside of the EAA region that was central to our thinking, but we wanted to tap into that unique element that Brussels has: a very large and substantive international community, with many, many international and European schools. There are many families in Brussels that are multilingual and multicultural, with kids wanting to find this in their university studies as well. And our multilingual bachelor programme will definitely feel like home for most of them.”

Another cause for celebration is that the third year of the bachelor programme gives room for options and choices. It includes writing a thesis, as this is part of the research thread that runs through this and the master programme. But on top of that the student will be given a choice from three, and ultimately four, options that will constitute a compulsory international experience (30 ECTS):

• The first is the by now well-established Erasmus exchange experience, where the options for an exchange will actually be intensified and elaborated.
• The second option open to students is to select a third and/or fourth language which translates as an additional 30 ECTS in a third language e.g., or 15 ECTS in a third and 15 ECTS in a fourth language.
• The third option is for those international students who have managed to build up a sufficiently strong level of Dutch to add Dutch as a third language-module to their programme. A basis in Dutch will be needed for this, but there are 2 years to start taking Dutch classes, so definitely a viable option for some.
• A fourth option for students to choose from to get that international experience will be EUTOPIA*-related. Called a ‘EUTOPIA window’, it will involve getting 30 ECTS from partners within the EUTOPIA alliance in a blended set-up.

“VUB has always had at its core to ensure its students learn in an open atmosphere of tolerance and diversity, and that they are stimulated to grow into independent and critical-thinking individuals, as well as become citizens of the world,” Professor Vandenbussche stresses. “This is why we attach so much importance to ‘mixology’, which is one of the elements of success in the MuMa. Being taught in Brussels, a hive of local, regional and international activities, really engenders the cross-fertilisation between the community of local students with the international student community at VUB that we want to see in our Multilingual BA and MA programmes.”

• More info on the programme online.
• Download the brochure in EN and in NL
• Find out more in the upcoming info days and online info sessions:
• Wednesday 18 May, 17:00-18:00 (Belgian time)
• Wednesday 22 June, 15:00-16:00 (Belgian time)

Read our press releases on this great news in French, Dutch, German, Italian and Spanish 

*The EUTOPIA European University alliance brings ten regionally and nationally distinct European universities together aiming to become by 2025 an open, multicultural, confederated operation of connected campuses.

**photo courtesy Taylor Wright via Unsplash