U5NOR13 Norwegian for Foreign Students. Beginners' Course

Contents and structure

Norwegian for foreign students. Beginners' course is directed towards foreign students studying at the Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, campus Bergen, for three months or more. The course requires no previous knowledge of Norwegian. The students must be sufficiently proficient in English to understand instructions in English.  

The course focuses on training of communicative skills in Norwegian, first and foremost listening and speaking. The communicative training will deal with everyday situations/speech acts.

The course is offered twice a year, starting in August and January. Classes will be held for two hours twice a week for eight weeks (August - October and January - March), altogether 32 hours of instruction per course. The course is completed with an oral exam.

Learning Outcome

By the end of the course the students are expected to

• be able to understand spoken Norwegian in simple situations of communication
• be able to make themselves understood in simple situations of communication
• be able to understand and make use of simple written information in Norwegian
• have knowledge about the most important features of Norwegian sound structure and pronunciation
• have knowledge about basic rules of Norwegian language structure.

Entry requirements

The course requires no previous knowledge of Norwegian. The students must be sufficiently proficient in English to understand instructions in English.

Teaching methods

The lessons will be conducted with a mixture of instructions/explanations by the teacher and communicative activities, both student-teacher and student-student. The language of instruction will be Norwegian, but English will be used as "support language" in the teacher-centred instruction. The students are expected to do tasks from class to class.

Compulsory learning activities

The communicative activities require that all participants are present. The classes are therefore obligatory. In order to take the exam the students must have been present at at least 80% of the classes. If absent more than 20 %, usually students will not be allowed to take the exam. It is the students'  responsibility to keep track of their participation, and to contact the teacher if there is any danger that the absence will exceed 20 %.

Assessment

The final exam will consist of a 20 minutes' oral examination where the students' communicative skills will be tested.

The exam will be evaluated with the grades Passed/Not Passed.

Students who do not pass the exam, will get one (1) more opportunity to sign up for the exam at the same term.

Examination support material

None

More about examination support material