Peer-led Discussion Groups in Foreign Languages: Training International Students to Become Peer-Facilitators

Abstract

While practice is paramount to achieve fluency and accuracy in a foreign language, Higher Education is understandably limited in the amount of language practice it can offer to its students. The initiative discussed here aims to address this issue by providing peer-led discussion groups in languages in a systematic manner. For the past three years, a team of language practitioners at the University of Limerick, Ireland have developed a programme whereby groups of native speakers receive training before facilitating discussion groups and/or one-to-one sessions. Peer-learning, facilitation training, intercultural education, internationalisation

Keywords

• Peer-learning
• facilitation training
• intercultural education
• internationalisation