Conference poster presented at the 'Research in Distance Education' conference on 9 February 2009 Development of an online self-access course to teach reading skills in Business Dutch to Anglophone learners with only a minimal knowledge of Dutch • Creation of a generic model of a reading course in the area of Language for Special Purpose

1. Self-access reading skills course in Business Dutch
Project description
Collaborative venture Virtual Dutch
Aims of project:
Development of an online self-•
access course to teach reading skills
in Business Dutch to Anglophone
learners with only a minimal
knowledge of Dutch
Creation of a generic model of•
a reading course in the area of
Language for Special Purpose
Method
Course modelled on a
similar course (Reading
Skills in Early Modern
Dutch) created in 2005 as
a WebCT course, in 2006
as an online self-access
course and used since
then in mixed distance
and face-to-face mode in
the context of the MA in
the Dutch Golden Age at
UCL.
Results
Series of thirty lessons,
including self-scoring
and self-correcting
exercises and revision
sessions, glossaries,
help documents, links
to other online learning
tools of Virtual Dutch
(presentation)
Discussion
Generic model of•
thirty lessons has
possibility in the
future of more
specialised extensions
and can be marketed
independently
Self-access course•
currently adapted to
function as an online
tutor-supported
component of a
distance Certificate in
Dutch Cultural Studies
at UCL (by 2011 a
fully-fledged distance
MA)
Teaching and Research Awards 2008
University of London Centre for Distance Education www.cde.london.ac.uk and cde@london.ac.uk
Project demonstrates•
that it is possible for
less widely taught
languages, supported
by small academic
units or collaborative
ventures, to develop
distance-learning
components that
can benefit both the
language in question
and the wider
language-learning
community.
READING SKILLS IN BUSINESS DUTCH
Unit 1: De economie van Nederland (2007)
Introduction
In this first Unit you will read a simplified text fragment from the Dutch version of Wikipedia Encyclopaedia. The
fragment contains a short and general description of the Dutch economy.
Wikipedia Encyclopedia provides a good general introduction to the current economic situation of the Netherlands and
Belgium, and offers articles on specific aspects of Belgian and Dutch society as well as links for further and more in-
depth online reading.
Note: in this first Unit you will be able to test for yourself how well prepared you are for this course. After working your
way through this Unit, you should go to the General Comments page where you will find some guidelines on how to
assess yourself and some suggestions on how to proceed if you found the tasks in this Unit very hard.
Text Fragment
Nederland is een rijk land met een open economie. De basis van de Nederlandse economie is de
buitenlandse handel. Ze is stabiel en heeft een lage inflatie. De belangrijkste industriële activiteiten zijn
voedselverwerking, chemie, en de fabricage van elektrische apparaten.
Text in original version: Wikipedia @ http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nederland#Economie
Task 1: Vocabulary
Print this page or write down the four sentences below. Read the sentences, underline the words you do not
understand and write down the meaning of the words you already know. Do not panic if you recognise very few
words. This exercise will help you to form a first idea of the meaning of the text fragment. Getting the meaning is
ultimately the aim of anyone reading a text. For now you will probably find it hard to understand what is being said in
the text fragments at the first reading. In the next Units your knowledge of Dutch vocabulary will gradually be
expanded and you will learn how to break down and analyse texts and sentences so that their meaning becomes more
easily understandable.
1. Nederland is een rijk land met een open economie.
2. De basis van de Nederlandse economie is de buitenlandse handel.
3. Ze is stabiel en heeft een lage inflatie.
4. De belangrijkste industriële activiteiten zijn voedselverwerking, chemie, en de fabricage van elektrische
apparaten.
Click on the Vocabulary link to compare your answers and to find out the meaning of the words or phrases you do not
understand.
Task 2: Word Groups
You will now have to divide the sentences into word groups using forward slashes. Why do this exercise? And what is a
word group? A sentence is made up of word groups; a word group consists of one or more words that together make
a meaningful unit. The following sentence consists of three word groups: de jongen / leest / het boek (the boy
Researchers
Prof Theo Hermans
Dr An Vanderhelst
University College London
t.hermans@ucl.ac.uk
Homepage
http://www.dutch.ac.uk/reading_courses/business_dutch/homepages/home_1.html