Program Overview

An International Foundation Year at our International Study Centre prepares you for your degree at Lancaster University. You will focus on English language, university-level study skills, and academic modules that relate to your degree subject.

Supporting your progression to the University
At the International Study Centre, we take every measure to ensure you are supported in your academic journey. Our programmes allow for increased time spent learning, researching and developing your skills. By studying with us, you will benefit from:

• Formal assessments at the end of each term.
• An improved English language module, Academic English Skills, providing greater opportunity for informal assessments and feedback.
• Combining and reducing the number of module assessments allowing more time to prepare.
• A personal tutorial system with a focus on your academic progress at key points of the academic year, creating action plans based on your performance and progession options.

Social Studies
The International Foundation Year in Social Studies leads to a choice of undergraduate degrees in the Faculty of Arts and Social Studies and the Faculty of Science and Technology. To prepare for your degree, you will study core English language modules and subject modules. Degree options include Philosophy, Sociology, and Film.

You will learn about global issues and contemporary events, including business, culture, politics and environment. Other areas of study include advertising, social media, psychology, and theories that relate to media and modern society.

Geography
You will undertake an extensive course of study, gain a wide range of skills and have the opportunity to cover many innovative and exciting modules that make Geography at Lancaster distinctive.

For example, you could launch your teaching career with our unique Communicating Geography programme. This programme is a distinctive feature of your degree course and gives you experience of working in a local school in order to develop your own project on a geographical topic. It will also help you to develop vital career skills. Alongside this you can take options such as Introduction to Eco-Innovation, where you work with academics and staff from companies based in our Environment Centre, or our Iceland field course on Glacier-Landscape Interactions.

During your second year you will study core modules covering skills and concepts in Geography and will also take a number of optional modules. Your third year includes the completion of an in-depth dissertation and six further modules chosen from a range of areas of Geography.

In the fourth and final year of your degree you will undertake a dissertation. You will also take four modules from the wide range of masters-level modules on offer by our Environment Centre including Geoinformatics, Environmental Justice and Climate Change and Society.