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.

Spanish Studies and History
Lancaster’s joint Spanish Studies and History degree is taught by the Department of Languages and Cultures in conjunction with the Department of History.  This degree includes an international placement in year 3.

Your Spanish Studies programme gives you the opportunity to acquire high-level language skills while gaining a thorough understanding of the country’s historical, cultural, social and political background in a global context. In History, you will develop your critical abilities studying modules in British, European and American world history.

Your first year comprises an exploration of the Spanish language and its cultural context as well as the core History module ‘From Medieval to Modern: History and Historians’. Alongside this, you can choose the History module ‘People, Places, and the Past’ or a minor subject from another department.

Building on your language skills in Year 2, you will study the culture, politics and history of the Spanish-speaking world in more depth, as well as selecting modules which are international in scope and promote a comparative understanding of Europe and beyond.  You will combine these with the core module, ‘The Nature and Practice of History’, and select options such as, 'Mapping Terra Incognita: Travel and Exploration of the Americas and the Pacific, 1492-1642' and 'Spain 1560-1700: Inquisition, Armada and Empire'.

Spending your third year abroad in a Spanish-speaking gives you the opportunity to develop your language proficiency while deepening your intercultural sensitivity. You can study at a partner institution or conduct a work placement.

In your final year, you consolidate your Spanish language skills, and study specialist culture and comparative modules, such as ‘Imagining Modern Europe: Post-Revolutionary Utopias and Ideologies in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century’.  You will also select History modules such as ‘Europe’s Age of Extremes, 1914-45: Film and Memory’ or ‘The Shock of the New - Modernity and Modernism in American Culture, 1877-1919’.