Marlene Weber 
Evaluation of a Language Course in Malta 

Pre-University Paper from the year 2009 in the subject Didactics – English – Applied Geography, grade: 13 Punkte, , course: Leistungskurs Englisch, language: English, abstract: In the past few years I recognized more and more students going on language courses abroad. Not only course in the U. S., but also courses within Europe strongly increase in popularity. There is a great variety of tender, from language courses that take only a few weeks or months, to so-called High-School-Years, professional business courses and even work and travel programs. At a first glance, it is very difficult to decide what to choose, but I would like to concentrate on language courses for students that last only a few weeks. I wanted to know why this is so fashionable nowadays and I began to think about this topic more intensively. I asked myself if this would not be a great thing for me to do, too. In the following pages I am going to examine such language courses in detail. I will present the different types of courses you can choose and the selection of accommodation available. There will also be an evaluation. I lead through a survey at Linguatime Language School in Sliema, Malta, to find out why so many students go on language holidays and if there is any progress possible at all. It has two parts, A and B. I distributed one at the beginning and one at the end of my stay in Malta to see if the students’ expectations were fulfilled or not. There can be seen positive and negative aspects that hopefully reveal the real image of such a trip. After my evaluation I am going to compare two particular language schools in Malta, the aspects will be the variety of courses, the accommodation types, the prices and the teachers. As a last point, in my conclusion, I am going to sum up the evaluation, so you will be able to see for yourself if such language courses really keep their promises. But at first, I want to have a closer look on the history of the country I chose for my stay. Malta has always been an interesting country for me because so many different cultures left their remains on its grounds. And although it is close to the African coast, it is still a part of Europe, which makes the journey much easier. Another advantage of Malta is the currency, for they have obtained the Euro in 2004. The thing I liked best of this island is that they have English as an official language. There are not so many countries so far in the south where you can speak English with native speakers and enjoy the warm climate as well; especially not in Europe.

About the author

I studied English literature and linguistics as well as history during my BA-program at Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich.
There, I focused mainly on revolutions, Victorian England, the Jacobite Rising and Scotland. My graduation thesis was focused on the Scottish
author Sir Walter Scott ("Ivanhoe", "Waverley") and the American author Diana Gabaldon ("Outlander") and on how Scottish culture we know today was/is established through textual means.

Afterwards, I was involved in a one-year MA-program (also at LMU) in literary translation (English > German). My MA-thesis was based on the translation of Unspeakable (in parts) by Dilys Rose and the Scots that she used by means of an artificial dialect into German.