International Foundation Certificate in the Arts & Humanities

The course covers the key aspects of writing an essay. These include features of academic style, the planning process, structuring an argument, summarising, paraphrasing techniques, referencing, avoiding plagiarism, and drafting and editing. Emphasis is given to the logic underlying Western academic writing conventions, rather than simply looking at the procedural aspects. This is supported by work on the main areas of English grammar, with a particular focus on improving grammatical range and accuracy in students’ writing.

Reading skills are also developed. Textual analysis enables students to learn about cohesion, extend their vocabulary, read for gist and specific information, infer meaning, as well as develop summary skills. The texts generally focus on a background to Western thought and culture, taking into account ancient Greeks and Romans, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and the influence of modernity, feminism and Marxism. There is an emphasis on how to use reading in writing: to learn from other writers’ style and using their points as evidence for students’ arguments.

Please Note: English Language Development modules are only available for students whose first language is not English.

To enhance listening skills, the course makes use of a wide range of texts, drawing firstly on commercially produced EAP materials to help students acquire the skills of listening for gist and specific information and taking useful notes. Later, the course moves on recordings from Goldsmiths library as well as BBC radio shows. Students are exposed to a range of challenging and interesting recordings related to the arts, current affairs, media, education and aspects of British culture. Many of the recordings are relevant to subjects studied at Goldsmiths, for example race and ethnicity, representation, identity and culture. Where possible, the recordings are exploited for vocabulary development.

To develop speaking skills, students will have to research and give seminar presentations and lead the class through discussion of their chosen topic. They will receive input on effective seminar techniques and functional language. There is also ongoing feedback on their presentations.

In this module, you'll focus on research methodologies. You'll be given a comprehensive overview of some of the main ways that knowledge is generated within university contexts. This includes:

• Defining research questions
• Qualitative and quantitative approaches
• Research design
• Research ethics
• Good questionnaire design
• Conducting surveys, using software where appropriate
• Conducting structured and semi-structured interviews; 
• Ethnographic approaches
• Coding data
• Drawing conclusions
• Recognising limitations

You'll collaborate in small groups (3-4 students) over the academic year to design and conduct your own research project. You'll be supported and closely supervised by your module convenor, and can relate to, and extend, IFC students’ pathway studies or learning from Music foundation studies. As the projects develop, the module adopts more of a workshop approach, with some group tutorials offered. 

As well as the content focus on research, you'll explore ‘soft’ skills such as: recognising individuals’ value to a team effort, conflict resolution, pooling resources, time management, poster design, confidence building, presentation skills and self-reflection.

Please Note: English Language Development modules are only available for students whose first language is not English.

This module will address the nature of globalisation across cultures.

Globalisation is one of the most far-reaching and widely discussed phenomena of modern times. It affects all our lives and has an impact on all areas of study. The globalisation module will give you an overview of the main theories regarding globalisation, and you will consider how it influences cultures across the globe as well as their own countries, their academic subjects and the world at large.

By taking this module, you will be able to develop their English in a genuine academic setting, and you will practice the key skills of reading academic texts, researching and writing assignments, listening to lectures, discussing theory and giving academic presentations.

You will also develop vital study skills such as evaluating the strengths of competing arguments and discussing their project proposal in tutorials with the supervisor.

The intention of this introductory module is to provide students with some of the basic tools available in interpreting the kinds of images that surround us in our everyday life. As such, it is relevant and adaptable to many of the disciplines students will go on to study in both the humanities and social sciences.

The module will have both a practical and a theoretical approach. For example, students will be asked to examine advertisements such as those advertising women’s perfume and to consider what ‘myths’ they represent in terms of power relations in western culture.

Students will also be actively encouraged to bring in and discuss advertisements and images from their own culture to consider the connotations of such images. The concept of ‘myths’ relates to the theoretical work of Roland Barthes, a key and influential thinker on the science of signs and systems of representation. Further texts will be drawn from the work of the well-known cultural theorist, Stuart Hall.

This course explores London as a diverse and vibrant capital of the arts. Students will be introduced to a range of musical, theatrical and visual art activities taking place in well-known institutions, as well as in smaller alternative venues. Visits to events in the city are put in context in follow-up discussions.

By embarking directly into the complex and colourful landscapes of present-day practices, this course aims to familiarise students with the vocabularies and context of visual culture as it has developed from art history. The first half focuses on particular artists and the various inflections that situate their work within modernity and Postmodernity; concentrations on case studies will yield fundamental skills of reading and thinking the visual.

The second half then shifts attention to spaces of exhibition and display, whilst also introducing students to wider topics such as (inter)nationalism and its impact on contemporary theory. Importantly, by laying these specific foundations, Contemporary Art Worlds will prepare students for the first year of the BA History of Art programme.