Peer-led Discussion Groups in Foreign Languages: Training International Students to Become Peer-Facilitators

While practice is paramount to achieve fluency and accuracy in a foreign language, Higher Education is understandably limited in the amount of language practice it can offer to its students. The initiative discussed here aims to address this issue by providing peer-led discussion groups in languages in a systematic manner. For the past three years, a team of language practitioners at the University of Limerick, Ireland have developed a programme whereby groups of native speakers receive training before facilitating discussion groups and/or one-to-one sessions. In this study, we will first present an overview of the initiative. We will then focus on the training offered to the peer-facilitators. The main principles of the training package will be explained: it seeks to prepare the facilitators to select relevant topics, to focus on language fluency and to provide constructive feedback to participating students. Finally, we will draw some conclusions from our experience, provide some recommendations and discuss the value of peer-supported activities to integrate International students in their host university.