Introduction.

The number of international students who make university exchanges in Chilean universities has increased considerably. A large number of them come from countries whose native language is not Spanish.

Objectives.

To know the difficulties of international students (from three disciplinary fields: Humanities, Social Sciences, and Engineering) as perceived by academics, and define the representative academic genres that students should produce during the university exchange.

Materials and methods.

A quantitative study using a descriptive transectional design was carried out by applying an online questionnaire to 44 academics from a Chilean university.

Results.

The main difficulty observed by the academics corresponds to a deficient Spanish level, and regarding the representative genres that they must produce, in the written genres stand out: essay (Human Sciences) and laboratory report (Sciences of Engineering) and in oral genres: debates (Human Sciences) and oral presentation (Sciences of Engineering and Human Sciences).

Conclusion.

Universities need to define and require a Spanish level that allows international students (non-native Spanish) to perform sufficiently in the academic field. In addition, international students must be taught to produce written and oral texts in Spanish.

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