Course summary

This Joint Honours course will enable you to start satisfying your curiosity about the past, enhancing your understanding of specific periods and problems, while giving you the opportunity to gain fluency in the language of your choice - French, German, Italian or Spanish. Whether you start at beginners’, advanced or native-speaker level, you will study the core language components for the language you have chosen, gaining skills in writing, reading, speaking and listening. All our teaching is led by native speakers. The remainder of your modern languages study will give you an opportunity to explore the literature, art, culture and history of the language area you are studying, from seventeenth-century French theatre to representations of childhood and youth in German culture, and from Italian fashion and design to visual arts from all the corners of the Spanish-speaking world. As a modern linguist, you will develop excellent communication and research skills, and combine lingusitic proficiency with cross-cultural perspectives. In your third year you will have the opportunity to spend a year working, teaching or studying abroad, where you will immerse yourself in another language and culture, truly broadening your horizons in the process.

• On graduation you will have language and analytical skills in a modern language together with additional knowledge of culture, society, and history, that will give you a valuable competitive edge in an increasingly globalised world.

• Our research staff are engaged in research at the highest level internationally; we are in the top 10 of UK Modern Language departments for research quality and the top in London (Research Assessment Exercise 2014).

• 96% say that our teaching makes the subject interesting and 94% find the course intellectually stimulating (National Student Survey 2016).

• World-leading and internationally excellent research which is ranked joint first for its impact on greater society (Research Excellence Framework 2014, 4* and 3* research).