Course summary

Birmingham’s fusion of language and culture places employability at its heart, preparing you to live and work as an engaged citizen of the world. Studying a modern language from beginner or advanced level (French, German, Italian, Russian, Spanish or Portuguese), alongside English is highly complementary and an exciting way to contextualise your knowledge in each discipline. At Birmingham, undergraduate language is taught through the lens of the target culture's literature, history, politics and society, and through total immersion on the Year Abroad. Please note that not all combinations are available due to timetable restrictions. Find out more about your chosen combination. By studying Modern Languages as a Joint Honours degree with English Language, you will gain a thorough appreciation of the technical aspects of the English language and its social and political context and how it inteacts with other langauges. Finding out how a language works and how societies communicate, combines a unique intellectual challenge with significant practical potential. You will also have the chance to use new resources, such as computer-held databases of linguistic data and you will be encouraged to embrace theoretical and technological advances in the study of language. Why study this course? More than fluent – Choose vocational modules in areas such as Translation, Language Teaching, Legal Culture, Business and more! Talk the talk into a long list of career prospects with the help of our Careers and Employability team. Practice as a professional – Develop your skills with our state-of-the-art translation suite, Televic interpreting suites and sound proof booths to the same professional standard at the United Nations. Multicultural city – Learn and Live in a vibrant city that is culturally, ethnically and religiously diverse. Join a number of language and culture-based societies at the University of Birmingham to further enhance your skills. Do more than read books – Take advantage of the wide ranging expertise within our academic community and delve into the study of social media, marketing, textual production, video games, comics, film and TV, music and art. Broad range of specialisms to explore - Birmingham is internationally famous for its work in corpus linguistics, stylistics, the language of social media, figurative language and language learning and teaching. You can focus on traditional aspects of the subject such as grammar, pragmatics or historical linguistics, but you can also explore newer areas such as English used worldwide or English used in internet communication. Top 100 for Modern Languages in the QS World University Subject Rankings 2022 Top 30 for English in the QS World University Subject Rankings 2022 100% of our graduates are in work or further study with 15 months (Graduate Outcome Survey 2022)