Program Overview

A modern languages degree equips you with excellent communication, research, critical and evaluative skills, all of which are highly sought after by employers.

The English and French degree gives you the opportunity to explore connections and interactions between two major literary and cultural traditions, developing your linguistic and analytical skills in close dialogue. This degree offers a rich range of modules, reflecting diversity of the culture, history, and society of the English- and French-speaking worlds.

Explore two rich and diverse literary and cultural traditions while developing your fluency in French, taking a core French language module in every year of study.

First-year core modules will introduce you to French literature and culture, English literature, and comparative literatures.

In your intermediate and final years all English and French optional modules are open to you, spanning topics from literature and critical theory to history, politics, linguistics, philosophy and film. In your final year, you can choose to write a dissertation on comparative French and English literature. You will normally spend your second or third year of study consolidating and enhancing your language skills abroad.

You will graduate as a highly qualified linguist with advanced intercultural skills, a deep understanding of key issues and developments in France’s past and present, as well as an advanced knowledge of French, English, and comparative literatures.

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We strongly recommend that you take a year abroad as part of your modern languages degree, if you are able to. If you are unable to take a year abroad you will move to a three-year degree. You will be required to complete further language reinforcement work. You will also be encouraged to spend time abroad in other ways, during vacation times.

You will usually spend your year abroad doing one of three things:

• Working as a language assistant teaching English in a primary or secondary school
• Studying full-time at a partner university in your chosen country
• On a work placement