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My name is Angela Kershaw and I am the programme lead for Modern Languages and European Studies
at the University of Birmingham.
Modern Languages and European Studies at Birmingham involved the study of one or more languages
and also the comparative study of European culture, and by European culture we really
mean literature, media studies, and film studies, so in each year of the programme we offer
comparative module which are taught in English which address text according to those themes.
The programme draws on a wide range of expertise from members of staff across the School of
Languages, Cultures, Art History and Music, and our teaching on this programme is research
led and so you benefit from the research that have been carried out within the School in
a very wide range of disciplines and across all the major European countries.
We offer final year modules which focus on a particular theme, so for example we have
a final year module on modernism, and we have another final year module on fascism, where
we are looking at these themes in the European context.
There are a range of options for the year abroad. You may be able to do a work placement,
you may be able to go to a foreign university or you might prefer to choose to work as a
teaching assistant in a school. So if you are studying two languages you can split the
year abroad between the two languages of your choice, and you can either spend half of the
year in one country and half the year in the other or, if you prefer to spend the whole
of the academic year in a single country, you can take that option and then perhaps
do a language course during the summer so that you also spend some times in the country
for your second language.
Some of our graduates choose careers where they are operating as primary linguists, so
they might be teachers, translators, or interpreters, so that means that they are using their languages
almost all the time in their jobs, and that is a very attractive option for many of our
graduates. Some people don't want to go down that path and so they work in jobs where
in fact we might call them secondary linguists, so they might go an undertake further training,
for example in accountancy or in law, but nonetheless they do also use their languages
in their career.
So we hope that Modern Languages and European Studies at Birmingham will change the way
you think about the developments of European culture both in the past and also in the present.