Summer School

When you take one of our Modern Languages courses, you'll have the opportunity to attend one of our partly-funded two-week summer schools during the summer vacation at the end of your first year.

Whether you study in Montpellier (France), Mondavio (Italy), or Santiago de Compostela (Spain), you will live with selected local families and hosts and enjoy language tuition in small groups each morning. In the afternoons, and some evenings and weekends, you'll take part in cultural and social activities for a complete immersion in the heart of the society, country and region you are visiting.

The benefits you'll gain are invaluable - you'll build your confidence in your chosen spoken and written language, gain crucial transferable skills (on completion of the summer school you will receive a HEAR certificate), discover new cultures, and build life-long friendships. 

Teaching: Modern Languages

Each week, you can expect to receive 3-4 hours of language classes, and 2 hours of contact time for each optional module. 

Language skills are taught in small groups, predominantly by native speakers. Our courses stress the importance of communicative ability as well as linguistic accuracy, and oral skills are highly valued.

Cultural studies modules are taught through a mix of lectures and seminars, which encourage discussion and debate around prepared topics and texts.

The use of online tutorials and exercises on Blackboard, the University’s virtual learning environment, allows us to include interactive training in our courses and to facilitate learning in specific areas such as essay writing and grammatical terminology.

You will be assessed throughout each year by a combination of continuous assessment, seminar presentations, essays, scenario-based assessments and formal exams at the end of each semester. While final year work is most heavily weighted in determining the degree class, your achievements during your second year and your year abroad are also taken into account.

You will have regular meetings with your personal tutor to discuss progress in your studies. Your personal tutor will also provide a sympathetic ear for all matters of personal concern, whether academic, financial, housing, career, or social.

Teaching: English

For each module you will typically have two lectures and a seminar every week, or a single long seminar. However, on top of these events will be a number of additional sessions, such as workshops on research and study skills, learning groups, introduced film screenings, and scheduled personal tutor meetings. Lectures are designed to introduce you to important background information for understanding a text, theme, period or author. Weekly seminars, in which a tutor leads a small group of students in discussion, will allow you to explore a text or topic in greater depth, developing your own responses in active conversation with your tutor and peers.

For your third-year dissertation you receive one-to-one guidance across the semester from a tutor with expertise in your chosen topic.

Assessment: English

You will be assessed by a wide variety of different types of coursework, in order to reflect the number of different skills you will acquire, including essays, group-work projects, oral presentations, reviews, portfolios, posters, and formative exercises. These assessments are designed to help you build confidence in a range of areas and to provide prospective employers with evidence that you can work effectively as an independent researcher and as a team-member, and can communicate complex information in an accessible way. Your final degree result will be based on the work you do in the second and third years of your degree.

Independent learning

When not attending lectures, seminars or other timetabled sessions you will be expected to continue learning independently through self-study. Typically, this will involve reading journal articles and books, working on individual and group projects, undertaking research in the library, preparing coursework assignments and presentations, and preparing for exams. To help with your independent learning, you can access the Library and our social study spaces in halls of residence.

Your contact hours will depend on the option modules you select. You can see details of the contact hours on individual module pages.