English & Modern Languages (French, German, Portuguese or Spanish) with a year abroad

Course detail Description

Teaching

Modules are taught by leading academics through a combination of lectures, small seminars or tutorials, and expert one-to-one supervision. Language classes involve in-depth work with different kinds of media, literary and academic texts. Teaching is in both English and the language studied, according to the subject area. Our teaching style is interactive; you will participate informally in small group discussions, in seminars or online discussion platforms, and formally through seminar presentations and oral assessments.

Typically, one credit equates to 10 hours of work.

Assessment

You will encounter a variety of methods of summative (for credit) assessments during your studies, including coursework & assessed essays; language assignments (written, oral, aural); individual or group-based presentations; year abroad project work; examinations; and dissertation. You will also have a variety of formative assessments (not for credit) throughout your programme. The feedback you receive will be key to provide guidance and inform the assignments you go on to do subsequently. Coursework contributes approximately 50% and examinations approximately 50% to your final mark, although the percentages will depend on your module choices.

Location

This course is taught on our King’s College London Strand Campus, located in the heart of London.

Our Modern Language Departments can draw on unparalleled print, audio-visual and online resources, including the King’s Maughan Library and Senate House Library, the Institute of Modern Languages Research, the British Film Institute and the British Library. All are within easy walking distance of the Strand Building. The Goethe-Institut, Austrian Cultural Forum, Institut français, Camoes Centre , Instituto Cervantes and Canning House also have extensive media and library holdings, and run lively courses including films, readings, seminars and exhibitions which complement our Departments’ internal film screenings, open seminars, exhibitions, and annual departmental play.

London is also a city of music and arts. You will have easy access to London’s endless live music performances at the South Bank arts complex, at the Barbican Centre, at London opera houses. West End Theatres, Cinemas, Art Galleries are all a short walk away.

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Structure

• Year 1
• Year 2
• Year 3
• Year 4

Year 1 Required Modules

ENGLISH

• Introducing Literary Theories (15 credits)
• Reading Poetry (15 credits)

MODERN LANGUAGES

• Cultural Transformations: An Introduction to Modern Languages (15 credits)

French pathway

Post-A Level French

• French Core Language (First Year) (30 credits)
• Critical Reading and its Pleasures: Approaching French Literature and Film (15 credits)

Ab initio French

• Introductory French (30 credits)
• Critical Reading and its Pleasures: Approaching French Literature and Film for ab initio (15 credits)

German pathway

Non-native German speakers

• German Language and Culture I (30 credits)
• Texts and Contexts (15 credits)

Native German speakers

• Translation from and into German (15 credits)
• Texts and Contexts (15 credits)

Ab initio German students

• Introductory German (30 credits)
• Texts and Contexts for ab initio (15 credits)

Portuguese pathway

Post-A Level Portuguese

• Portuguese Language 1A (30 credits)
• Global Iberias: Perspectives - Introduction to the Spanish and Portuguese Speaking Worlds (15 credits)

Ab initio Portuguese

• Introductory Portuguese (30 credits)
• Global Iberias: Perspectives - Introduction to the Spanish and Portuguese Speaking Worlds (15 credits)

Spanish pathway

Post-A Level Spanish

• Spanish Language I (30 credits)
• Global Iberias: Perspectives - An Introduction to the Spanish and Portuguese Speaking Worlds (15 credits)

Ab initio Spanish

• Introductory Spanish (30 credits)
• Global Iberias: Perspectives - An Introduction to the Spanish and Portuguese Speaking Worlds (15 credits)

You will select a further one module in the English Department from a range that may typically include:

• Classical and Biblical Contexts of English Literature (15 credits)
• Medieval Literary Culture (15 credits)
• Early Modern Literary Culture (15 credits)

You will then select one further module from a range of optional modules in the English Department that may typically include:

• Classical and Biblical Contexts of English Literature (15 credits)
• Medieval Literary Culture (15 credits)
• Early Modern Literary Culture (15 credits)
• The Grotesque from Dickens to Dahl (15 credits)
• Writing Race, Writing Gender (15 credits)
• A Book (15 credits)

MODERN LANGUAGES

Native German speakers only

You will select a further module in the German Department from a range of optional modules that may typically include:

• Medieval Germany: Language, Literature & Society (15 credits)
• Milestones of German History (15 credits)
• One Hundred and Twenty Years of German Cinema (15 credits)
• An Introduction to German Politics (15 credits)

Year 2 Required Modules

French pathway

Post-A Level French

• Core Language (Second Year) (15 credits)
• The Practice of Translation (15 credits)

Ab initio French

• Intermediate French (30 credits)

German pathway

Non-native German speakers

• German Language and Culture II (15 credits)
• Translation from and into German II (15 credits)

Native German speakers

• Translation from and into German II (15 credits)

Ab initio German students

• Intermediate German (30 credits)

Portuguese pathway

Post-A Level Portuguese

• Portuguese Language 2 (30 credits)

Ab initio Portuguese

• Intermediate Portuguese (30 credits)

Spanish pathway

Post-A Level Spanish

• Spanish Language 2 (30 credits)

Ab initio Spanish

• Intermediate Spanish (30 credits)

ENGLISH

You will select two English Department modules in literatures pre-1800 from a range of optional modules that may typically include:

• A Mad World, My Masters: Performing Culture in Jacobean England (15 credits)
• Comedy and Identity (15 credits)
• Cultural Encounters: Literature and Language in the Anglo-Saxon Period (15 credits)
• Early American Literature (15 credits)
• Family, Authorship and Romanticism (15 Credits)
• The Film of the Play (15 credits)
• History, Politics and the Elizabethan Imagination (15 credits)
• Introduction to Eighteenth-Century Literature: Gothic (15 credits)
• Language on the Edge (15 credits)
• London Literature 1380-1450 (15 credits)
• Medieval Science Fiction (15 credits)
• Performance in Medieval Culture (15 credits)
• The Poetry of Revolution (15 credits)
• The Rise of the Novel (15 Credits)
• Renaissance Wordplay (15 credits)
• Subjects of Desire in Medieval Literature (15 credits)
• Unlocking Early Modern Letters (15 credits)

You will select two further English Department modules in literatures post-1800 from a range of optional modules that may typically include:

• American Popular Culture (15 credits)
• Australian Literature and Film (15 credits)
• The Colonial Novel and British India (15 credits)
• Contemporary Global Novels (15 credits)
• Creative Non-Fiction (Creative Writing) (15 credits)
• Experimental Theatre (15 credits)
• Fin de Siècle (15 credits)
• Forms of Engagement: Poetic Learning and Poetic Making
• Gender and Performance (15 credits)
• Mapping Modernism (15 credits)
• The Mind of the Novel (15 credits)
• Modern Poetry and the Place of Writing (15 credits)
• Modern Theatre (15 credits)
• Moments of Culture (15 credits)
• Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture (15 credits)
• Post/colonial Pirates (15 credits)
• Prose Fiction (Creative Writing) (15 credits)
• Shocks of the New (15 credits)
• Theatre Capital (15 credits)
• Theory, Culture and Politics After the 1960s (15 credits)
• US Slavery and the Literary Imagination (15 credits)
• Twentieth-Century American Fiction (15 credits)
• Victorians and Social Change (15 credits)
• Writing Africa (15 credits)

MODERN LANGUAGES

French pathway

You take 30 credits from a range of optional French Department modules that may typically include:

• The Idea of France (15 credits)
• Death & Desire: Love in French literature before 1700 (15 credits)
• Obscenity and Civility in Pre- and Early-Modern French Literature (15 credits)
• Modern French History (15 credits)
• The French Novel after 1700 (15 credits)
• French Poetry after 1800 (15 credits
• Writing the Self in French Literature since 1700 (15 credits)
• Marketing the Margins: Case Studies in the Literary Marketplace (15 credits)
• Modernity and the City (15 credits)
• French Political Thought II (15 credits)
• French Cinema and its Others (15 credits)

German pathway

You are required to take at least one German Department module with pre-modern content from a range, that may typically include:

• Gender and Identity in Arthurian Romance (15 credits)
• The German Reformation (15 credits)
• 18th-Century German Thought (15 credits)

You will then select further German Department modules to bring your total German credits to 60 for the year from a range of optional modules that may typically include:

• The pre-modern modules listed above
• Politics and Culture in Cold War Germany since 1870 (15 credits)
• The Weimar Republic: Culture and Crisis (15 credits)
• A Year in the Life of German-Language Film (15 credits)
• Marketing the Margins: Case Studies in the Literary Marketplace (15 credits)
• Talking Back: Voices of Protest in German Culture (15 credits)
• Society, Politics and Popular Culture in Germany since 1870 (15 credits)
• Berlin Past and Present: The Reconstruction of a Capital City (15 credits)

Portuguese pathway

You take 30 credits of Portuguese optional modules in the Department of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies from a range that may typically include:

• Nineteenth Century Fiction in Brazil and Portugal (15 credits)
• Visuality, Literature and Modern Life in Latin America (15 credits)
• Fatherlands: Spain and Portugal under the Dictators (15 credits)
• Imperial Visions in Iberian Literature (15 credits)
• Introduction to the Study of Language with Special Reference to Spanish and Portuguese (15 credits)

Spanish pathway

You take 30 credits of Spanish optional modules in the Department of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies from a range that may typically include:

• Memory in Modern Spanish Culture (15 credits)
• Language Acts and Worldmaking in Medieval and Early Modern Spain (15 credits)
• Introduction to the Study of Language with Special Reference to Spanish and Portuguese (15 credits)
• Imperial Visions in Iberian Literature (15 credits)
• Marketing the Margins: Case Studies in the Literary Marketplace (15 credits)
• The Study of Gender in Spanish American Literature and Culture (15 credits)
• Visuality, Literature and Modern Life in Latin America (15 credits)
• Fatherlands: Spain and Portugal under the Dictators (15 credits)
• Catalan Language & Culture (15 credits)

Year 3

Assessment for this year will depend on whether you choose to split the year between two countries, or spend the entire year in one. It will also depend on how you opt to spend your year: as an exchange student at a university, a language assistant teaching English, or on an approved work placement.

Partner Institutions for the French pathway currently include:

• Université Lumière Lyon II
• Université Paris-Sorbonne
• Université Paris-Nanterre
• Aix-Marseille Université
• Université des Antilles et de la Guyane (Martinique)
• École Normale Supérieure (Paris)
• École Normale Supérieure (Lyon)
• Sciences Po (Paris)
• Sciences Po (Lyon)
• Université de Montréal
• Université Laval
• Université de Strasbourg

Partners for the German pathway currently include:

• Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe-Universität , Frankfurt am Main
• Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
• Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munchen
• Universität Wien
• Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg
• Universität Mannheim

Partners for the Portuguese pathway currently include:

• Universidade de Lisboa - Portugal
• Universidade Nova de Lisboa - Portugal
• Universidade de Coimbra - Portugal
• Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais - Brazil
• Universidade Federal da Bahia - Brazil
• Universidade de São Paulo - Brazil
• Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro - Brazil

Partners for the Spanish pathway currently include:

• Universidad de Alicante - Spain
• Universidad de Cádiz - Spain
• Universidad Carlos III de Madrid - Spain
• Universidad de Córdoba - Spain
• Universidad del País Vasco - Spain
• Universitat Pompeu Fabra – Spain
• Universidad de Santiago de Compostela (Lugo Campus) – Spain
• Universidad de Salamanca - Spain
• Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (PUC) - Chile
• Instituto Tecnológico de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (TEC), Campus Querétaro - Mexico
• Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) - Mexico
• Universidad del Pacífico – Peru
• Universidad San Francisco de Quito – Ecuador

Year 4 Required Modules

MODERN LANGUAGES

French pathway

• French Language (15 credits)

German pathway

Non-native German speakers

• German Language and Culture III (15 credits)
• Translation from and into German III (15 credits)

Native German speakers

• Translation from and into German III (15 credits)

Portuguese pathway

• Portuguese Language 4 (30 credits)

Spanish pathway

• Spanish Language 4 (30 credits)

ENGLISH

You will select 60 credits of English Department optional modules from a range that may typically include:

• Activist Texts: Literature and Politics, 1910-1938 (15 credits)
• Alternative Americas: The Other Nineteenth Century (15 credits)
• Austen in Context (15 credits)
• Autobiography (15 credits)
• Beowulf (15 credits)
• Chaucer’s Books (15 credits)
• Critically Queer (15 credits)
• Figurations of Conspiracy (15 credits)
• Gender, Culture and Power at the Court of Elizabeth I (15 credits)
• Identity in Contemporary Britain (15 credits)
• Imagining Britain: Medieval Places, Journeys, Maps (15 credits)
• James Joyce and Ulysses (15 credits)
• Late Shakespeare (15 credits)
• Literature and Media (15 credits)
• The Life of the Sonnet (15 credits)
• Multi-Ethnic American Modernisms (15 credits)
• Performance Philosophy (15 credits)
• Romantic Lyric, Philosophy and The Senses (15 credits)
• Shakespeare’s London (15 credits)
• Science, Nature and Performance (15 credits)
• Testimony: The Holocaust and Rwanda (15 credits)
• Vernacular Theory (15 credits)
• Virginia Woolf and the Politics of Reading (15 credits)

MODERN LANGUAGES

French pathway

You take 45 credits of French Department optional modules from a range that may typically include:

• Old French Romance (15 credits)