French and English

French and English is a combination that places two of the most significant literary and linguistic traditions in European culture side by side, enabling a genuinely comparative approach to language, literature, and cultural history. French opens access to one of the great literary traditions, from the medieval chansons to Montaigne, Descartes, Moliere, Baudelaire, Proust, and Sartre, as well as to the cultural and intellectual life of francophone worlds extending well beyond France itself. English literature encompasses one of the most internationally influential bodies of writing in any language, from Chaucer and Shakespeare through the Romantic and Victorian periods to the contemporary.

Studying both develops a depth of linguistic competence and literary understanding that enriches each discipline through the other.

At University College London, this four-year full-time programme allows you to achieve genuine proficiency in French alongside deep engagement with English literature and linguistics. The programme, as the current description makes clear, builds linguistic and cultural knowledge in both languages and develops your understanding of literary, linguistic, and cultural studies as disciplines. In your French studies, you will work on the language at an advanced level, developing reading, writing, and oral fluency alongside engagement with literature, intellectual history, and contemporary French and francophone culture.

In English, you will read widely across periods and genres, developing skills of close reading, critical argument, and contextual analysis. The combination asks you to move between the two traditions and to consider questions of translation, cultural exchange, and the relationship between language and literary form.

Graduates from French and English programmes at UCL are exceptionally well prepared for careers where the combination of advanced linguistic skills, cultural knowledge, and the analytical training of literary study provides a strong foundation. Translation and interpreting, journalism, publishing, international organisations, the civil service, teaching, the cultural sector, and a broad range of professional roles in international contexts are all well-established career directions. Postgraduate study in French, English, comparative literature, or translation studies is a natural progression.