Modern Languages

Modern languages study at degree level is about far more than achieving fluency. It is about developing a deep understanding of other cultures, literatures, and ways of thinking, and building the analytical and communicative skills that come from engaging seriously with languages that are not your own.

Birkbeck College offers a part-time Modern Languages programme allowing you to study one or two modern languages from a range that includes French, German, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, and Mandarin Chinese, alongside the literature, history, film, thought, and visual culture associated with those languages. The part-time mode is central to what Birkbeck offers: as a specialist in flexible, evening-based higher education, it allows students who are working, caring for dependants, or otherwise unable to study full time to pursue a degree of full academic rigour. The well-established programme brings together students from diverse professional and life backgrounds, which enriches the learning environment considerably.

You will develop language proficiency through progressive study of grammar, written and spoken communication, reading, and translation, while engaging with literary and cultural material in seminars and through independent study. The programme develops your analytical skills, your ability to move between languages and cultural frames, and your capacity for independent, evidence-based argument.

Graduates from modern languages programmes find their skills valuable across a wide range of careers: in business, diplomacy, international development, journalism, publishing, translation and interpreting, education, and public relations. The combination of linguistic skill, cultural knowledge, and analytical ability is consistently sought by employers with international dimensions, and postgraduate study in languages, area studies, or translation is a natural continuation.