This course provides both practical training in written and spoken language and also an extensive introduction to European literature and thought. You will learn to write and speak the language(s) fluently, and will be able to choose from a broad range of options including linguistics, film studies and advanced translation. The course aims to teach spoken fluency in colloquial and more formal situations, the ability to write essays in the foreign language, and the ability to translate into and out of the foreign language with accuracy and sensitivity to a range of vocabulary, styles and registers. The course also focuses on studying literature, as this study is enjoyable, personally and linguistically enriching, and intellectually challenging. It gives you an understanding of other cultures that cannot be acquired solely through learning the language, and it leads you into areas such as gender issues, popular culture, theatre studies, aesthetics, anthropology, art history, ethics, history, philosophy, politics, psychology and theology. You can either study abroad, chronological range of literature or focus your studies on the medieval, the early modern, or the modern period right up to the present day. The course also offers a wide range of options in non-literary subjects including linguistics, philology, advanced translation and film studies. Your first year is closely structured. You will attend oral classes and courses on the grammatical structure of your language(s), translation into and out of the language(s) and, in some of the languages, comprehension. You will also attend introductory lecture courses and participate in seminars and/or tutorials on literature. If you study a single language, you will take a range of additional options in that language in the first year, such as literary theory, film studies, or introductions to related languages. Your other years of study give you more freedom to choose the areas you wish to focus on, from a range of options.