BA Modern Languages (German and Portuguese)(For students entering from September 2024 onwards)

Year 4

(Award available for year: Bachelor of Arts)

Learning outcomes

On successful completion of Level 3, you will be able to
You will be able to:
1. Use language flexibly and effectively for social, academic and professional purposes expressing yourself fluently and spontaneously, and identifying differences in sociolinguistic and pragmatic conventions to adjust communication accordingly
2. Understand a wide range of complex and longer texts recognising implicit meaning, and produce clear, well-structured written and oral texts on complex and specialised subjects. Recognise, analyse, and evaluate basic and advanced communicative resources of the target language: vocabulary, grammar, and script (if relevant)
3. Mediate between languages, demonstrating cultural and plurilinguistic competence, helping to maintain positive interaction by interpreting different perspectives and managing ambiguity
4. Explain, interpret and discuss aspects of the history, culture, and society of the countries where the target languages are spoken
5. Deploy a range of critical methodologies to analyse and interpret diverse cultural materials, media forms and means of communication
6. Contribute to contemporary debates by drawing on historical, comparative and global perspectives

Skills Learning Outcomes
1. Produce an autonomous piece of extended research work (the Final-Year Project), responding to guidance and feedback from a supervisor and working to a deadline
2. Apply effective oral and written communication skills to present a coherent, structured and sustained argument to the public in a specialist area using terminology and concepts appropriate to the field(s) of study
3. Independently apply conventions of acknowledging and referencing source material
4. Actively seek, critically evaluate, and use creatively a range of sources of information and knowledge
5. Critically assess and construct sustained arguments supported by evidence and reasoning to challenge received knowledge and propose new ideas
6. Critically reflect on, evaluate, and use creatively digital resources and tools to collect and communicate new information and knowledge
7. Make connections across differing perspectives in order to explore ideas, identify problems and provide solutions

Assessment

You will be working towards the subject specific and skills learning outcomes by engaging with a variety of approaches to assessment, which will depend on the programme, language pathway, and modules that you take. At Level 3, assessment methods will typically include coursework in English (essays, commentaries) and the target language (short assignments collected in portfolios), oral presentations in English or the target language, exams in the target language that might include elements of English (for example, translation tasks), group projects, the production of podcasts and other digital artefacts. At Level 3, all students will work on one major independent research project.