Group 1 — A literature course in your best language
Language A1
Literature course for native or near-native speakers. In practice this means the student’s best language which is often their “mother-tongue”.
Group 2 — Other languages
Language A2
Language and Literature course for fluent speakers.
Language B
Foreign language course for students with previous experience of learning the language.
ab Initio
Foreign language course for complete beginners.
All Diploma candidates are required to study a Language A1 in order to fulfil the requirements for Group 1.
Candidates are able to fulfil the Diploma requirements by studying another Language A1 (from Group 1) or a Language A2 or a Language B or an ab initio Language (from Group 2).
For your sixth choice of subject, you may study a third Language from Group 1 or 2.
The Language Department offers the following within the timetable:
- Chinese A1 – Higher and Standard Level
- Chinese A2 – Standard Level
- Mandarin B – Higher and Standard Level
- Mandarin Ab initio – Standard Level
- English A1 – Higher and Standard Level
- English A2 – Higher and Standard Level
- English B – Higher and Standard Level
- French B – Higher and Standard Level
- French Ab initio – Standard Level
- Spanish A1 – Higher and Standard Level
- Spanish B – Higher and Standard Level
- Spanish Ab initio – Standard Level
You may take your “mother-tongue” as Language A1 in the College. It will be as a “self-taught” subject, with an outside tutor from the local community or an on-line distance tutor. So if you’re a native speaker of Dutch, Danish, Thai, Hindi, etc., and you’re worried that you can’t take your language as your Language A1, don’t worry, you can!
Language A1 is a literature based course and uses the language at a sophisticated level. All other courses – A2 and B at both Higher and Standard Level together with ab initio programmes can usefully be seen as being on a continuum from A1 Higher to the ab initio levels, with the courses becoming progressively less literature based and offering instead, a more practical focus on language skills.
This page was last updated on October 13, 2008.
