Academic Program > Languages Department

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 some 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.

Languages are offered at both Higher or Standard Level.

 

The Language Department offers the following within the timetable:

Chinese A1 - Higher and Standard Level
Chinese A2 - Standard Level
Mandarin B - 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 Ab initio - Standard Level

You may take your "mother-tongue" as Language A1 in the College. It will be as a "self-taught" subject, ideally 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.

Ronny Mintjens, Linda Olson, Hayley Goldberg, Justin Snider, Tim Vallence, Li Ping, Cherrie Cheung, Arthur Chung, Michele Morvan, Jesus Sanchez Rodriguez

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