Programme Structure

Year One:

Core units: All programmes:

Language unit: 3.5 hours weekly (6 for beginners), including two hours in small groups with native speakers, a grammar workshop and a translation / grammar seminar

Introduction to German Studies: Three hours weekly, including one lecture and two seminar groups: this unit will introduce to all the sub-fields of German studies currently on offer in our department, i.e. literary studies, the history of ideas, linguistics, medieval art and culture, and the history of Germany and Austria. Students of ab initio German will initially follow a tailor-made course of literature in translation. Sinlge Honours will do a number of extra units in our department and in other departments as open units.

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Year Two:

Core units: All programmes:

Language unit: Three weekly hours (four for beginners) in oral, aural, and translation skills

Optional units:

4 options (currently including):

• Short Prose of Thomas Mann
• Bildung:History and Evolution of a German Concept
• Divided Germany
• Historical Linguistics
• Images of women in 17th Century Literature
• Modern Sociolinguistics
• Poetry as Painting
• Franz Kafka
• Text and Image in the Middle Ages
• Literature and Politics 1800-1870
• Text and Image in the Middle Ages

Single Honours students additionally take two further German department options; one (or two) units in another Department

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Year Abroad:

All programmes in German include a period of residence abroad during the third year. Modern Languages students spend half that year, Single Honours students and Joint Honours students combining German with a non-language (e.g. Drama, Politics, etc.) spend the whole year in a German-speaking country. You can choose to either work in approved employment or to attend a course of study at a German or Austrian University. Many students prefer to attend a course of study at a German or Austrian University. The Department has Socrates links with the Universities of Hannover, HU Berlin, Heidelberg, Kiel, Leipzig, and Marburg in Germany and Graz in Austria where our students read subjects such as German literature and linguistics, Music, History.

Final Year

Core units: All programmes:

Language unit: Three weekly hours in oral, aural, and translation skills. Ab initio students join the Final Year programme.

Optional units:

2 - 4 further units (currently including):

• 17C Women’s Writing
• Independent Study*
• German Travel Literature
• Weimar
• Cultural Cosmos: Nuremberg 1470 - 1530
• Brecht in Berlin and in Exile
• Constitutional History of Germany and Austria
• Modern Sociolinguistics
• Christa Wolf
• Goethe's Faust

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