Sole language or joint honours?

Hi there,

I am currently in year 12 and trying to decide what I want to do at university. I definitely want to do german, but a lot of people have been telling me that doing a sole language at university would somehow not be regarded as respectable as it would be doing a joint honours, for example german and politics which I what I would choose if I were to do joint honours.

I ultimately hope to make an oxford application and whilst I love politics, I love german even more and don't want to apply for a course just on the base of employability but I realise to an extent I probably should. I'm not sure how well I would cope or even if I would get a place at oxford, as the chance of getting in with joint honours is smaller.

Does anyone think that doing a degree in one language would be in anyway less respected?

thanks!

Reply 1

qwertyuiop1993

Original post by N3rdbu

Hi, I do French Sole at Oxford. I love my course but if I could redo my application I would pick up another language, because many language related jobs require two foreign languages to degree level.

However, I don't think a sole language is any less respected than a language + English/History/Politics etc. because languages degrees cover a lot of the same sorts of things within them. I think you would only have a clear advantage if you did German and Economics/Maths/Sciences which would open up career paths in more quantitative fields but obviously that depends on if you are actually interested in those subjects.

Reply 2

Squaresquirrel

The best advice I can give is to look closely at the courses and what you'll be giving up if you go the joint honours route. I applied to do Japanese at SOAS and originally wanted to do it with Social anthropology but that meant giving up classica lJapanese modules which I'm really interested in. So ye, just check, if you don't mind what your sacrificing it might be worth doing joint honours. Hope this was helpful :P

Reply 3

N3rdbu

Original post by qwertyuiop1993

thank you both for the advice! unfortunately I don't do any science based subjects for a level, but if I were to start apply for a joint course with another language which one would you advise doing? I do french A level at the moment but I don't enjoy it as much as german and prefer to do one from scratch. I know that oxford do quite a few ab initio languages such as russian and portuguese, which one would you say is most interesting and useful?

Reply 4

qwertyuiop1993

Original post by N3rdbu

Russian is hard, but I have a friend who is doing it ab initio (switching from French sole) and he is loving it. I think Russian is pretty useful as well because it's considered a 'hard' language (along with Chinese etc.) that will open doors in certain areas (like MI5 just for example)

(edited 10 years ago)

Reply 5

xmarilynx

Original post by N3rdbu

That's my degree! :woo:

I would definitely recommend going for another language or another subject with German as it would open a lot more doors than just the language by itself. I'm not sure Politics would make you more employable though - I'm not saying it's a bad choice if it's really what you want to do, but it wouldn't add much value if you just did it for the sake of having another subject. In hindsight, I wish I'd done German with another language like Russian or something business-y like Marketing

This excellent post by jonnythemoose pretty much sums it up :smile:

Original post by jonnythemoose

I graduated eight months ago with a BA in Modern Languages. I'm currently finishing my contract as an English tutor at a French university, with the possibility of staying on for a second year. As I said in my first post in this thread, I don't regret my choice of degree. I chose it because languages was and is pretty much the only thing I could ever specialise in. No other field has ever attracted me enough.

However, had I had the choice between languages and a science, or business, or economics for example...I would always choose the latter. Or, I would do a joint honours degree, such as Spanish and Politics or French and Business. The one niggling regret that I have is that I don't have a real area of expertise. I consider myself well-educated, but aside from my linguistic ability, I don't have any special area of knowledge. Unfortunately, this makes me unemployable for a lot of exciting jobs - and aside from teaching English, there is very little I can do to spend time in foreign countries. Fortunately for me, I am very interested in interpreting and am hoping to do a Master's in CI a few years from now. For that, I do have the necessary skill set! :smile:

Now, if languages are your only passion, then heed this advice: don't waste your money on a simple BA French or a BA German degree. If you're going to do a pure languages degree then you absolutely have to offer two languages. The stereotypical jobs of language graduates (teacher, translator, interpreter) pretty much always require two foreign languages. As such, if you are going to market yourself as a linguist then it's best to offer as many languages as possible. If you speak three or even four foreign languages, then you really do outrank other graduates in terms of linguistic capacity (whereas a BA in French can easily be matched and even surpassed by a bilingual English/French person, or a marine biologist who studies French in his spare time). BA French and Spanish, BA German and Chinese, BA Italian and Arabic...all of these are better than a single honours.

Reply 6

N3rdbu

Original post by xmarilynx

That's my degree! :woo:

do you enjoy the course? thanks for the advice, i've pretty much decided from all this that I'm going to apply for 2 languages instead of just german. even though it would still be interesting I might as well come out of uni fluent in two languages instead of one :smile:

Reply 7

xmarilynx

Original post by N3rdbu

German yes, Politics no and it's making me hate the course slightly. Even though it's technically only 1/3 of it, it feels more like 2/3 and because the other students are all politics majors, I feel like they have an advantage as so much of the knowledge is transferable.

I am glad I didn't do sole German though, as I'm looking for an internship in Germany at the minute, and when I say that I'm studying German, the general response is "that's great! and what else?". Last year I got an internship in Germany due to the fact that I spoke French, so a second foreign language is definitely well worth having.

So basically joint honours is great but choose your subject wisely. I wish I'd listened to my gut instinct and gone for Russian, or something more applicable to the world of work (ie Business/Marketing).

Reply 8

N3rdbu

do any of you think beginners' portuguese would be worth doing? I like the idea of being able to travel to brazil and I imagine it has quite an interesting history as well as being good in the future as brazil has such a growing economy.

Reply 9

hollo

I did a joint honours with a language and I would definitely recommend it over single honours. To be honest, I think it would have been a bit boring to just do the language, at least for me.

You should try to find out about the different module options that are available or if you can maybe do major/minor. Sometimes joint honours can restrict your choices but equally single honours can mean you're choosing classes which you're not interested in, just to fill the timetable.