The Student Room Group
Reply 1
Your best bet is to ask the universities (by email or telephone).
Don’t be scared asking questions. I did at first.
They would give you advice, telling you what you need to get into a language degree.

I’m hoping to do geography degree next year. I do not have any knowledge of geography (no GCSE or A level geography) at all but I am interested about this world I’m living on. Anyway I email them recently asking if I could get into geography with access to humanities and social science, and they said that I would have to pass the access course to get a place.

I hope this helps

All the best
The Naturalist
Hi. I posted this in the Modern Languages forum but I realise now that here is probably more appropriate, so sorry about that. I am doing an access course in September and I would love to do a language at university. However, most universities ask that you have a language at A-level and I don't have any A-levels. Would I still have a chance of getting in, despite this?



I think as a mature student you may get onto a modern languages course without A levels, but I think you would be expected to demonstrate some ability with languages, even with a course that goes from scratch: do you have any languages GCSEs, or any particular expertise with languages (even if you don't have a qualification to prove it)?

I would recommend you research the courses you're interested in and contact the relevant admissions offices for advice on entry requirements for a mature student. Good luck! :smile:
Reply 3
I think it depends which language you plan to do. Your best bet would be an ab initio language such as Chinese, Russian or Arabic. While these do require demonstration of language ability, it doesn't actually have to be in the target language. In fact, they prefer it not to be.
last year i started spanish after doing an access course in psychology (big difference i know!). the only language experience i had was French at GCSE. Luckily though the course I did had different entry levels and obviously i went into beginners level.
Reply 5
Hi,

Most unis tend to interview mature students and your language ability/fluency may be (unofficially) assessed during your interview. Where I'm studying, there is the opportunity to study most European languages ab initio.

I did A Levels before starting uni, but there are many students doing courses in the Language Centre who have no language qualifications. As long as you're enthusiastic and a fairly good linguist, then you'll be OK :smile:
Reply 6
I'm pretty much the same as you to be honest. I'm taking German Intensive A Level to get onto the German course at Uni!
Reply 7
I'm in a quite similar situation and have been in touch with various universities regarding the topic. My goal is to study Japanese after an "Access to Humanities" course and the only uni that actually pointed out the advantages of having an additional language A level were Cambridge - they basically told me the access course would satisfy the course requirements and a language-related A level would only make my application more competitive, which is rather obvious in this case. They did, however, say that my natural bilinguality would be an advantage, too, so if that applies to you as well, maybe that's something to mention in your PS.
Another suggestion was to read a lot about Japan, so maybe you can grab a few books about the cultures and societies related to your desired language; that might also help when the time for interviews comes.

I'm sure the specific uni advisors are able to answer your questions in a much more satisfying way than we, so you might as well just get in touch with them. :smile: