BA Russian and Beginners German
About this course
Russian and Beginners German at Oxford is a programme that combines deep expertise in one of Europe's most consequential languages with the opportunity to build a second from scratch. Russian opens access to the largest country in the world by land area, a major literary tradition that includes Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Akhmatova, and Bulgakov, and a geopolitical story that has shaped global history from the 1917 revolution to the present day. German, offered here at beginners level, is the most widely spoken native language in Europe, the language of Goethe and Kafka, and the primary language of economic and political power within the European Union. Oxford's four-year full-time programme develops your Russian to a high level, engaging with the language, literature, and culture of the Russian-speaking world in depth, while building your German systematically from the foundation upward. The Oxford tutorial system means you will be expected to think and argue independently, preparing weekly essays and engaging in close academic discussion with specialist tutors in each subject. In Russian, you will read major literary and non-literary texts in the original, develop translation skills, and engage with the history and politics of Russia and the former Soviet Union. In German, you will progress from early grammar and vocabulary through to intermediate proficiency by the end of the programme, with attention to cultural context as well as linguistic competence. A typical entry tariff of 184 points reflects the competitive admissions context at Oxford, where prior knowledge of Russian or German at A-level or equivalent is normally expected for at least one of the languages. Graduates with Russian and German expertise are sought in diplomacy, the foreign service, intelligence analysis, international business, journalism covering Eastern Europe, translation and interpreting, European institutions, and academic research in Slavonic or Germanic studies.
Syllabus & Modules
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