Arabic Studies

Our BA Arabic Studies course will enable you to achieve an advanced language level in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) while studying the language within its cultural and historical context.

You will start as an absolute beginner in reading, writing, speaking and listening and develop to an advanced level by the end of the four-year course.

You will also look more widely at Arab culture and literature and you will be introduced to social and cultural trends in the Arab Middle East and beyond.

The course is carefully structured so you can measure your progress step by step.

Learning modern Arabic also opens the door to the vast literature of classical Arabic, including religious and secular texts, and provides a perfect platform from which to learn one or more of the colloquial dialects.

You will spend your third year studying abroad at an academic institution in an Arab country, an ideal way to improve your fluency in the language while gaining a fascinating first-hand experience of the Arab world.

You can choose from a wide variety of course unit options to focus on your special interests or to study other disciplines within the University, such as linguistics, history, archaeology or the social sciences.

Although language units may show here as optional, they are a mandatory part of your modern languages degree and you will take the units relevant to your level of language in each year of study.

It is compulsory to study language at all levels of your modern languages degree.