SOAS introduces undergraduate language entitlement
26 December 2008
SOAS would like all of its undergraduate students to possess at least a working knowledge of one of the languages of Africa, Asia or the Middle East by the time they graduate.
The School has therefore established the concept of a 'language entitlement' for all BA, BSc and LLB students. This means that from September 2009 every SOAS undergraduate will be entitled to register for at least one language course during his or her time at the School.
Undergraduate students who are unsure whether they have the aptitude for language learning, and are therefore reluctant to risk taking a language course as a part of their degree, will be entitled to take a one-term non-credit-bearing Language Centre course in any non-final year—in addition to their four required courses, and free of charge. Students who perform well in this non-credit-bearing course will be encouraged to take a credit-bearing language course in a subsequent year.
SOAS celebrates the fact that a fair number of its undergraduates are already familiar with an African, Asian or Middle Eastern language even before they join us, often because of their family or personal background. We would like to encourage these students to participate in language learning too, either by taking up their language entitlement to deepen or extend their own linguistic skills, or by sharing these skills with fellow students through the School's new Language Exchange (lww-cetl.ac.uk/exchange).
The Faculty of Languages and Cultures at SOAS offers students the opportunity to study more than 30 different languages. It is also the home of the joint SOAS-UCL Centre of Excellence in the Teaching and Learning of Languages of the Wider World.
