English and Beginners' Portuguese

Portuguese is the fifth most widely spoken language in the world, the official language of Brazil as well as Portugal, and an important medium of literary, musical, and intellectual life across Africa and Asia. Beginning a language from scratch at university is a serious intellectual undertaking, combining the acquisition of grammatical structures and vocabulary with engagement with literature, film, history, and culture in that language. Paired with English literary study, the combination trains a particular kind of multilingual critical attention: the ability to read texts closely in more than one linguistic tradition and to understand how language shapes what can be thought and expressed.

This four-year degree at the University of Oxford combines the study of English literature with the acquisition of Portuguese from beginner level. On the English side, you will have access to a wide chronological range of literature written in the English language, from its origins in Anglo-Saxon poetry through to contemporary writing from across the English-speaking world. You will develop skills in close reading, literary criticism, and historical contextualisation that are among the most demanding and rewarding that university study in the arts can provide.

The Portuguese strand provides structured linguistic training from beginner level, developing reading, writing, and spoken competence, alongside an introduction to the literatures and cultures of the Lusophone world.

The combination of highly developed literary analysis, fluency in Portuguese, and the breadth of cultural knowledge acquired across four years opens a wide range of career paths. Graduates move into areas including publishing, journalism, broadcasting, translation and interpreting, international business, diplomacy, and the civil service. The foreign language component is particularly valuable in roles requiring engagement with Portuguese-speaking markets and institutions, including in Brazil, Angola, and Mozambique.

Academic careers in English or Lusophone literature, linguistics, or comparative literature are a natural progression, and many Oxford graduates continue to doctoral study in these or related fields.