Languages and Language Teaching

Language teaching is a discipline at the intersection of linguistics, pedagogy, and cultural understanding. Those who study it are asking not just how languages work as systems but how people learn them, what makes teaching effective, and how teachers can support learners with different backgrounds, abilities, and motivations. The study of modern languages alongside language teaching theory gives you both a subject specialism and the professional knowledge to communicate it, making you someone who can do the language and explain it.

At Birkbeck College this three-year full-time programme offers you the chance to develop proficiency in one or more of French, German, Italian, Japanese, or Spanish while also building your understanding of how languages are taught and learned. You will study linguistics, second language acquisition, and the theory and practice of modern language teaching, engaging with questions about how people acquire new languages and what teachers can do to support that process. Birkbeck's distinctive approach as a primarily evening and part-time institution draws on a student community with diverse professional and life experience, and this programme reflects that ethos in its attention to the practical and the applicable.

Graduates from programmes combining language study with language teaching are well prepared for careers in secondary and further education, language schools, English as a foreign language teaching in the UK or abroad, and corporate language training. Many go on to postgraduate teacher training to qualify as secondary school modern languages teachers, a profession with strong and sustained demand in the UK. The linguistic and cultural knowledge you develop is also valuable in translation and interpreting, international business, diplomacy, and the cultural sector.

For those drawn to further academic study, postgraduate programmes in applied linguistics, TESOL, or languages and education provide natural pathways.