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German with Film Studies (BA) (Full-Time, 2021 Entry)

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UCAS Code
R2P3

Qualification
Bachelor of Arts (BA)

Duration
4 years full-time, normally including a year abroad

Start Date
27 September 2021

Department of Study
School of Modern Languages and Cultures

Location of Study
University of Warwick


We aim to equip you with excellent communication, research, critical and evaluative skills, all of which are highly sought after by employers. Our German with Film Studies (BA) degree gives you the opportunity to specialise in German language and culture, while spending a quarter of your time on Film Studies.


Course overview

Germany has always been at the heart of the European intellectual tradition and is now the driving force of its economy and the EU. German Studies at Warwick provides the opportunity to explore the extraordinary breadth and depth of German language and culture in collaboration with recognised experts in the field. Intensive language work from advanced level opens up the richness of German language and cultural life. Combining German with film means you’ll graduate as a highly qualified linguist with a deep understanding of key issues and developments in Germany’s past and present, advanced intercultural skills and an excellent knowledge of visual aesthetics, cinematic culture and narrative forms.

You’ll normally spend your second or third year abroad, consolidating and enhancing your learning.

Course structure

In your first year, you will master keys aspects of German grammar, grow your vocabulary and enhance your oral skills around key topics of interest. You will have a choice of cultural modules examining a range of culture, which may range from 18th century literature through to contemporary German film. You will take modules in Film Studies that complement your work in German and introduce you to formal strategies and critical and historical concepts necessary for understanding and analysing films.

In your intermediate and final years, you will take Film Studies modules that further develop your skills and knowledge in the theory and analysis of film. You will deepen your German language skills, working towards near-native competency and effective communication and translations skills across distinct registers of language. In addition to cultural modules on nineteenth and twentieth century German culture, you will have an opportunity to develop your own particular interests by choosing from a wide selection of modules offered by German specialists that cover a broad range of subjects in German culture, society, literature, politics, philosophy, film, history and business, as well as translation and transnationalism. You can also opt to study some of our interdisciplinary cross-School modules.

You can choose to spend your year abroad studying at a university in a German speaking country or on a British Council Assistantship or a work placement. Currently, during the year abroad, students usually attend a residential orientation course in Germany at Easter time. Led by departmental staff, who travel out to lead the event, the course offers skills development, pastoral care, careers advice and guidance on final year study.


How will I learn?

We employ a variety of teaching styles, including: lectures; seminars of about 15 students, in which the emphasis is on student participation; and written and spoken language classes in small groups. You will spend the rest of your time studying independently, preparing for classes, reading and analysing materials set for study, writing essays and working on your language skills.


Contact hours

12 hours per week (15 hours per week in first year).


Class size

Seminars generally involve around 15 students.


How will I be assessed?

We will track your progress through language assignments, essays, presentations, portfolio submissions and examinations (written and oral). Throughout your course you will receive detailed, personalised feedback to help you to improve your skills.

The final degree classification is determined by your intermediate- and final-year marks; each of these years contributes 50%.


Your year abroad

We strongly recommend that students take a year abroad, if they are able to. Students may move to a three-year degree if circumstances do not permit them to complete a year abroad. In such cases, there will be further language reinforcement work and students will be encouraged to spend time abroad in other ways, during vacation times.

You will usually spend your year abroad doing one of three things:

  • Working as a language assistant teaching English in a primary or secondary school
  • Studying full-time at a partner university in your chosen country
  • On a work placement

The year abroad options are flexible so we recommend you check the department's subject pages for more details.

General entry requirements

A level:

  • ABB to include German.

IB:

  • 34 to include 5 in Higher Level German.

BTEC:

  • We welcome applications from students taking BTECs alongside A level German.

Additional requirements:

You will also need to meet our English Language requirements.


International Students

We welcome applications from students with other internationally recognised qualifications.

Find out more about international entry requirements.


Contextual data and differential offers

Warwick may make differential offers to students in a number of circumstances. These include students participating in the Realising Opportunities programme, or who meet two of the contextual data criteria. Differential offers will be one or two grades below Warwick’s standard offer (to a minimum of BBB).


Warwick International Foundation Programme (IFP)

All students who successfully complete the Warwick IFP and apply to Warwick through UCAS will receive a guaranteed conditional offer for a related undergraduate programme (selected courses only).

Find out more about standard offers and conditions for the IFP.


Taking a gap year

Applications for deferred entry welcomed.


Interviews

We do not typically interview applicants. Offers are made based on your UCAS form which includes predicted and actual grades, your personal statement and school reference.

Year One

Modern German Language 1

You will develop your translation, grammatical and speaking skills in German, and in doing so broaden your vocabulary and range of idiom, expression and awareness of various stylistic registers. You will work in a pair or group on a media project under the supervision of a tutor, which will contribute to your end-of-year mark in spoken German.

OR

Modern German Language for Beginners

As a beginner in the acquisition of the German language, you will cover the main linguistic skills in speaking, listening, writing and reading. You will focus on gaining grammatical accuracy as well and communicative fluency and competence. By the end of the year, you will be expected to be able to sustain everyday conversations in German, read authentic texts such as newspaper articles, follow the gist of TV extracts and be able to write an intermediate range of texts in German. You will also work on basic translations to and from German as a means of consolidating your knowledge.


The Changing Face of Germany in Film and Text

In your study of the intellectual history of post-war Germany, you will consider the rise of the mass media and the role played by writers and intellectuals. Through your analysis of diverse literary and filmic texts, you will build your understanding of major landmarks in German history, including post-WWII political reconstruction, the development of the press in the Federal Republic, unification and military reintegration, the opposition to rearmament and student movements, and migration and settlement. The work of intellectuals such as Heinrich Böll, Peter Weiss, Bernhard Schlink, Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Paul Verhoeven will inform your studies.

Power and Passion: The Making of Modern German Culture

Starting with the study of the social milieu of late 18th century Germany, you will consider the cultural and intellectual changes of this period, and in particular the rise of the middle classes in the Age of Enlightenment. You will engage with the work of the globally significant writers of this period, including Goethe and Schiller, and study the light they cast on the emerging middle-class consciousness just prior to the cataclysmic changes of the French Revolution of 1789.

Film Analysis and Methods

This module is intended to introduce students to the techniques and skills of textual analysis. This module aims to introduce and familiarise students with the principles of film form, narrative, and style as well as the basic methodologies of film criticism. It gives students the opportunity to study historical and contemporary cinemas from a range of national and industrial contexts. It intends to equip students with a critical vocabulary for analysing films and will give them significant practice in discussing and writing about cinema.

It aims to introduce cinema through a range of critical lenses and frameworks, familiarising students with key formal strategies and critical concepts that are necessary for analysing films. It is designed to ensure that students are adept at examining the various visual, aural and narrative conventions by which they create meaning and how these meanings have been understood within the academic field of Film Studies.

Film History and Methods

This module will focus on film and history, exploring the various ways film texts have been analysed as reflecting social and cultural historical moments, filmmaking movements of particular eras, and how films have historicised individuals and events. There are many ways to ‘do’ film history and this module is not be an exhaustive survey of the history of cinema. Instead, it will offer some key contexts, methodologies, and traditions that have formed the wide-ranging study of film and history.

Intermediate Year^

Modern German Language 2

In this second-year module, you will increase your general and specialised vocabulary in German through translation into English and German, essay-writing in German, spoken and listening comprehension, and work on business-related materials. In pursuit of these aims, you will learn to identify and rectify grammatical problems, and gain increased sensitivity towards language in general, and an awareness of register, semantics and style in particular. You will also gain important research skills, including correct use of dictionaries.

Reason, Romantics and Reactions. Germany in the Age of Revolution.

You will get to grips with the emerging sense of German nationhood, against the background of the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars. You will study concepts such as the state, the nation and the classical ideal as an aesthetic and political model through the work of authors such as Goethe, Schiller and Hölderlin, before exploring German Romanticism up to its critical reappraisal in the 19th century. You will develop your appreciation of the role of the artists in the German Weltanschauung and the rise of nationalism to broaden your understanding of how literature reflects different models of progress and anticipates social and political change. See also the link to optional German modules below.

Hollywood Cinema

This core module will build on what students have learned about Hollywood in first year modules by expanding their knowledge about Hollywood in what has been deemed its ‘classic’ period. The module will illustrate important aspects about the industrial system that dominated Hollywood filmmaking from the late 1920s to the early 1960s, including style, genre, and stars. By first focusing on Hollywood as an industry, examining the practices and cultures of film production, the module will then consider its ideological influence by promoting specific American values and traditions through political issues, such as race and ethnicity.

Final Year

Modern German Language 3

In this third-year module, you will use vocabulary of increasing sophistication in both general and specialised fields, and improve your skills in spoken and written German and translation. You will improve your listening and reading comprehension skills, and learn to identify and rectify grammatical problems. An important aim of the course is to cultivate sensitivity towards language in general, and an awareness of register, semantics and style in particular.

The Rise of Capitalist Modernity: Gender, Class, Identity

You will study the evolution of modern German literature, from Poetic Realism, through Naturalism and Modernism across a wide spectrum of authors, genres and themes in dialogue with major social, cultural and political movements that mark the transformation of Germany and Austria from the 1870s onwards. Themes include the Industrial Revolution, social critique and the dramatic form, sexuality, adolescence and education in the Wilhelmine period, gender roles and modernity, and the lead-up and response of German writers to the First World War. You will analyse major literary movements through the work of, among others, Theodor Fontane, Gerhart Hauptmann, Arthur Schnitzler, Franz Kafka, Thomas Mann and Georg Kaiser, and appreciate how the arts became a vehicle for expressing ambivalent attitudes to modernity.

Film Aesthetics

You will begin by exploring overarching ideas about aesthetics and how these relate to evaluative, historical and political discourses. The study of film aesthetics will subsequently see you applying these tenets to the evaluation and interpretation of film, particularly in the light of considerations of representation, mode and genre, and social context. By bringing together philosophical and theoretical questions of aesthetics with detailed textual analysis of a range of films, you will learn to apply such concepts to your understanding of contemporary international cinema.


Examples of optional modules/options for current students:

    Please see the optional modules for BA German Studies and BA Film Studies.

    ^Year Two or Three depending on when the year abroad is taken

    Tuition fees

    Find out more about fees and funding


    Additional course costs

    There may be costs associated with other items or services such as academic texts, course notes, and trips associated with your course. Students who choose to complete a work placement or study abroad will pay reduced tuition fees for their third year.


    Warwick Undergraduate Global Excellence Scholarship 2021

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    Find out more about the Warwick Undergraduate Global Excellence Scholarship 2021

    Your career

    Graduates from these courses have gone on to work for employers including:

    • Amazon
    • British Airways
    • Civil Service
    • Grayce Consulting
    • HM Revenue and Customs
    • HSBC
    • Ipsos Mori
    • Lidl
    • NBC Universal
    • Save the Children International and The Department for International Trade

    They have pursued careers such as:

    • business and financial project management professionals
    • chartered and certified accountants
    • financial accounts managers
    • human resources and industrial relations officers
    • management consultants and business analysts
    • public services associate professionals, teachers and other educational professionals

    Helping you find the right career

    Our department has a dedicated professionally qualified Senior Careers Consultant to support you. They offer impartial advice and guidance, together with workshops and events throughout the year. Previous examples of workshops and events include:

    • What are you doing after Warwick? Career planning for final year language students
    • Careers in the Public Sector
    • Warwick careers fairs throughout the year
    • Completing effective CVs and Application Forms for students from the School of Modern Languages
    • Reflecting on Your Year Abroad
    • Languages Alumni Evening

    Find out more about careers support at Warwick.

    Georgina, current student

    "Very small classes"

    "The best part of studying in the SMLC is the feeling of community. Unlike other courses, we often have very small classes, which makes you feel as though you can get to know your tutors and cohort better than if we always sat in large lectures."

    Georgina

    BA Modern Languages


    "I chose Warwick because I really liked it being a campus university. I like how green it is, and I like the thought of everything being very close together. I come from the countryside, so it's not often I could just walk to the shops and have everything in one place. And also because it's a very high-ranked university, so you know that you're going to get good opportunities if you come here."

    Fiona

    German Studies BA

    Transcript

    This information is applicable for 2021 entry. Given the interval between the publication of courses and enrolment, some of the information may change. It is important to check our website before you apply. Please read our terms and conditions to find out more.