MA Italian and Russian and Spanish
About this course
Combining three modern languages in a single degree programme is an unusual and ambitious undertaking, and it produces graduates with a genuinely exceptional range of cultural and linguistic competence. Italian, Russian and Spanish span different language families and grammatical traditions, different cultural histories and geographies, and very different relationships to the wider world: the Romance languages of Italy and Spain with their connections to Latin America and the Mediterranean, and Russian with its reach across Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the global politics of the post-Soviet era. At the University of St Andrews, this four-year MA (Hons) programme develops all three to a serious level of proficiency. You will work towards high-level competence in reading, writing and speaking across all three languages, engaging with the literature, culture, politics, film and history of each tradition. The programme requires a disciplined and organised approach to language learning, as you manage the demands of three distinct grammatical systems and cultural frameworks simultaneously. That challenge is also the source of the degree's intellectual reward and its professional value. A year abroad is built into the programme, during which you will spend time in environments where one or more of your languages is spoken, consolidating your fluency and your cultural knowledge through direct immersion. Graduates of trilingual modern languages degrees are exceptionally well placed in any graduate labour market that values communication, cultural intelligence and analytical depth. Careers span diplomacy, international business, translation and interpreting, the civil service and foreign office, journalism, education, law, the creative industries, and international organisations. The combination of Italian, Russian and Spanish is particularly distinctive in competitive professional environments, where linguistic range is rare and highly valued. Many graduates also pursue postgraduate study in one or more of their languages, or in related fields such as international relations, European studies or comparative literature.
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