BA French Studies / Course details

With a strong heritage dating back to 1896, French Studies at Manchester is the oldest in the UK.

It's also one of the largest, with over 120 students registering on its various programmes each year.

You will be taught by experienced academic staff of international distinction, including three winners of University and Faculty Teaching Excellence Awards, and a dedicated team of specialist language tutors.

Among our staff, over 70% are native speakers of French and we teach you in that language from Year 1.

Our innovative language-teaching programme, which follows an enquiry-based learning approach, is central to a curriculum that offers an extremely wide choice of course units.

These cover the Early Modern period to the present and fall into the four broad categories of history and politics, literature, popular and visual culture, and linguistics and translation. 

You will benefit from our rich Library resources - including precious manuscripts, a vast French literature collection, and contemporary digital media - and from our long-established partnership with the Alliance Française de Manchester, which hosts cultural events throughout the year such as film screenings, talks, plays, concerts, exhibitions and intensive language classes.

You will also benefit from our collaboration with the Institut de Touraine in the Loire Valley, which hosts Easter and Summer French language classes that are appropriate for ab initio students and finalists.

Residence abroad

You can study abroad for up to a year to improve your communicative language skills in a native-speaker environment.

Collaborations and partnerships

The University has links with language and cultural institutions across the city, including:

• HOME - international and contemporary art, theatre and film
• Alliance Française - home of French language and culture.

Societies

Join the Francophone Society and benefit from French classes, discussion groups, cheese and wine nights, film screenings, themed socials, and a yearly trip to Paris.

The University is home to over 30 international and language-related student societies offering a breadth of cultural activities and experiences.

You'll learn through a mixture of formal lectures, seminars and tutorials, spending approximately 12 hours a week in formal study sessions. 

For every hour of university study, you will be expected to complete a further 2-3 hours of independent study.

You will also need to study during the holiday periods. 

The individual study component could be spent reading, producing written work, revising for examinations or working in the University's Language Centre .

You will be assessed in various ways, including:  

• written and oral examinations; 
• presentations; 
• coursework (which may include library research, linguistic fieldwork and data collection, or web-based research); 
• in your final year, a dissertation based on a research topic of your choice.  

Assessment methods vary from course unit to course unit - see individual course unit listings for more information.

The University Language Centre is home to language resources, including a new interpreting suite, purpose-built recording rooms, and resources for more than 70 languages.  

The Centre also offers multilingual word processing, language learning software, off-air recording and AV duplication, multilingual terrestrial and satellite TV, and extensive support and advice for learners.  

Learn more at facilities