Are you a linguist? Are you a good communicator? Do you enjoy travelling to new places? Are you interested in people and other cultures? Then you should be considering studying Spanish to A Level! More and more universities are asking for a language qualification for their courses, irrespective of your chosen career path.

In addition to lessons with your teachers each week you will have extra conversation classes with a native Spanish speaker to improve your accent and the style of your spoken Spanish. You will take advantage of the instant access to authentic materials that the Internet affords us and use your language in real life situations.

Through the A level route you will develop and refine your listening, speaking, reading and writing skills as well as revising and building on the grammar already learnt at GCSE to improve the complexity and fluency of your language. In addition you will learn about the culture of Spain and the life of people in Spain and the Spanish speaking world.

There are four areas of study which are taught at A Level; ‘Spanish society and social trends’, ‘Culture in the Spanish speaking world’, ‘Immigration and multicultural society’ and ‘Franco’s dictatorship and the move to democracy’. Also you will study literature and cinema from the Spanish speaking world. In Year 12 you will study the film ‘Laberinto del Fauno’ and in Year 13 you will study the text ‘Crónica de una muerte anunciada’.

A Level - two year qualification

Exams taken at the end of Year 13
Paper 1: 40% Listening, Reading and Translation into English and into Spanish.
Paper 2: 30% Essays on both books or book and film studied. Paper 3: 30% Speaking exam on an individual research project (21-23 minutes).

Progression Routes

Spanish is highly regarded and considered a ‘facilitating subject‘ for the top universities in the country, regardless of the degree that you wish to study. It provides an excellent grounding for those wishing to progress onto Law and other ‘humanities‘ subjects but also for Medicine and Veterinary Science as well as Business or Management. The Advanced GCE in Spanish can lead to further study of languages at degree level and can easily be combined with other courses such as Law, English, Business, International Studies or other languages that can be taken up at university such as Chinese and Japanese. Current popular career choices for students of languages include Translation and Interpreting, Business, Journalism, Computing, Law, Publishing, Marketing, as well as Teaching, both in the UK and abroad. Linguists are sought after employees for many types of Business and Industry.