Which languages are on offer?

Recent figures indicate that Korean is the 14th most spoken language globally, with over 70 million Korean speakers. In 2020 alone, nearly 160,000 students enrolled in Korean classes, aiming to learn and master the language.

Furthermore, the number of Hallyu (the Korean wave) related organisations enthusiastic about Korean culture is rising. Every year, these organisations increase by 7% and members by 36%. In 2020, the total number of members who have joined Hallyu-related organisations worldwide had reached nearly 100 million. 

This craze has expanded to Korean traditional culture, food, literature, and language, creating increased enthusiasm.

Course description:

Level 1- Korean 1 description 

Level 1.5 - Korean 1.5 description

British Sign Language (or BSL) is a real, full and living language that is part of a rich cultural heritage and one of the UK’s indigenous languages.

Knowledge of BSL is a helpful skill to have if you ever want to communicate effectively with deaf people. It consists of hand movements, hand shapes, as well as facial expressions and lip patterns to demonstrate what people want to say.

It is estimated that 151,000 people in the UK use British Sign Language and, of these, 87,000 are Deaf. This makes it the second most used language in the UK after English, so it’s well worth it to learn BSL!

Ara­bic (العربية al-‘arabīyah, or عربي ‘arabi) Se­mitic lan­guages, such as He­brew and the Neo-Ara­maic lan­guages. In terms of speak­ers, Ara­bic is the largest mem­ber of the Se­mitic lan­guage fam­ily. It is spo­ken by more than 280 mil­lion peo­ple as a first lan­guage, most of whom live in the Mid­dle East and North Africa, and by 250 mil­lion  more as a sec­ond lan­guage.

Course descriptions:

• Level 1

• Level 2

French is estimated to have about 76 million native speakers and about 235 million daily, fluent speakers[and another 77 to 110 million secondary speakers who speak it as a second language to varying degrees of proficiency, mainly in Africa. According to the Organisation internationale de la Francophoniem approximately 300 million people worldwide are able to speak the language. 

Course descriptions: 

• Level 1

• Level 1.5

• Level 2

• Level 3

Ger­man is  one of the world's ma­jor lan­guages and the most widely spo­ken first lan­guage in the Eu­ro­pean Union. Glob­ally, Ger­man is spo­ken by ap­prox­i­mately 105 mil­lion na­tive speak­ers and also by about 80 mil­lion non-na­tive speak­ers. Stan­dard Ger­man is widely taught in schools, uni­ver­si­ties and Goethe In­sti­tutes world­wide.

Ger­man is a pluri­cen­tric lan­guage, with mul­ti­ple coun­tries hav­ing their own stan­dard­ised vari­ants (e.g. Aus­trian Ger­man, Swiss Stan­dard Ger­man) as well as many di­alects. It is the only of­fi­cial lan­guage of Ger­many, Aus­tria, and Liecht­en­stein; one of the of­fi­cial lan­guages of Switzer­land, Lux­em­bourg, and Bel­gium; and a recog­nised mi­nor lan­guage in many other coun­tries, such as Italy, Slove­nia, Hun­gary, Namibia, and Poland. 

Course descriptions:

• Level 1

• Level 2

• Level 3

• Level 4

Italian (italiano) is a Romance language spoken by about 60 million people in Italy, and by another 10 million Italian descendants in the world, making it spoken by a total of 70 million native speakers. It is also spoken by an additional 125 million people as a foreign language. In Switzerland, Italian is one of four official languages, spoken mainly in the cantons of Grigioni and Ticino.

Course descriptions:

• Level 1

• Level 2

The Japanese word for Japan is 日本, which is pronounced Nihon or Nippon and literally means "the origin of the sun". The character nichi (日) means "sun" or "day"; hon (本) means "base" or "origin". Japanese is an agglutinative language distinguished by a system of honorifics reflecting the hierarchical nature of Japanese society, with verb forms and particular vocabulary indicating the relative status of speaker and listener. Japanese writing uses kanji (Chinese characters) and two sets of kana (syllabaries based on cursive script and radical of kanji), as well as the Latin alphabet and Arabic numerals.

Course descriptions:

• Level 1

• Level 2

• Level 3

Mandarin language, also called Northern Chinese, Chinese (Pinyin) Guanhua (“Officials’ Language”), or (Wade-Giles romanization) Kuan-hua, the most widely spoken form of Chinese. Mandarin Chinese is often divided into four subgroups: Northern Mandarin, centring on Beijing and spoken in northern China and the Northeast provinces (Manchuria); Northwestern Mandarin, extending northward from the city of Baoji and through most of northwestern China; Southwestern Mandarin, centring on the area around Chongqing and spoken in Sichuan and adjoining parts of southwestern China; and Southern, or Lower Yangtze, Mandarin, in an area centred on Nanjing.

Course descriptions:

• Level 1

• Level 2

Russian is the largest native language in Europe and the most geographically widespread language in Eurasia. It is the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages, with 144 million speakers in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Russian is the eighth most spoken language in the world by number of native speakers and the seventh by total number of speakers.The language is one of the six official languages of the United Nations.

Course descriptions:

• Level 1

Spanish is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. It is estimated that more than 437 million people speak Spanish as a native language, which qualifies it as second on the lists of languages by number of native speakers. Instituto Cervantes claims that there are an estimated 477 million Spanish speakers with native competence and 572 million Spanish speakers as a first or second language—including speakers with limited competence—and more than 21 million students of Spanish as a foreign language.

Course descriptions:

• Level 1

• Level 1.5

• Level 2

• Level 3

If you are a member of the local community, our 20-week course costs £400 per language.

Brunel alumni and staff receive a 50% reduction on the full course fee. The current reduced rate is £200.

Applications for the 2024-2025 Modern Language courses will open Monday 16  September 2024. Teaching will begin in the week commencing Monday 7 October. We strongly recommend you enrol as soon as possible as the classes are very popular and we operate on a first-come, first-served policy. Places on a language course cannot be reserved.

Click here to apply if you are an Brunel Graduate

Click here to apply if you are a member of the community

Please note, you will be asked to pay the full course free amount when submitting your application. You application will not be processed without payment.

You can view the timetable of our language courses here. 

Due to high demand, you can only enrol onto one language course per year.

Choose this level if you have no knowledge of the language.

Choose this level if you can:

• Greet accordingly

• Introduce yourself /age/ nationality/occupation

• Use some numbers and the alphabet

• Have very basic vocabulary

• Use present tense in a very limited context

Choose this level if you have knowledge of some of the following topics:

• Greetings; introducing self and others

• Shopping; telling the time, days of the week

• Asking and giving directions; ordering food and drink; describing objects, people and places; dealing with simple hotel situations; talking about everyday activities

• Use the present, present continuous and immediate future tenses; have an idea of the imperative mood.

Choose this level if you can:

•  Describe yourself and others, your character and personality and that of others

• Express opinions, likes and dislikes; actively participate in simple verbal communication regarding simple and routine tasks

• Exchange information on familiar topics, e.g. present and past experiences and future events

• Write simple emails, messages and notes relating to everyday matters

• Understand commonly used phrases and vocabulary relating to everyday matters

• Extract specific information from simple texts written in the target language.

Choose this level if you can:

• Describe yourself and others, your character and personality and that of others

• Actively participate in verbal communications regarding routine and semi complex tasks, and exchange information on various topics, e.g. present and past experiences and future events;

• Express a variety of opinions, likes and dislikes

• Write emails, messages and notes relating to routine and semi complex matters.

• Understand some less commonly used phrases and vocabulary relating to everyday matters when listening to  recordings in the target language and extract specific information from them

• Extract specific information from a variety of texts written in the target language relating to more complex topics.  

• For additional information please follow the link  Common European Framework of Reference for Languages.