MFL for English Degree

[JordanBaker]

My DD is in Y9 and will be choosing her GCSE options after Christmas. She is passionate about English and is sure that she will want to study it at university, preferably Oxford, although she realises that getting a place there is very tough.

She is currently studying French, Italian and Latin and is doing a taster course in Japanese. She definitely wants to continue with Latin to GCSE and loves Japanese (she is interested in the culture anyway, Manga, Anime etc).
She could do 3 languages to GCSE (her third choice would be French) but this would limit her other options.

My question is, if she were to continue Latin and drop French, would top universities regard Japanese as an appropriate MFL for a prospective English student?

Does she HAVE to have an MFL? This is from the Oxford website:
We no longer have matriculation requirements at Oxford. A GCSE pass in a language other than English is not, therefore, essential and if you feel your application is likely to be competitive in all other respects this should not be a bar to your application.

This is from Cambridge - re A level choices for English:
Applicants must have studied English Literature or combined English Language and Literature (if English Literature isn't offered) to A Level/IB Higher Level or equivalent. For their other subjects, many applicants have studied languages and humanities, which can be useful for the course. However, students who have studied the sciences and other subjects also do well.

What limits are we talking about re keeping French on?

Thanks all-had to go out last night hence not replying.

Milliways I know a MFL isn't a necessity for Oxbridge but as I understand it, it is a preference. Plus, there are other Universities that do require one for English (Eg Leeds I think). English is so competitive that I think it's a good idea to tick as many boxes as possible.

Joan at DD's school Eng Lang, Eng Lit, Maths, and triple science are compulsory. Then they have to choose one MFL (which includes Japanese), one of the humanities (she will choose History), one of Art, DT, Music, Drama etc (she will do Drama) and Latin/Greek is optional but she wants to do Latin. That brings her up to 10. The most they can do is 11. She would like to do RS as she enjoys it and it's an essay subject which plays to her strengths. If she were to do French and Japanese she couldn't do RS. If she were to drop French in favour of Japanese she could.

Hope that makes sense!

Bump for evening crowd...

I'm a little out of date on my info, but I suspect it's still right. For Cambridge, Japanese would be perfectly acceptable as a MFL GCSE, and maybe even be a talking point (I'd hesitate to say it would be an advantage, as that would mean people at other schools which didn't offer exciting language options were at a disadvantage IYSWIM).

However, she wouldn't be able to take it as her language option (what's called "Paper 7") in her English degree.

Here are the language options for the Cambridge English degree:

"Finally, there is a language element: you choose either a paper on literature in a European language, or one on early medieval British language and its literature, or one on the English language. The papers on European or early medieval British literature require you to comment on, or translate short sections of, literary works in a language of your choice (from Greek, classical Latin, French, German, Italian, Old English, early Middle English, medieval Latin and Anglo-Norman ? several of which can be studied from scratch), and then to write essays in English on literary works from those languages. The paper in English language introduces you to the syntax, vocabulary and literary uses of English from 1300 to the present." Note that the choice of languages is now severely restricted!

The English language paper used to have a reputation for being harder than the MFL papers, but that may not be the case any more.

Cambridge does have a situation where you can 'borrow' papers from other faculties (i.e. study a course from another faculty instead of your own registered course), so in theory she might be able to 'borrow' a Japanese paper from the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies. I had a quick nose around the site and couldn't see whether this would actually be feasible. There are plenty of language courses to keep skills up, though.

Having said all that - one of my best friends at college when I studied English hadn't done French at all, and she said it was a real nuisance, as quite a lot of the texts you study assume you can understand both French and Latin. I hadn't done Latin at school and there was a point in my post-grad studies at which I just had to stop and learn the stuff.

If she really wants to study English Lit seriously (and I was passionate about it from at least that age), then I would advise her to do both French and Latin, and suck up the French for the pleasure of English Lit that will be with her when she starts at University.

Best of luck to her!

I don't know about Oxford, but at Cambridge there's quite a lot of scope for free language lessons if you claim to need them ( especially in the richer colleges). So, for example if she did Latin A level and then wanted to pick up Italian, she'd probably find it quite easy, both because of the similarities and because she'd get extra help. And frankly, as an arts student, she will have plenty of time for the extra lessons and a spot of extra 'homework'. I do think a modern / classical language to A level or a decent reading fluency is a useful extra for lots of humanities subjects because it gives you access to a lot more material.

Thank you GrendelsMum and Matsikula that is very helpful. Based on that information she may well be better continuing with all 3 languages and dropping RS. She is really enjoying Japanese and it would be a shame if she had to drop it. As she will be doing History I don't suppose RS is a priority.

I'm a bit surprised that triple science is compulsory TBH. She is capable of doing it but is very obviously an Arts girl and it seems a shame that she'll have to drop a subject that she enjoys in order to fit triple science in when she won't be pursuing them beyond GCSE.

She's only 13 so it seems early to be choosing her options based on her likely Degree choice, but she really does have a passion for Eng Lit. She is costing me a fortune in theatre tickets (she saw her 8th Shakespeare play a couple of weeks ago) but as I'm an English grad myself I am secretly delighted that she has such good taste!

Thanks again for the info.