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- Languages is something that I've always really enjoyed,
and I thought,
Why not rise to the challenge and study Arabic?
- Chinese sort of came to the forefront
because of the relevance today.
Political, sort of historical.
- The Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies
at Cambridge is comprised of two departments.
- You can choose either Middle Eastern Studies
or Asian Studies.
Both will have a language component,
as well as content courses.
- Students who are studying Middle Eastern Studies
can choose from Arabic, Persian, Hebrew, Sanskrit or Hindi.
Students who are studying East Asian Studies can choose
from Chinese, Japanese or Korean.
- You will reach an advanced level of your chosen language
in listening, speaking, reading and writing.
- So their second year, third year and fourth year,
the students will become more immersed in cultural studies.
- History, politics, culture, thought and philosophy,
society, anthropology, literature, films and linguistics.
So all these courses are to do with your chosen language.
- So the best experience for me was
probably the year abroad.
It's the highlight for most people.
- I was in Cairo in Egypt.
I really really enjoyed it, I stayed for, you know,
the different seasons, the different religious festivals.
It was an amazing place,
it was definitely the best experience by far.
- The confidence you gain in yourself
after speaking that language for the first time
in the country itself is really rewarding.
- It was just really really good to have that contact
with the culture.
- The courses are taught in a variety of forms.
They can be in lectures, in seminars,
and also in the form of supervisions.
- The students would be given a writing assignment to do,
and then they would meet with their supervisor
in small groups, typically two or three students at a time.
- Supervision will actually give the students an opportunity
to discuss your ideas with the world-class experts
in the field.
- There's actually quite a lot of guidance,
a lot of support is offered.
- Everyone has a Director of Studies
who's a part of the department here.
- Their doors are always open to support you.
Of course you also have your teachers and your lecturers,
who you get really close relationships with
because it's such a small faculty.
- We have a faculty library,
which is specialised in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies.
We also have the University Library,
as well as all the College libraries.
- There's the common room, which is a fantastic place
to study informally, just with friends in groups.
- There's a rich intellectual ecosystem here,
which includes seminars and public talks and workshops.
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- Learning a language is absolutely a transferable skill,
you can use that in any field, in all walks of life.
Working for NGOs to working for the government, the FCO,
working in translation, interpretation.
- We have students who go on into academia,
who continue their studies at the Masters and the PhD level.
A wide variety of career paths.
- If you think you are self-disciplined,
if your curiosity goes further beyond language per se,
in that case, our faculty is where you will thrive.
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