When choosing your A-Level subjects, it can often feel like there is a “right” or “wrong” answer for what you can do. This is especially as your A-Level options can either open or close doors for further study or even work depending on what choices you’ve made.
If you want to go into medicine, you’ll need to take certain science subjects, whereas if you’re planning to do literature, you’ll most likely need to take at it as an A-Level.
Simply put, deciding whether or not to do a language at A-Level will depend on your preferences and interests as well as your goals for when you complete your A-Levels. If you just so happen to want to become a translator or even a language teacher, then taking a language is going to be a priority. If not, then you’ll first need to look into what your priorities are and weigh up your personal pros and cons for each option you’re considering.
Deciding whether doing a language at A-Level is right for you isn’t just a simple case of yes or no. There are several factors that you need to consider when deciding and, in this article, we’ll go through these in detail to help you make your decision.
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Can you take languages at A-Level?
Before you can even think about if you “should” take a language at A-Level, you first need to figure out if you’ll even be able to. Like most A-Levels, there are some prerequisites students need to fulfil before they can do a language at A-Level.
First of all, the A-Level options you can do are limited by the sixth form or college you go to. Some colleges only do a specific few languages and some may not even do language A-Levels at all, so you’ll need to keep in mind that this may limit your choices.
Also, as A-Levels are meant to be a continuation from GCSE and more advanced, the level of language required will also be more advanced. While you could start a language GCSE with little or even no previous knowledge of the language, this isn’t the case for A-Level.
Typically, you will need to have a GCSE or equivalent qualification in the language. Moreover, sixth forms and colleges will often set certain minimum grade requirements of at least a grade 5 in the GCSE or sometimes even higher.
If you don’t have a GCSE in the language, you may still be able to do it through your sixth form or college if you have a high level in it. This would typically be if it is a language that you speak at home or if you can otherwise prove that you have a high level in this language.
What are languages like at A-Level?
To be able to decide whether or not you should study a subject, you need to know what it involves. This is especially the case for A-Level languages because they’re vastly different to GCSE study.
While there is some variation depending on the specific language and even the exam board, the general structure of a language A-Level is testing your reading, writing, speaking and listening abilities through a range of general and country-specific topics. Unlike language GCSEs, language A-Levels give you quite a lot of context and understanding of the countries that speak that language.
For example, I did A-Level Spanish with the AQA exam board and one of the topics covered was to do with the dictatorships of Latin America. Whereas my friend did A-Level French, also with the AQA exam board, and had a topic on demonstrations, strikes and who holds power in France. For more on these, you can check out their respective webpages here and here on the AQA website.
Also, it’s important to note that A-Level Modern Foreign Languages is also considered to be one of the most difficult A-Levels. When ranked from the 10 hardest A-levels, it ranks at #9 from a poll asking students what they felt was the hardest A-Level subject, with over 2,000 participations. You can learn more about our ranking in our other Think Student article.
Why should you take languages at A-Level?
We’ve looked at whether or not you’d even be able to take a language at A-Level as well as what the course itself would be like, now let’s have a look at all the reasons why taking a language might just be a great idea for you.
The advantages of studying a language at A-Level:
- Doing a language at A-Level can give you a head start to do further study in languages.
- Doing a language at A-Level can improve your language skills, which can be beneficial for travel.
- A-Level Modern Foreign Languages are facilitating subjects, meaning that they look good to universities, particularly the more prestigious ones. This means they can be a great choice if you’re not certain of what you want to do. You can learn more about facilitating subjects in this Think Student article.
- A-Level Modern Foreign Languages can be great in combination with other A-Level subjects, especially such as A-Level Business, A-Level Law and humanities subjects, such as A-Level English Language, A-Level English Literature or A-Level History. Learn more about A-Level combinations in this Think Student article.
- If you are a fluent speaker of one of the languages covered by the A-Level exam boards, doing a language at A-Level could be a great way to prove your language skills, which you can then have on your CV.
Why shouldn’t you take languages at A-Level?
Taking a language at A-Level can be a great idea, personally I really enjoyed it and would recommend it for other people. However, like all subjects, it may just not be right for you.
Reasons why taking a language at A-Level may not be right for you:
- Language A-Levels are hard – Even if you did the GCSE, you most likely need to have scored pretty highly in this for a chance of being able to properly understand the A-Level course as the language is suddenly used much more consistently and it becomes advanced very quickly. It’s important that you are fully committed to doing the A-Level and learning the language, if not, you may be better off choosing something else.
- You may prefer other subjects – When it comes to choosing your A-Level subjects, you are greatly narrowing down what you study from about 10 GCSE subjects to normally only 3 A-Level ones. If you enjoyed other subjects more or need them for university, make sure you prioritise these. Remember, the A-Levels you choose do matter as they can limit what you can go on to further study.
- You can still study a language at university even without doing the A-Level – Universities tend to offer their language programmes at different levels. You can do a language degree, even if from beginner level. This is known as “ab initio”, simply meaning “from the beginning”. You can learn more about this by checking out this page from the University of York.