Modules

You will be studying Spanish or Chinese in the global context of the contemporary Spanish/Chinese societies. You will immerse yourself in your languages and their related societies through themes such as sustainability and other cultural, social and political issues. Classes will be conducted in a mixture of English and Spanish/Chinese depending on the content of the session and your entry level. For Post A level students most teaching will be delivered in Chinese/Spanish and beginner students will build up the target language content across the term. There will be plenary sessions on academic skills, for example, but language classes will be in workshop mode with an emphasis on practical activities, including group and pair work, information sharing and discussion and you will have conversation classes with a native speaker. In addition to written texts and grammar work, a range of multi-media materials will be used for the development of comprehension and production. These materials will be used in the language laboratories in timetabled sessions as well as in private study time and can be accessed on the module VLE. If you are a Post A level student or have an equivalent level, this module will advance your linguistic knowledge and skills towards a threshold B2 in the CEFR. If you are beginner student, you will be able to develop towards a A2 in the CEFR (A2 equivalent for Chinese). For a beginner, the content will be tailored to accompany your language development. Key skills like autonomous learning and reflection will be worked on through a portfolio of tasks, developed with tutorial support.

Modules

The module is organized into two interlinked Streams, both of which students will complete.

In Stream 1, students are introduced to the foundational ideas, theories, and developments of Globalization Past and Present through a comprehensive, international perspective on world political, cultural, social, and economic history. This segment reorients discussions of globalization to include perspectives from the peripheries of the world system, offering a critical framework for understanding globalization as a longstanding historical process rather than a recent phenomenon. Students will examine pivotal moments in global history, exploring how advancements and discoveries have driven societal transformations while also being marked by significant imbalances in power, inequality, and conflict. This stream encourages students to challenge Western-centric and universalized narratives by examining globalization through Eastern and Southern-led experiences and viewpoints. Analyzing globalization from historical and contextual angles, the module addresses issues such as underdevelopment and global disparities, which are fundamental to understanding politics and international relations. Students will explore the long-standing global forces shaping today’s world, approaching globalization from diverse perspectives. Topics include:

  • Core theories of globalization—World Systems Theory, Dependency Theory, and various layered approaches from international relations to analyze globalization
  • Three primary perspectives on globalization: Hyper-globalists, integrationists, transformationalists, and regionalists
  • Global economic history: colonial expansion, trade, and early capitalism
  • The Silk Routes, fur trade, and slave trade as catalysts of early global change: Who financed industrialization?
  • The rise of industrialization and its opposite: deindustrialization and the beginning of the "Great Divide"
  • Encounters with globalization in the South Pacific: the cultural significance of gifting in Polynesian societies
  • Chinese globalization: Confucianism, communism, and the role of copper in trade
  • Indigenous perspectives within the global system: examining marginalization
  • South Asian globalization forces: from the “sweatshops of the world” to a manufacturing powerhouse
  • Latin American views on globalization: coffee economies, the Chavez legacy, and communism

In Stream 2, students will investigate "What's in the News?"

This stream equips students with analytical and methodological skills to understand how major global events are represented and reconstructed across a variety of sources including news, documentaries, film, and academic sources. Students will deconstruct, examine, and critically evaluate the narratives and portrayals surrounding major international events, with an emphasis on methodological analysis. Students will explore dominant and alternative representations to question why and how certain perspectives are emphasized over others and how the methodologies used can determine those representations.

Weekly sessions centre on “What’s in the news?” as a means to interpret, decode, and assess current global events. This approach helps students develop research methods techniques and practices, critically evaluate sources (across a wide range of methods), and construct well-supported arguments using various types of documentary evidence, policy statements, academic texts and a range of methodological approaches. Through this stream, students build essential methodological skills in global affairs, including critical analysis, and the academic approaches central to Global Affairs and International Relations.

In this module you will examine political ideas such as freedom, equality, justice and democracy that have shaped today’s world. You will develop knowledge of the major concepts and ideas underlying political thought which primarily emerged out of and are associated with western political traditions. These ideas will be unpacked and explored through key thinkers and case studies in this module from classical to contemporary political thought. Indicative ideas may include power and freedom, democracy and rights, equality and justice, individual and state, security and militarism, gender, sexuality and queerness, race and nation, and class and capitalism. Students will learn to critically analyse and apply these ideas in both institutional and organisational analyses and through case study scenarios.

Indicative case studies rooted in the European context may include movements such as Just Stop Oil, Black Lives Matter, and the #MeToo Movement. Global Surrogacy; security approaches such as UK Immigration policy; UK National Security policy; Global tobacco control; environmental justice such as UK Climate Coalition; Just Stop Oil; or Fracking.

Indicative institutions within the European context include government and political institutions and European institutions, elections, political parties and interest groups, constitutionalism, bureaucracy and public service, policy-making, civil society and social movements.

This module provides the opportunity to study a new language from scratch and introduces you to basic grammar, vocabulary and cultural contexts. You will apply the language to practical situations using both oral and written skills. 

This module is designed for students who have completed GCSE in Chinese or equivalent. You will further develop your grammar, vocabulary and learning conventions for spelling and pronunciation. You will work with written and recorded texts on a range of cultural, personal and social topics and will develop oral and written communication skills at an intermediate level.