System of Required and Optional Courses

Over the course of your studies, you will be required to earn 180 credits. Of those, 47 come from required courses in our department. The other necessary credits can come from your second subject, from the core courses, and also from optional courses.

Each year you have a different number of courses that are required. In addition to these required subjects, you have two other kinds of courses you need to take: Compulsory-Optional Courses and courses related to your Bachelor’s Thesis.

Additionally, there are prerequisite courses that you must pass in order to progress through your studies. This is especially true in the first year.

Compulsory-Optional Courses

During your bachelor studies, you will have to complete at least four of these courses and at least one of those four must be a literature course and a second of the four must be a culture or history course (that is the compulsory part). Which subjects you choose is up to you (that is the optional part), you can choose anything for the other two, and you are welcome to participate in more than four if you have the time and interest.

Note that Combined students do not have the requirement about which kinds of courses they must take. They only need to take four compulsory-optional courses of any kind.

You can see a list of the courses on offer on the page Offered Optional Courses. Note that you are able to start taking these kinds of courses beginning in your third semester.

Bachelor’s Thesis Courses

All students must begin taking courses related to their bachelor’s thesis beginning in their fourth semester. In the fourth semester, there is the course BPP_AJ Bachelor Thesis Project. In the fifth semester, there is the course BP_AJ Bachelor Thesis. And in the sixth semester, there is the course BPD_AJ Bachelor Thesis Completion. (If your thesis is in another department, all of the codes will be different after the “_”.)

Passing each of these courses requires work with a supervisor. You can find out what our teachers are interested in supervising in IS in the application Packages of Topics (under Student). Then you can contact a potential supervisor and work out all necessary things with them.

As you haven’t had any ELT Methodology courses in your study programme, you cannot choose a Methodology topic.

If you are determined to investigate the area of teaching, you can apply to write your thesis with one of the core general subject departments (e.g., pedagogy or psychology).

Students who will write their thesis at the Department of English, in addition to the above, are strongly recommended to pass either AJPV_ASWR Academic Skills: Writing or AJPV_WRIB Expository Writing during their second year.

Semester by Semester

What follows is a possible look at how you can fulfill your requirements each semester.

In the first semester, you have 9 credits from required courses at our department. You must pass all of them (except Introduction to English Language for Teachers) in order to take the B parts of the course in the second semester.

In the second semester, you have 11 credits from required courses at our department. At the end of this semester you need to pass 3 important exams (Grammar 1B, Practical Language 1B, and Seminar in English Phonetics B); passing all three of them will allow you to continue to the second year.

In the third semester, you have 7 credits from required courses at our department. Most of them require you to have passed the Complex Exam in order to be enrolled (as will most of the required courses for the rest of the program). Additionally, you can begin taking compulsory-optional courses now, including AJPV_ASWR Academic Skills: Writing.

In the fourth semester, you have 8 credits from required courses at our department. You can continue taking compulsory-optional courses, including either AJPV_ASWR Academic Skills: Writing or AJPV_WRIB Expository Writing. You must sign up for the Bachelor Thesis Project course (and discuss your ideas immediately with a supervisor), no matter where you are writing your thesis.

In the fifth semester, you have 10 credits from required courses at our department. You can continue taking compulsory-optional courses. You must sign up for the Bachelor Thesis course, no matter where you are writing your thesis.

In the sixth semester, you only have 2 credits from required courses at our department. None of your courses last more than 6 weeks (as you need all of your credits by 20 April in order to be eligible for the state exams). You must sign up for the Bachelor Thesis Completion course, no matter where you are writing your thesis.

Then you need only complete the state exams and defend your thesis and you will have your bachelor’s diploma.