In-Country Honours Programme at Otago

Honours at Otago is for those students who wish to take their language studies to a higher level of proficiency and understanding. Honours involves taking more papers in your subject area. It’s a way to focus more of your attention in a chosen subject area.

If you have good first-year grades and at least 126 points you can enter the programme at the start of the second year. It’s also possible to enter at the start of the third year. If you have already completed your BA degree, then you can still do the in-country study programme, by taking the final year Honours programme (400-level study) as a Postgraduate Diploma in Arts instead.

The culmination of the Honours degree comes in the fourth year.

Otago has a unique 400-level programme. It works like this:

Semester 1

You undertake in-country* study at a partner university in the target language. Here you take the equivalent of a full-time load for one semester, usually one paper in language and another one or two in culture or literature. The points earned for these papers are credited to your Otago degree and you pay only Otago fees. While overseas you also begin preparation of the dissertation you will submit at the end of the year in Otago. Special arrangements for in-country study have been made with selected partner universities in China, France, Germany, Japan, Spain and Latin America.

In most cases living overseas will be more expensive than living in Dunedin. We have various ways to help with that: scholarships are available at some overseas universities, Otago travel allowances and Humanities exchange scholarships will take the sting out of the travel and StudyLink loans continue while you are overseas.

Semester 2

You return to Otago, take one paper here (LANG 441) and complete your dissertation (LANG 490). As a result of your in-country experience you’ll have a depth of knowledge of language and culture you could gain in no other way.

In-country Honours or Postgraduate Diploma can be taken in Chinese or Japanese, French, German or Spanish.

For more information

The Department of Languages and Cultures has more information on the Honours programme. If you are interested, contact the Department of Languages and Cultures on languages@otago.ac.nz.

* in-country is defined as study in the country where the target language is spoken as the indigenous language.