Italy is one of Europe’s most creative and distinctive civilisations with a fascinating history and culture. You will receive a good foundation in both the language and cultural studies and will spend a year teaching, working or studying in Italy. The small class sizes and vibrant Italian Society make it easy to get to know teaching staff and other students. The mixture of exchange students and Italian and UK staff creates a stimulating learning environment. This joint programme also offers a comprehensively broad and challengingly deep training in the academic study of the English language. It aims to develop serious academic interest in and specialist knowledge of all well-understood aspects of the English language both historically and currently, and at all relevant levels of structure and analysis. In so doing, it offers opportunities to develop intellectual and methodological capacities in rigorous, exact and strongly-theorised analysis. English language is a subject which is both historical and descriptive, and both text-focused and theoretical. In these several respects, the subject can be seen as encompassing and reflecting the traditions of both philology and linguistic theory. The University of Edinburgh’s linguistics and phonetics equipment, for use experimentally and in fieldwork, is among the best in the world. You can also study Scots language which has its own rich linguistic and literary tradition.