The School of Modern Languages and Cardiff Business School aim to educate our students to become ‘global citizens’. By combining Business Studies with Japanese, a major world language, you will gain a variety of transferable skills and knowledge beneficial to the world of employment, making you competitive and attractive in an increasingly global workforce and opening the doors to a variety of career paths. 

As a joint honours student, you will find that there are often complementary issues and perspectives as well as skills that link subjects, such as critical analysis, historical contexts or recent research. You will spend a similar amount of time on each subject, benefiting from developing your understanding of Business and acquiring a high level of proficiency in your chosen language.    

Japan is one of the most powerful economies in the world, with Japanese businesses and organisations continuing to need English-speaking graduates who can understand Japanese and who are knowledgeable of Japanese culture and society.

In terms of language acquisition, this course will enable you to develop your writing, oral and aural skills through a range of learning activities, and using a variety of audio-visual materials. In your first year, in addition to your language tuition, an introduction to history and culture seeks to provide a solid foundation for more specialised studies as you progress through your course.  

Your understanding of the language will be further developed and refined during your year abroad, when you will experience life in Japan, providing you with the opportunity to truly immerse yourself into the Japanese way of life.

In the final year, you have the opportunity to write a dissertation, which stimulates initiative, and can serve as a useful preparation for postgraduate study.

It is important to remember that studying languages is not just about the language itself. It involves exploring many aspects of a country, and at Cardiff we aspire to offer a genuinely broad course that offers challenging and stimulating modules.     

On completion of this four-year programme, you will have a high level of proficiency in the Japanese language, as well as a critical understanding of key aspects of modern and contemporary Japanese, culture, politics and society.  

Distinctive features

• in the first two years on the BSc degree course in Business Studies and Japanese you take modules from the Business Management degree course and begin your study of the Japanese language and Japan
• during the first two years about twice as much class contact time is spent studying Japanese as is spent on the business studies modules
• we place great emphasis on strengthening reading, writing, oral and aural skills. These vital communication skills are practiced and developed through regular classwork exercises, written work, use of video and audio material, and interaction with native speakers
• your third year is spent at a Japanese university.