Outreach Events & Activities
Outreach Events & Activities
We offer a range of events and outreach initiatives to support prospective students, our widening participation aims and school language teaching.
My name is Dr. Emilia Wilton-Godberfforde and I oversee a diverse range of outreach and widening participation events at the Faculty of MMLL.
Languages are an important part of our daily lives in so many different ways. We believe that successful language learning should be fun and engaging. Learning languages fuels our curiosity about other cultures and helps us to better understand our own.
Learning languages truly opens so many doors! Employers repeatedly tell us that they appreciate the transferable skills acquired by graduates when they have studied languages, linguistics and cultures at university. This training helps you become an excellent communicator with a sharp eye when analysing material.
Here at MMLL, we are proud to have expertise across a range of languages, topics and chronological periods.
With enthusiasm, we endeavour:
- to support and promote the study of modern languages and linguistics in higher education
- to support and promote the study of languages in schools, especially at secondary level
- to contribute to the University’s Access and Participation goal by widening participation in the study of languages and linguistics, in the humanities more broadly, and in applications to Cambridge.
Please take a look at our different initiatives and come visit us at our Open Days! If you are interested in partnering with us (for Year Abroad Ambassadors, Creative Translation Ambassadors or other ventures), please do look at the information below and get in touch!
- Open Days
- New 'Languages in the world' annual in conversation lecture series
Year Abroad Ambassadors (working with Year 8 and 9 classes in schools)
Would you like to connect your Year 8 or Year 9 class with one of our Year Abroad students? Then sign up for our Year Abroad Ambassadors scheme! Year Abroad students are partnered with schools and correspond with a Year 8 or 9 class once every half term, encouraging them to think about taking their language learning journeys further. Year Abroad Ambassadors are encouraged to arrange a visit to their partner school when they are visiting the UK, or to set up a video call if this is not possible. MMLL students study language combinations from among German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Russian.
Contact: mrb208@cam.ac.uk or outreach@mmll.cam.ac.uk (Co-funded by MMLL and the Schröder Fund and the Faculty)
- Language Specific Tasters: this will be updated for 2026-27
- Subject Masterclasses - The University's Subject Masterclasses offer Y12 students an opportunity to experience typical undergraduate teaching and to find out more about what it's like to be a student here. Each event includes two subject-specific sessions (including a mini lecture and an interactive, workshop-style session), an introduction to the admissions process and a Q&A session with current staff and students. Please note that advance booking is essential for these events and there is a cost to attend. Funded places are available for eligible students.
- The Subject Matters
- For further listings, please see our events page.
The Faculty, the University and its Colleges are committed to widening participation to the University and to higher education in general. Hundreds of outreach initiatives and events are run each year both in Cambridge and in schools and colleges across the UK.
We are committed to helping all students thrive.
Sutton Trust Summer Schools (and Cambridge-specific website)
Sutton Trust Summer Schools are free subject-specific residential courses for Year 12 (or equivalent) students studying at state-maintained schools in the UK. The five-day summer schools in July and August allow students to explore their interest in one of 26 subject courses and gain an insight into what it is like to live and study as a first-year undergraduate student at Cambridge.
Think like a linguist is an exciting outreach program run by the Translation Exchange at the University of Oxford in partnership with the University of Cambridge, literary charity the Stephen Spender Trust, and secondary school Hollingworth Academy in Rochdale. Cambridge MMLL delivers sessions to Year 8 students in both Blackpool and Rochdale.
Creative Translations Ambassadors
The Creative Translations Ambassadors program has run in British schools successfully since 2018. Cambridge MMLL is delighted to work in partnership with the University of Oxford and every year since 2024 we have trained a cohort of students to run a series of innovative translation workshops across different languages (French, German, Italian, Catalan, Spanish, Mandarin and Japanese to date). We have partnered with a range of schools in the Cambridge area.
Year Abroad Ambassadors
This scheme connect schools (classes in Year 8 or Year 9) with one of the MML Faculty's Year Abroad students. Year Abroad ambassadors correspond with the allocated Year 8 or 9 class once every half term, encouraging them to think about taking their language learning journeys further. The ambassadors arrange a visit to their partner school when they visit the UK or set up a video call.
MMLL students study language combinations from among German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Russian.
Contact: mrb208@cam.ac.uk or outreach@mmll.cam.ac.uk (Co-funded by MMLL and the Schröder Fund and the Faculty).
Insight Explore and Insight Discover
Insight is an academic programme which aims to help students start thinking about higher education choices and their future. A series of events throughout Years 9, 10 and 11 helps to develop and broaden students’ interests and tackle the barriers many students face when applying to university.
- HE+ programme
- Modern and Medieval Languages
- Linguistics
- Looking for ways to explore your subject beyond the curriculum? Then this website is for you. Each topic is produced by Cambridge postgraduate students and academics at the cutting edge of research in their field. The topics provide guided activities, questions to think about and suggestions for further reading. MML resources include French, German, Italian and Spanish. The main subject pages also give you a quick guide to what it would be like to study the subject at university level and suggest some further resources to check out.
The University's Area Links Scheme enables the Cambridge Colleges to build effective, coherent relationships with schools and colleges across the UK. It gives schools and colleges a direct way of staying in touch with the University by providing specific contact points, and it enables the Cambridge Colleges to get to know specific regions and the local educational environments. All Cambridge Colleges share a willingness to provide advice and guidance, and to listen to your perspectives on what we can do to help make Cambridge as accessible as possible to all students with the ability and potential to study here.
- University-wide support for disabled students
- University-wide support for mature students
University-wide support for students who are or have been in care
We welcome applications from UK students who are or have previously been in care. The University’s Realise project holds special events for young people in care and can help with travel funds to visit Cambridge. For the care leavers currently studying here we are able to offer a wide range of support and guidance.
This playlist is a compilation of videos created by colleagues across an international range of universities, including: Cambridge, UCL, Reading, Warwick, Cork, Princeton, Bristol, Edinburgh, Johns Hopkins, KCL and Queen's Belfast. Videos have been recorded in the target language on texts set for French and German A levels. These are great resources for sixth form students and teachers alike! These videos (CCARL) are to be used for educational purposes only.
Introduction to CCARL French resources by Christophe Gagne.
List of resources
L'Étranger, Albert Camus
Thérèse Desqueyroux, François Mauriac
La Mère Sauvage, Guy de Maupassant (with accompanying handout)
La Haine, Mathieu Kassovitz (2 separate resources)
La Place (1983), Annie Ernaux
Le Gone du Chaâba (1986), Azouz Begag
No et moi: l'adolescence et la marginalité, Delphine de Vigan
Kiffe kiffe demain, Faïza Guène (2 videos: parts 1 & 2)
Bonjour Tristesse, Françoise Sagan
Au revoir les enfants, Louis Malle
Tartuffe, Molière (3 videos: parts 1, 2 & 3)
Interview with Gérald Garutti
Chocolat, Claire Denis (1988)
Entre les murs (2008)
Introduction to CCARL German resources by Silke Mentchen and Stefanie Green.
List of resources
Barbara (2012), Christian Petzold
Zonenkinder, Jana Hensel
Das Leben der Anderen, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
Andorra, Max Frisch
Der kaukasische Kreidekreis, Bertolt Brecht
Dawn song 'Sîne Klâwen', Wolfram von Eschenbach
https://www.youtube.com/@mmllcambridge
This channel hosts a series of videos that have been produced by members of our Faculty and within various colleges. We encourage you to look through and find topics that might be of interest. Please note that this is an archive and many of the videos date back several years.
A tour of the MMLL Library, University of Cambridge
Explore our impressive Faculty library with this video. Our collection is divided into sections covering the ten languages taught in MMLL, as well as medieval European languages, linguistics, art, and cinema.
MMLL: The Year Abroad Experience
A Student's Year Abroad (Paris and Dakar)
The Year Abroad for Russian-Language Students, Cambridge Slavonic Studies
Explore these three videos to get a taste of what our students do on their year abroad.
Our outreach programme encourages school students to explore new languages and cultures, and to continue studying languages at the next educational stage.
Please contact us with any queries by email at outreach@mmll.cam.ac.uk.
Sign up to our Outreach mailing list
- Villiers Park
- Villiers Park is an educational charity. They also provide modules in French, German and Spanish.
- Advice for teachers and advisors
- Cambridge Admissions Office (CAO) and College admissions offices are always available to give advice to teachers on admissions policy and other matters.
- University-wide events for teachers and advisors
- The Prince’s Teaching Institute
- The Prince's Teaching Institute has worked in partnership with the University of Cambridge since the charity was created in 2006. Many of its academic speakers are drawn from Cambridge faculties, including several from the Cambridge MMLL Faculty. We hope to meet you on a Prince's Trust event soon!
Please do encourage your students / classes to explore the resources in the link above (Online resources for students).
See full details on the Cambridge website.
Please find some sample tests which will give prospective applicants a sense of the type of assessment we use as part of our Admissions process in MMLL. This is related to undergraduate study in the four courses (triposes) (Modern and Medieval Languages, Linguistics, History and Modern Languages and Linguistics and Modern Languages*).
* LML sample currently not provided