The study plan could be modified according to every student’s personal interests, so that each student had his or her unique area of expertise. Unfortunately, with a great range of courses at our disposal, came also poor organization and coordination of the lessons, and the student’s often ha to choose between overlapping courses.

The University of Bologna is the oldest university in Europe and one of the best universities in Italy. Its programmes, classes and professors are high-quality and constantly checked thanks to questionnaires handed to the students at the end of each term. The whole university is very internaltional and welcomes thousands of non-Italian students and lecturers every year. The curriculum offers internships with local and national companies starting from the second year, so that every student can get a good grasp of the labor market very soon. The university supports new graduates too. One thing that could be improved is student accommodation and facilities (for instance, canteens).

English and Arabic literature were great, linguistic less. The English literature teacher’s pronunciation was really really bad. Uni facilities were decent. Student life was amazing!
Overall a positive experience! Missing Bologna.

Good course for linguistics and literature, good lecturers and location. Good facilities and decent student life. Maybe there could be more on the field activities and less theory. But overall a solid course.

The Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures of the University of Bologna is an excellent starting point for those interested in a career in the field of languages.
It covers a large number of topics, from literature to linguistics, which obviously changes according to the languages chosen for your study path.
Recommended for those who want to have different possibilities in terms of future university or working career!

I started my Bachelor’s degree studies in 2014 at the University of Bologna. The faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures wasn’t as good as I expected, particularly concerning the study of English which I trusted more. Courses were badly organized and there were more students than the classroom could host. For this reason, often students couldn’t find a seat in order to follow lessons with their best attitude. Moreoveer, the courses didn’t approch subjects properly. There were lots of English classes of course, but each of the courses was focused on grammar and didn’t let students practise the language. I felt very upset by discovering that my English level was pretty bad when I finished my academic studies. The only exams I liked more were those which I took from other faculty and eventually I’ve chosen to write a thesis based on a subject from the Lettera and Philosophy faculty. I’d never suggest this faculty in Bologna.

The university has a very long history and is spread over several departments. Mine was that of languages, where I found excellent teachers, very well prepared and a very young university environment. The classrooms are large and look a little old, like the university itself, some are even frescoed, therefore very welcoming and suggestive.
The only flaw is that being a large university, the larger the classrooms the more crowded it was with people and this at times made it difficult to follow the lessons, especially considering that often the microphones did not work. Another drawback was it happened to me that two lessons overlapped at the same time and for this, I was forced to choose between one subject or another, an organizational gap not to be underestimated.
For the rest, I know that the university also has excellent laboratories, even if my course of study did not foresee their use and that it offers quite unique study paths, which are not easily found in other Italian universities.
I would recommend it to those who want a full-fledged university life and want to experience the university and the city in unison, being that of Bologna a typically large Italian university in a beautiful historic city.

I’m 23 years old, I have a bachelor’s degree in Linguistic and Cultural Mediation and I’ve just started a master’s in Semiotics at Alma Mater Studiorum of Bologna.

From an academic point of view, the course is very coherent and multifaceted, it involves all the fields and the sub-disciplines to which the study of Semiotics can be applied (media, art, geographic communication) and it gives the students the chance to customize their programme by choosing exams from others academic paths (such as cinema, linguistic, philosophy, photography, etc).

During the courses, the teachers give you the possibility to practice what you learn and study – it’s not all theory and boring stuff, but you actually examine and analyze commercial spots, movies, and other narrative texts! What I expect from the course is actually what they are offering at the moment: to build and develop the instruments to read the reality from a semiotic point of you (which includes linguistic, cognitive, perceptive skills that you are invited to grow or sharpen).

Moreover, half of the courses and activities are in English, so there is the chance to improve the language skills too.

There are some aspects that a wannabe Semiologist should consider before attending this course. In the academic contest, the future perspective isn’t well explained. Besides the academic ambitions (PhD, master’s), the other applications or job figures are extremely vague. Of course, you can apply Semiotics to commercial communication, social media strategy, business activity, and so on. But it’s actually up to you, because this isn’t a ‘professionalizing’ degree. You are expected to continue your academic journey or to apply after you have obtained the skills and competencies, this study to something else.

In conclusion, I think that this course is for someone who wants to build an analytic eye on what is around us – which is, to me, a rare and consistent skill that can be useful and sometimes crucial for some jobs (copywriters, art directors, etc).

The program of Scienze Linguistiche it’s based on transversal skills and competencies. the main focus is, obviously, linguistic but the programs of the classes help you to see the subject (Linguistic) from a larger point of view that could be sociological (sociolinguistics), psychological (psycholinguistics), cognitive (Scienze cognitive), and many others. also, a lot of classes could give you some important technical knowledge and skills to analyse and teach the Natural Languages. There are also some laboratories in which improve the knowledge.