The BA programme in Development Studies is a combined honours degree, allowing students to blend a critical awareness of international development, with a solid grounding in another discipline or subject area. This allows Development Studies students to place the knowledge they gain as part of their degree within a specific regional, cultural or disciplinary context. Combined-honours degrees in Arabic are intended to give students a solid grounding in Modern Standard and classical Arabic, as well as conversational ability in Egyptian colloquial Arabic, in combination with a second subject. Intensive study of a wide range of Arabic language and literature is a compulsory feature of combined-honours degrees in Arabic. Students are required to spend the third year of study at a university in the Middle East.