The computer science component of CSL seeks to impart a mastery of the techniques and technologies that lie behind what you see on the screen of one of today's computers, giving you a full understanding the computer applications of today, and enabling you to participate in the development of the applications of the future. No prior knowledge of programming is required; some aptitude for mathematics, for the analysis of a system, for recognition of structure will help. For this reason the degree requires a C3 or better in Higher Level maths. For the chosen language (French, German or Irish), this component of CSL will provide you with a degree-level standard of comprehension, grammatical competence and fluency, in both written and spoken language. For those undertaking French or German, a significant feature of the programme is you will spend the third year abroad as an Erasmus exchange student . The CSL degree has an extensive network of exchange agreements with European universities that offer a similar combination of computer science and linguistics, and during the year abroad education in these components of the CSL degree continues, via the relevant language. Besides mastering a particular language, CSL students become acquainted also with the scientific study of language in general (linguistics), as well as technologies specifically focussed on language (computational linguistics). This involves study of such things as the sound systems used by languages generally, how these are produced by humans by manipulating a flow of air, how they can be recognised by a computer from a digital encoding of sound, how syntactic structures show regularities across languages, how a sentence's syntactic structure relates to its meaning, and so on.