Lusophone literature and cultures personal statement example

Why do you want to study this course or subject?

I began learning Portuguese because of a borrowed CD. A neighbour who had worked in Lisbon lent me a fado recording, and although I could follow the shape of the sentences from Spanish, the vocabulary kept slipping away from me. I started writing the words I recognised in a notebook, then the words I did not, and within a few months I was listening to Brazilian community radio online to hear how differently the same language could sound. What began as curiosity about pronunciation turned into an interest in why a single language carries such different literary worlds: Portugal, Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, all connected by grammar and separated by history. I want to study that connection properly rather than in fragments. Reading Fernando Pessoa in a facing-page edition showed me how much I was missing without the original, and how much a translator has to decide on my behalf. Clarice Lispector's short stories, which I found in the city library, unsettled me in a way I could not explain from the English alone. My A-level in English Literature has taught me to read closely and to argue from evidence, and Spanish has given me a grammatical foundation and a habit of reading slowly with a dictionary beside me. A degree in Lusophone literature and cultures would let me build the language to a level where the texts answer back, and let me study colonial and postcolonial writing as part of the same conversation rather than as separate topics. I am drawn particularly to the poetry and prose that came out of the African Lusophone countries in the twentieth century, and to the question of what a shared literary language means when the histories behind it are so uneven.

How have your qualifications and studies helped you to prepare?

My A-levels have shaped how I read. English Literature has been the most demanding: writing on Othello and on Carol Ann Duffy taught me to build an argument from the language on the page rather than from a summary of themes, and my teacher's insistence on quoting precisely has made me a much more careful reader. Spanish has given me the practical skills I will rely on in a degree with a strong language element, including translation exercises both ways, and I have found that comparing Spanish and Portuguese structures helps me remember both. Our study of Federico García Lorca introduced me to reading poetry in a second language, which was slow at first and is still slow, but no longer intimidating. History has been unexpectedly useful for this application. A coursework unit on European empires led me to read about the Portuguese presence in West Africa and Brazil, and I chose to write my extended piece on how plantation economies were justified in contemporary accounts. That reading gave me context for the literature I was picking up separately, and made me understand why so much Lusophone writing is preoccupied with memory and land. I also completed the EPQ in Year 12, producing an essay comparing two published English translations of the same Portuguese poem. I did not have the language to judge fidelity fully, so I focused on rhythm, register and what each translator chose to explain. My teacher's feedback about overstating my conclusions was fair, and I rewrote the final section more cautiously.

What else have you done to prepare outside of education, and why are these experiences useful?

Since I could not take Portuguese as a subject, I made my own arrangements. For the past eighteen months I have attended a Saturday language exchange at a community centre near the market, where a retired man from Porto and a woman from São Paulo practise English with me while I stumble through Portuguese. Hearing two accents in the same hour has been the best thing about it, and both have been patient with my mistakes. Alongside this I keep a notebook project: each week I take one song, poem or newspaper paragraph, copy it out, translate it, and write a short note on one word I could not render. I am now on my hundred and second entry, and the early ones are embarrassing to reread, which I take as a good sign. I used a free public library card for everything I could not buy, and requested several titles through the inter-library service. I work Saturday mornings in a bakery, which has taught me to be quick, polite and accurate with money under pressure, and to talk easily with people I do not know. At school I help run a reading group for Year 8 pupils, choosing short stories and asking questions rather than giving answers, which has improved my own explanations enormously. I play in a local badminton club on Thursdays, mostly for the exercise and the company. What I take from all of this into university is stamina for slow work: the willingness to sit with a text I do not yet understand and come back to it the following week.

This example has 4,673 characters across the three answers. Use it for ideas and structure. Your own UCAS answers must fit within 4,000 characters in total, including spaces.

Review this personal statement

Latest reviews