This discussion is now closed.

Check out other Related discussions

bilingual uni students

33.33.33

are any of you doing languages (including the one you are bilingual in) at degree level? i've heard that universities really dislike bilingual students doing language degrees...

Reply 1

kellywood_5

17

Personally I've never understood why anyone would want to do a degree in a language they were already fluent or a native speaker in. What's the point? Would they still have to do all the core language modules like everyone else? That would be such a waste of time, and if not, what would they do instead? I don't know if universities dislike them, but I imagine it would be quite awkward trying to work out what modules they would do, and the entrance requirements would have to be different as well.

Reply 2

Saffie

11

universities apparently don't like people who do A Levels in a language they are already fluent in. Because usually the point of doing a language is to show that you are really hard-working and an applied learner, and if you already know the language you aren't proving you can learn.
i wouldn't think universities will be bothered if you're already fluent because at uni there's so much more to the course than being able to speak the language.
but again, future employers may not be as impressed if you've been able to speak french since you were 5 and you have a degree in it, as a pose to if you have purely learnt it at school.

I think its a total waste of an AS/A level subject if you already speak the language! Surely you wouldn't even need to take the language to do it at uni if you really wanted to :confused:

You have 2 sixth form years of free education, you may as well learn something you don't already know, in my opinion!

Reply 3

Manatee

14

I did my first degree in French and Czech - Czech being my mother tongue. I agree that it definitely makes the language side of it easier, but depending on where you study, a certain proportion of the course will involve areas other than just pure language. I was at Oxford, where at least half the degree involves the study of literature. I hadn't done enough schooling in the Czech Republic to have studied any literature, and this was my opportunity to do so. No different from a native English speaker studying English. I did quite a lot of medieval literature, in Czech as well as French, so that was a challenge from the linguistic point of view as well.

I had to tread quite carefully where the "ethics" were concerned though. In my first year I applied for a prestigious travelling scholarship, but only in French - as much as I would have loved to be paid £1,000 to go to Prague, my French tutor thought that it would be unfair if I entered it for Czech (and I agreed with her). I still got it though... :wink:

Reply 4

Connery

This is an interesting dilema for me because, while i am not fluent in Italian , i am equivilent to A-Level i guess, i was thinking of taking it as 1 half of a joint honours degree, but as a previous poster said in , would an employer not be as impressed with this, since i am of Italian origin? say if the job in question does not necessarily require a language?

my choices are Japanese/ Italian at Cardiff, or
Russian studies at Nottingham

Help !! it's virtually 50- 50 at the moment and i only have 3 more weeks to decide
:confused:

thanks

Reply 5

kellywood_5

17

Connery

This is an interesting dilema for me because, while i am not fluent in Italian , i am equivilent to A-Level i guess, i was thinking of taking it as 1 half of a joint honours degree, but as a previous poster said in , would an employer not be as impressed with this, since i am of Italian origin? say if the job in question does not necessarily require a language?

my choices are Japanese/ Italian at Cardiff, or
Russian studies at Nottingham

Help !! it's virtually 50- 50 at the moment and i only have 3 more weeks to decide
:confused:

thanks

Ooh, 3 totally different languages! How did you get around that in your personal statement? I say you should just go for whichever one you think you'll enjoy more. Your case is different because you say you're probably about A-level standard, so if you were put on a post A-level course, you'd be at about the same level as everyone else and could therefore study the same modules. As for employers, I don't think they'd mind since if you went for that degree, you'd have Japanese as well, so you'd still have one language you learnt from scratch.

Reply 6

midnight

1

I'm doing a degree in international management with french and i'm fluent in french but i still find it hard. i was only educated in france until the end of primary school so my grammar isn't very good and as manatee said a lot of the course is focused on things such as literature etc.. so being fluent in a language isn't that much of an advantage. I do find the oral and listening classes easy though. I would never have done a degree in just French though. I think that would be pointless.

My mum did a degree in french studies and she is french. In the end they didn't make her take a year abroad and she didn't have to go to the listening/oral classes because they figured it would be a waste of everyone's time. she did get a first though but it seems like cheating to me.

Reply 7

JennyG

Come to Nottingham!! I'm doing Russian there too - woo for Nottingham~!

Reply 8

belis

17

universities apparently don't like people who do A Levels in a language they are already fluent in. Because usually the point of doing a language is to show that you are really hard-working and an applied learner, and if you already know the language you aren't proving you can learn.

I do not know if they realy dislike it so badly. My Polish A level was accepted as a part of my offer for medicine even though it is my first language and I did not have to study for it at all. I do not know if that would work if I applied for foregin language course at uni.

bilingual uni students

Related discussions

Latest

Trending

Trending

Articles for you