foreign languages students, are you boys or girls?

I wonder what the proportion is.

Reply 1

princessa

there are about 200 girls on my course and about 20 boys. not great for the old love life but hey.

Reply 2

A lot more girls than boys, I imagine. When I went to an AS French conference in London last October/November, there were hardly any boys in the hall at all! My class is 60:40 girls:boys, but 5 isn't exactly a representative sample! It's easier to see if you look at the teachers. As far as I know, there was only one male languages teacher and he's just left, so the department is now completely female, just like the English department.

Reply 3

leannemarie

11

At AS there were 15 girls and no boys in Spanish and in A2 French there will be 10 girls and 1 boy. Maybe they can't hack it :wink:

but we have a good laugh

Reply 4

leannemann

At AS there were 15 girls and no boys in Spanish and in A2 French there will be 10 girls and 1 boy. Maybe they can't hack it :wink:

but we have a good laugh

Wow, that's a pretty big class for an A2 language. More than twice as big as mine anyway. I forgot to add that when my brother did AS French at college, it was him and 6 girls, which he loved every minute of!

Reply 5

leannemarie

11

kellywood_5

Wow, that's a pretty big class for an A2 language. More than twice as big as mine anyway. I forgot to add that when my brother did AS French at college, it was him and 6 girls, which he loved every minute of!

There were loads of AS Frenchies at my school, so many that we had to have 2 sets, so about 20 I'd guess. Loads have quit though because they all found it ridiculously hard :eek:

Reply 6

WhatFreshHell?

2

In my French class last year there were 5 girls and me the only boy, and two of the girls were stunningly attractive. German's always been about even. I think it's a bit like physics only the other way round, with bigger proportions of women but guys doing it isn't unusual. I don't think languages are seen as a "girly" subject, but it is a bit poncey like philosophy.

Reply 7

Crimson Black

13

Languages are poncy??? There is a rarity of language students/people with language skills in the UK jobs market today - it is highly prized with employers!!! Or maybe I'm grasping the wrong end of the stick at the moment?

Reply 8

fuglyduckling

2

Haha. I sure hope that Languages courses attract more girls than guys!

Reply 9

priya

14

overall, girls will outnumber boys in language departments/courses. out of this though, you will find that boys may outnumber girls in departments such as German and Russian, and possibly oriental languages and/or Arabic. The romance languages tend to be the girly ones :p:

Reply 10

princessa

so far the poll is more even than i thought it would be. my school was all girls so it doesnt count, but at uni boys are way outnumbered.

i agree with what priya said about romance languages being a bit girly!

on a different note, my findings after extensive research is that despite being small in number, boys who do spanish are generally very pretty. french less so. german is very erratic, but some are gods. girls tend to all be pretty average but on the whole there are few boggers. we are a cute bunch, languages students.

Reply 11

Lirael Abhorsen

well i'm going to be studying Portuguese at uni, there were a few guys on the course but not sure which language option they went for.. cos its politics history and something= modern european studies

Reply 12

leannemann

There were loads of AS Frenchies at my school, so many that we had to have 2 sets, so about 20 I'd guess. Loads have quit though because they all found it ridiculously hard :eek:

At my school there were only 6 of us to begin with, 3 boys and 3 girls, but one of the boys quit in about 2 weeks because he supposedly found it 'too hard', even though we were still going over GCSE stuff at that point! I think the 5 of us who did AS are all carrying on to A2, but one girl hasn't been to a single A2 lesson and one boy who has very poor attendance may not even be let back in sixth form next year. I doubt he'll pass AS French anyway, so we could be down to 3 or 4 at A2. I guess it's because languages have a reputation for being hard at A-level and my school is considerably less academic than yours!

Reply 13

Lady Narcissus

14

When I took French there was 1 boy with 20 girls. In German 12 girls and we had two different boys, who both quit

Reply 14

vickybailey17

At my sixth form our Spanish class started off with about 10 girls and 3 boys which very quickly dropped to 4 girls and 1 boy, all the others complained about it being 'too hard' in the first lesson! Although we do enjoy ganging up on our 1 male student and he gets all embarressed when we chat about 'girly' stuff :p:

Reply 15