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"Languages are an easy A level."

This annoys me a great deal.

During a lunchtime, a few people at school were having a heated discussion about the hardest A level on offer at our school. It went a little something like this...

Person A: "OMFG, aNyThinG wHich iZnt Maffs, furver maffs, bIolOgy, CkemistrY or Fyzicz iS lyk EpiC FaIl, inni?"
Person B: "YeAh man, lyK medicine inni? If lyK, U don'T do medicine at uni, u iZnt worff nuffink."
Person C: "Fo sho."

I suggested that foreign languages were the hardest option, and got myself absolutely ripped into. Nobody even acknowledged a lanaguage as a "respected" A level and worse still languages were dubbed, almost unanimously, as "useless" unless you plan to get a job in the target country...

Personally, I chose 2 languages (french and german), History, Chemistry and Physics and found languages by FAR the most difficult. There's such a massive amount you need to know and be able to analyse. And even if you wanted to, you'd have trouble doing any effective revision close to a listening/comprehension exam. It seems to me as though you need to be able to put in a concerted effort over the duration of the whole course.

So what is everyone's opinion on the above statement? Agree/disagree?

P.S. Yes I know they're easy if you're already fluent in one of them...

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Reply 1
who even cares what's respected. i mean jesus. oh crap, i do disrespected subjects and i'm happy therefore i must become unhappy cause of other people's dumb 'views'.

WHO CARES ABOUT THIS CRAP

i agree with you by the way, just saying it's not worth thinking about at all. why bother?
Totally underrated. I'm taking Chinese (for at least three years), and plan to take French next year (for three years). It's crazy. If you miss a lecture, you've missed a week's worth of material. You have to do every single assignment to do well, you have to prepare laboriously for orals (if the language has different sounds e.g. CHINESE!). It's my most demanding class, and I'm taking classes that demand 200 pages of intense reading per week.
Reply 3
Sapientia
who even cares what's respected. i mean jesus. oh crap, i do disrespected subjects and i'm happy therefore i must become unhappy cause of other people's dumb 'views'.

WHO CARES ABOUT THIS CRAP

i agree with you by the way, just saying it's not worth thinking about at all. why bother?


Well how difficult/respected an A level is can carry some weight. Some universities don't recognise certain A levels (not languages) because they don't provide 'adequate preperation for undergraduate study.'

It's also a little frustrating to be looked down upon for taking some tough A levels, which aren't recognised as such (albeit by narrow minded randomers).
Reply 4
ragnar_jonsson
Totally underrated. I'm taking Chinese (for at least three years), and plan to take French next year (for three years). It's crazy. If you miss a lecture, you've missed a week's worth of material. You have to do every single assignment to do well, you have to prepare laboriously for orals (if the language has different sounds e.g. CHINESE!). It's my most demanding class, and I'm taking classes that demand 200 pages of intense reading per week.


Dude, Chinese? Thats gotta be tough.

But yeah, it's difficult not to fall behind sometimes, and if you do it's even harder to try and catch up, I find.
Get Tactical
Dude, Chinese? Thats gotta be tough.

But yeah, it's difficult not to fall behind sometimes, and if you do it's even harder to try and catch up, I find.


Yeah, catching up is a nightmare. I'm seven weeks in, and we're expected to have a basic vocabulary of 100 characters, with about 50 "lesser" characters (e.g. non-recurring). We're expected to show full tonal fluency by now, and be able to write, in characters, anything the teacher says regarding the material.

I'm going to try and finish all of my week's assignments this weekend to see if that makes things easier (thus I don't have to spend two hours the night before).

Oh, and I'm currently on my way to get a B in the class, despite it being the class I spend the most time on. :frown:
Reply 6
Not everyone can take languages...and because of that, they will hate.

Hater Gonna Hate, Fo Sho
I challenge anyone to get the French literature I had to study for A2, read it, then write a well-structured essay in timed conditions and then come back to me and say foreign languages is easy at A-level.

*Has terrible flashbacks of trying to read said book*
Get Tactical

I suggested that foreign languages were the hardest option, and got myself absolutely ripped into. Nobody even acknowledged a lanaguage as a "respected" A level and worse still languages were dubbed, almost unanimously, as "useless" unless you plan to get a job in the target country...

Well that is clearly an arrogant view point. I did A-level German and got a C and I found it much harder than my other subjects too. I spent the least time on German and that showed with my results. The hardest thing about languages is that you can't do last minute revision like other subjects. In fact you can't really do a few months revision. Languages have to be learnt gradually in order to understand the grammar, structures, idioms and vocab. This must include independent work every week too which includes practicing listening, grammar and reading (which I usually couldn't be bothered with!) If an A-level student doesn't do all of this, it is very hard to achieve a high mark grade that is B or above, unless you can remember a lot in your lessons or do well on courswork. They are 'fo sho' dick heads!
Reply 9
george_evertonian
Well that is clearly an arrogant view point. I did A-level German and got a C and I found it much harder than my other subjects too. I spent the least time on German and that showed with my results. The hardest thing about languages is that you can't do last minute revision like other subjects. In fact you can't really do a few months revision. Languages have to be learnt gradually in order to understand the grammar, structures, idioms and vocab. This must include independent work every week too which includes practicing listening, grammar and reading (which I usually couldn't be bothered with!) If an A-level student doesn't do all of this, it is very hard to achieve a high mark grade that is B or above, unless you can remember a lot in your lessons or do well on courswork. They are 'fo sho' dick heads!


Yeah I agree, it's kind of something you need to make part of your life and stay on top of. It's also odd that people fail to recognise the benefits, of which there are many, other than being able to speak the language.
Get Tactical
This annoys me a great deal.

During a lunchtime, a few people at school were having a heated discussion about the hardest A level on offer at our school. It went a little something like this...

Person A: "OMFG, aNyThinG wHich iZnt Maffs, furver maffs, bIolOgy, CkemistrY or Fyzicz iS lyk EpiC FaIl, inni?"
Person B: "YeAh man, lyK medicine inni? If lyK, U don'T do medicine at uni, u iZnt worff nuffink."
Person C: "Fo sho."

I suggested that foreign languages were the hardest option, and got myself absolutely ripped into. Nobody even acknowledged a lanaguage as a "respected" A level and worse still languages were dubbed, almost unanimously, as "useless" unless you plan to get a job in the target country...

Personally, I chose 2 languages (french and german), History, Chemistry and Physics and found languages by FAR the most difficult. There's such a massive amount you need to know and be able to analyse. And even if you wanted to, you'd have trouble doing any effective revision close to a listening/comprehension exam. It seems to me as though you need to be able to put in a concerted effort over the duration of the whole course.

So what is everyone's opinion on the above statement? Agree/disagree?

P.S. Yes I know they're easy if you're already fluent in one of them...

I totally agree with you, I think they're definitely one of the hardest options because a lot of it relies on self study and you do have to do a lot. It's also one of those subjects you can't really revise for and as you said, I think you do have to put in a lot of effort during the whole course. Obviously if those people think languages are useless then they're not looking at the full picture or just don't know a lot about what you can do with them. They're probably people who think stuff like "Languages are like well easy innit coz u just have to learn wordz and that ent hard."
What a bunch of idiots. Languages ARE hard! Sure, Maths, Physics etc are pretty hard, too, but so are languages. I do Maths, German, Physics, Chemistry and Russian so I think I'm being fair. I've found them to be equally difficult at times.
Seriously, though, it's absolute rubbish what they say. "If you don't do medicine, you're not worth anything" Really?
Reply 12
It's subjective :colonhash:

It really depends on how good you are in the language before you take the A-level. I took Arabic A-level as I could speak it pretty well beforehand but if the OP did (assuming he doesn't speak Arabic) he/she would end up getting a U.

Universities, especially the higher ranked ones take into account if the A-level Language you took is your first Language.
I don't know what annoys me more, their ignorance and arrogance or the fact that they can't speak properly.

Good luck getting into medicine:ahee:
This is something I've just been studying in sociology, education for democracy vs education for profit. Basically nowadays arts and humanities are being marginalised in place of science, and it is not just schools doing this but universities etc are more keen to take cuts in arts and humanities than in science departments.

Languages are VERY hard, whereas science I found easy.

At uni I'm doing Eng Lit, Eng Lang, and Sociology and according to some people I've met, Eng Lit isn't a real degree anymore!
You're right, languages are hard. I gave them up after my abysmal gcse results in french.

Though I'd also say they're pretty useless as well - you've got english, why don't you master that instead?

Rhetorical question btw.
Language a-levels were hard when I did a-levels. Far harder than maths was, or further maths.
Reply 17
I plan on taking French at A level, but you guys are putting me off lol.
How hard is it compared to GCSE? I'll probably get an A at GCSE, and I'm confident with tenses and sentence structure. Is it a lot more advanced then?
I feel they are too easy and don't really seem to give you a decent level of fluency in the language. I'm actually on a school trip to France at the moment, and most of my classmates struggle to say anything more than very basic sentences in French (one of them asked earlier what "we're leaving" is!). They all got As in their Highers (equivalent to AS).

That said maths is hardly difficult either, it's also a very rubbish A-level.
(edited 13 years ago)
Reply 19
Languages aren't easy a levels unless you actually know the language.

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