[Frey]

Hey guys,

I'll be studying languages at uni soon and was just wondering from your experience, how many hours did you put into learning your language per day (esecpially people doing it as a degree) to make sufficient progress? I'm thinking of joining a number of clubs and taking on more languages by self teaching, so I don't want to abuse my main degree languages; I'd say a solid three hours, not including the language classes themselves?

Also my languages are pretty ancient, so I don't need to listen/speak, just read and write.

[hannah_dru]

Never counted up until my final year. Then I was doing anything from 5 to 8 hours a day outside of lectures.

[sanksta]

I do combined English literature and Spanish so this may differ for you, but I work pretty much 9-6 on weekdays (with classes included in that time), plus a couple of hours in the evenings depending on my work load at the time and then a varying amount of time on the weekend too. You're unlikely to have many contact hours as an arts student so you really are expected to put in the time when you're not in class. However, this may of course also vary according to your university. But don't discount the fact that you're likely to also be doing cultural modules that will require reading academic works in English and writing essays.
Despite this, I've never feel that I lack the time to do everything that I want to outside of my degree so I see no reason why you couldn't get involved in as much as you want to. One of the benefits of an arts degree is that it lets you plan your work around what you're doing as you'll probably have less actual deadlines than a science student. The best thing to do is to start off by joining everything that interests you then to cut it down throughout the year if you find that it gets too much when you have a better idea of what you really enjoy and want to stay involved in. This is also likely to naturally happen as you find that some societies don't quite live up to your expectations but others are better than you ever imagined.
Good luck and enjoy it!