Doing foreign languages at A-level.

Hi all,

I have just finished Spanish GCSE, and I will be starting Spanish A-level in September - obviously, I have knowledge about the Spanish language - pronunciation, the culture and a fair bit of grammar; however, the college which I have applied for, I have just noticed that ANYBODY can do Italian with a B in any other foreign language at GCSE.

I was thinking: do you think that it will be worthwhile me taking on-board Italian as well as Spanish - or do you think it will be too much added stress?

These are the A-levels that I am considering - and I would swap Government & Politics for Italian (if I decided to take it).

SPANISH
HISTORY
ENGLISH LITERATURE
GOVERNMENT & POLITICS

Thank you in advance for your replies, and kind regards.

Hi all,

I have just finished Spanish GCSE, and I will be starting Spanish A-level in September - obviously, I have knowledge about the Spanish language - pronunciation, the culture and a fair bit of grammar; however, the college which I have applied for, I have just noticed that ANYBODY can do Italian with a B in any other foreign language at GCSE.

I was thinking: do you think that it will be worthwhile me taking on-board Italian as well as Spanish - or do you think it will be too much added stress?

These are the A-levels that I am considering - and I would swap Government & Politics for Italian (if I decided to take it).

SPANISH
HISTORY
ENGLISH LITERATURE
GOVERNMENT & POLITICS

Thank you in advance for your replies, and kind regards.

It might be a good idea to pick Italian I'm doing both Spanish and German and what's great about doing two languages is that the exams are very similar so you can sort of revise for both at once... You can plan an essay and the plan for the essay will be useful for both of your languages. You'll also probably be covering the same topics in both languages, so if you learn any facts/statistics to back up your points in essays, again they'll be useful in both languages. In addition for my speaking exams I prepared the same topic for both languages, which meant it was easier for me to remember them. I did Spanish and Italian at GCSE and would have loved the opportunity to study Italian at A-level. There is the risk of confusing vocabulary as Spanish and Italian can be quite similar, however I think your knowledge of Spanish will help you grasp the basics of Italian. I am kind of biased though as I want to study languages at uni and I originally started government and politics but dropped it in the first week and switched to chemistry because I personally didn't enjoy it at all

I was in a similar position as the college I went to offered ab-initio Italian (don't suppose you're looking at Greenhead? )
I took French, German, Italian and Art at AS Level, then in Year 13 i did A Level French, German, Italian and Maths.

I loved Italian and really wanted to continue it as uni, but as I was set on doing 3 languages including Japanese my options were somewhat limited
It's a beautiful language - grammatically I found it really nice as so close to French, but pronunciation is so much nicer as it's much more phonetic (which i've heard Spanish is?). So I'd definitely agree with the other poster that Italian should come easy to you if you're doing Spanish too.

And I can't see that it would disadvantage you later on - except perhaps if you were looking at a uni degree in Politics. If that is the case, then it could be good to look at a couple of uni entry requirements. Generally, humanities courses are fairly flexible. Politics at Newcastle for example says,

At least one A level from a social science or humanities subject such as History, Government and Politics, Geography, English or Philosophy is preferred but not required.

So you'd be well covered with History and Eng Lit.

I was in a similar position as the college I went to offered ab-initio Italian (don't suppose you're looking at Greenhead? )
I took French, German, Italian and Art at AS Level, then in Year 13 i did A Level French, German, Italian and Maths.

I loved Italian and really wanted to continue it as uni, but as I was set on doing 3 languages including Japanese my options were somewhat limited
It's a beautiful language - grammatically I found it really nice as so close to French, but pronunciation is so much nicer as it's much more phonetic (which i've heard Spanish is?). So I'd definitely agree with the other poster that Italian should come easy to you if you're doing Spanish too.

And I can't see that it would disadvantage you later on - except perhaps if you were looking at a uni degree in Politics. If that is the case, then it could be good to look at a couple of uni entry requirements. Generally, humanities courses are fairly flexible. Politics at Newcastle for example says,

At least one A level from a social science or humanities subject such as History, Government and Politics, Geography, English or Philosophy is preferred but not required.

So you'd be well covered with History and Eng Lit.

Hey do you go to greenhead college? I'm applying there


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I did back in 2008 - 2010

Oh nice- Huddersfield represent 😎

Which university do you go to?


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