The Student Room Group
School of Oriental and African Studies
London

A Week in the Life: SOAS edition

Scroll to see replies

Reply 60
jonboyyork
Ok since this thread has digressed slightly...here's mine........



i guess you're doing arabic and history or something?
how do u like arabic? do u know what happens if u have taken 2 years of arabic already? do u start again?

and is anyone doing Politics and arabic? or Politics and something else? i'd like to know how the two topics are covered during a week, if i make sense :biggrin:
School of Oriental and African Studies
London
alex_h
i guess you're doing arabic and history or something?
how do u like arabic? do u know what happens if u have taken 2 years of arabic already? do u start again?

and is anyone doing Politics and arabic? or Politics and something else? i'd like to know how the two topics are covered during a week, if i make sense :biggrin:

I started with Arabic and History, but the faculty are letting me (and quite a few others) switch to Arabic and Persian in September.

If you've done two years of Arabic at university then you really shouldn't be starting the course at first year level. They have a test in September for those who want to go straight into the second year.
If you mean you did it at high school, then they will put you in the first year, you'll be ahead for a few weeks, but then everyone sort of levels out within a month or so, because it is really intense.

I really like it, sometimes I hate it, but it is a worthwhile degree.
Reply 62
jonboyyork
I started with Arabic and History, but the faculty are letting me (and quite a few others) switch to Arabic and Persian in September.

If you've done two years of Arabic at university then you really shouldn't be starting the course at first year level. They have a test in September for those who want to go straight into the second year.
If you mean you did it at high school, then they will put you in the first year, you'll be ahead for a few weeks, but then everyone sort of levels out within a month or so, because it is really intense.

I really like it, sometimes I hate it, but it is a worthwhile degree.



Yeah, I meant 2 years in high school. thanks for all the info, it's pretty useful! did u find it hard to alternate arabic and history? and why you switching to arabic and persian in september?
sounds good though
alex_h
Yeah, I meant 2 years in high school. thanks for all the info, it's pretty useful! did u find it hard to alternate arabic and history? and why you switching to arabic and persian in september?
sounds good though

It's 3 units of Arabic and 1 unit of History. Thus Arabic has ended up dominating the degree so far. I'm adding Persian because it seems really useful and interesting, and also because I'm not really enjoying History - the module I am doing (Middle Eastern) doesnt seem to be taught so well, but maybe that's because I'm just doing that unit and not the other ones like Approaches to History etc... one of the lecturers could barely speak English (this was for an entire term) and the tutorials are so pointless...we just sit around and listen to someone do a presentation. I might have been more interested had we had proper assingments to do each week, not reading and then sitting in a classroom for an hour, not even discussing the topic in any great depth.

So yeh, basically, History has been extremely disappointing at SOAS, it's astonishing how it ever got rated so highly in surveys and league tables.
Reply 64
Wow, thanks for all the information, definitely helped me in building a picture of what the university is like. It sounds really fun (as well as hard work of course) and from the way you guys talk, very sociable and friendly too. I'm thinking of applying for 2010 entry to BA Japanese and Linguistics or perhaps Chinese and Linguistics (though the idea of classical Chinese puts me off that a bit.)

Thanks again :smile:
Reply 65
Yeah I have to second drive like june here....why the hell would you seriously apply to SOAS if you don't like the course being centered around africa and asia.......????

Thanks for those who put their weeks up...DAMN I really want to get in now...

I do Japanese A-level, but I'm not sure I want to go into the 2nd year, and the advanced class sounds kinda odd xD But hey...we'll see how it goes..

Anyone in the Advanced class up for giving me some more details...? I know someone has already mentioned it...
Reply 66
I assumed I wouldn't skip a year, as I don't work hard enough for an A at Alevel Japanese :smile:

And my gawd these teachers sound AMAZING :biggrin:
Reply 67
Kawabata can't teach anymore though can she? I remember something about the fact that the government had issues with her visa, and Kashiwagi seemed intent on emphasizing that "it isn't her fault." D:
Gwilym
I'm in AJ. It's the same as EJ, just with less time to do it in.
You probably won't get into the second year anyway - lots of people are in the 1st year did Japanese A-level. Only one guy afaik did go straight to 2nd, he's on this forum somewhere by name of Japi, and he spent a couple of years in Japan anyway.


Yeh Japi (feels lame using my flatmate's tsr username on here) was amazingly good at Japanese, beyond A Level standard I'm guessing, so he went into second year.
Reply 69
Rynn
and the advanced class sounds kinda odd


So are the people in it.
.. :biggrin:
Reply 70
:O dont spill blood on the forum! :smile:
If anyone on here's doing straight Japanese, I'd love to hear their 'week in the life of' - so I know what I've let myself in for :smile:

Oh, and where do you find timetable info on the SOAS website? I find it pretty difficult to navigate at times.

Edit: Never mind about the timetable info, found it after all :smile:
Reply 72
Gwilym

You probably won't get into the second year anyway - lots of people are in the 1st year did Japanese A-level. Only one guy afaik did go straight to 2nd, he's on this forum somewhere by name of Japi, and he spent a couple of years in Japan anyway.
.


Yeah, c'mon, I'm 'ard. :cool: It was one year btw.
Reply 73
harawata o tatsu
If anyone on here's doing straight Japanese, I'd love to hear their 'week in the life of' - so I know what I've let myself in for :smile:

Oh, and where do you find timetable info on the SOAS website? I find it pretty difficult to navigate at times.

Edit: Never mind about the timetable info, found it after all :smile:


Mine is basically straight Japanese, just ignore the Korean lecture on Thursdays and add in Introduction to the Study of Language Learning on Tuesday (2-5? I think) as most first year straight Japanese students took that. All the Japanese lessons will be the same anyway (presuming you're in elementary) and Aspects of Japanese Culture is compulsory for you.

Also, SOAS timetable thing is pretty confusing for Japanese as there are 4 different groups for elementary.
Reply 74
fourr
Mine is basically straight Japanese, just ignore the Korean lecture on Thursdays and add in Introduction to the Study of Language Learning on Tuesday (2-5? I think) as most first year straight Japanese students took that. All the Japanese lessons will be the same anyway (presuming you're in elementary) and Aspects of Japanese Culture is compulsory for you.

Also, SOAS timetable thing is pretty confusing for Japanese as there are 4 different groups for elementary.


I don't think that Introduction to the Study of Language Learning is avaliable this year, because Pizziconi is away....So Japanese freshers are very lucky in that respect this year (in my opinion anyway xD). But it was Tuesday 3-5, we only had to endure two hours :biggrin:
Reply 75
On their "BA Japanese (and...)" information pages, "Intoduction to etc." is still listed, but it seems to be optional. Did it use to be compulsory?

Also, have I understood correctly that those taking combined honours don't really have any freedom of choice in their first year modules? Since "Elementary Japanese" is two units already, just like the two required Linguistics modules, I cannot really take any of the additional options, can I? Or can the four-unit thing be exceeded? (Not that I'd actually do that, the workload seems enough as it is... :smile:)
Reply 76
Irukandji
On their "BA Japanese (and...)" information pages, "Intoduction to etc." is still listed, but it seems to be optional. Did it use to be compulsory?

Also, have I understood correctly that those taking combined honours don't really have any freedom of choice in their first year modules? Since "Elementary Japanese" is two units already, just like the two required Linguistics modules, I cannot really take any of the additional options, can I? Or can the four-unit thing be exceeded? (Not that I'd actually do that, the workload seems enough as it is... :smile:)


It wasn't compulsory exactly, but if you weren't branching out to other departments, for a lot of us it was the only thing that fit into the timetable, so it felt compulsory. We were told that EJ students couldn't take Issues in Post War Japan, and the only other thing that fit in without having to make insane dashes between both campuses in five minutes (in my case) was ISLL. There are music modules that fit though, I think, I'm just not very good with musical instruments xD I wanted to take one of the Korean modules to do with society, but those didn't fit for me, and first year Japanese students can't take Korean or Chinese language as a floater.

I don't do combined honours, but I don't think you're allowed to exceed four units. So if you have two from each subject that are compulsory, that's the four modules you have for the year.
Reply 77
Hiiiii...thanks for so much info guys....
just a quick question, I'm about to start on BSc Econ this September, am I allow to choose Japanese as an optional floater? since I already speak Mandarin and Cantonese ,I thought would be really useful for my career in the future!
Reply 78
I hope so...I'm thinking of doing that too, but surely you can pick anything as a floater?

Also when does Freshers Week start :biggrin:
I kind of forgot the info at the open day but you can't do Korean with Mandarin floater can you?

Quick Reply

Latest