The Student Room Group

Should I do French evening classes?

I'm doing a degree in Chinese and Cultural studies at Newcastle University at the moment. I spent last year teaching English in China, so I already have a pretty good level of Chinese. This first semester has been painfully slow for me, so I've been advised to take Chinese evening classes to keep my level up. While looking through the brochure for the evening classes they have, I saw you can do a whole range of other languages, ranging from Arabic to Swahili! I would like to get my level of French up to scratch, as I did it for GCSE and got A*, and wanted to do it for A-level, but couldn't as it clashed with other subjects. I had some private tutoring for French, but that was over a year ago.

I am considering doing French evening classes as well as Chinese, but I don't know if it's a good idea, considering that I will have other modules to pass at Uni which are more important, and which I find very difficult. (I am having to take Sociology, which I suck at!)

Another thing is, one of my flatmates is going to do beginners Spanish, and she wants me to come with her, but I don't know if it's better to further my average French, or to begin an entirely new language!!!

What do you think? Should I do the French evening classes, or should I just concentrate on my degree? I'm siding more towards doing the evening classes, but I don't know if it's wise!

Plus, do you think French and Chinese would be a good language combination for the future?
i think that if there is not that much "homework" for the evening classes (french) then go for it. you've got to ask yourself whether you really would be doing your other uni work if you didn't go to them (i.e. if you wouldn't be doing any work when the classes take place, then maybe it is worth it) i wouldn't recommend the spanish thing, because personally, i'd rather be fluent in one language, rather than semi-fluent in two.
If you're not finding the workload a problem at the moment and you want to take up another language, go for it! Uni is probably the best time to do it, what with all the resources available to you. As for whether you should do French or Spanish, that depends on you and which you're more interested in. You'd probably remember your GCSE French pretty quickly, but equally Spanish is quite easy to learn with a basic knowledge of French and learning with a friend might motivate you.

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