Foreign language centre at Bath

Does anyone know how it works? Anything about it, really. Also I don't see how the course could possibly fit into one's timetable.

Hi,

As you can see on our foreign languages centre website, students are able to take a language course for free in addition to their degree programme for extra credits or as part of their degree. The language courses on offer include French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portugese, Arabic, Russian, Japanese and Mandarin Chinese. The courses generally run for 11 weeks and after this there is an opportunity for students to enrol for the continuation of the course, which increases in language proficiency. The language courses are all taught by teachers who are native speakers, and students are able to start learning a language in any year of their degree.

If you have any other questions please feel free to quote me!

Beth

Does anyone know how it works? Anything about it, really. Also I don't see how the course could possibly fit into one's timetable.

Hi there

Beth has explained it wonderfully - I'll just add some more information that you may or may not need.

For the first year at least, you get a designated 'language timeslot'. This means, if you study a language, you should pick that timeslot for it if possible. You get to choose your timeslots at the start at a first-come-first-served basis online, so try and pick as quickly as possible! This means that students who don't study languages usually have those 2 hours off (language classes are 2 hours long, once a week, unless you do it to count towards your degree, in which case you have an extra hour somewhere in the week).

In the second semester of the first year, 1 hour of the 2 clashed with another one of my lectures! The same thing happened in the first semester of Year 2, but I went to languages as I felt that it was more important and caught up with study some other time. This doesn't mean that it'd happen to you - I'm sure the timetabling people don't do it on purpose!

And just some more information about the course - if you do it optionally ('3 credit' then you sit a reading, listening, writing, and speaking test in weeks 6, 7, 8, 9. (One a week) and this shows up on your degree transcript but doesn't count towards degree. You can sign up as 'attendance only' which means you don't have to sit the tests if you don't want to and it doesn't show up on your transcript, which means you're doing it out of interest. Then there's '6 credit', that some students can do, and that counts towards your degree. On top of the 4 tests that people usually do, you sit an exam in the main exam periods.

Thanks for this! I'll definitely sign up come October.

No worries is there anything else you want to know? (If it's subject specific I probably can't answer, but otherwise I might be able to. )

Which language course did you do ? And how much experience did you have regarding the language before?

I study Japanese, and I started at 'stage 1', which is just for complete beginners. The next stages up are '2' for students who've done the GCSE or equivalent before, '3' for post A-level and then I don't know how the rest go. Some units go all the way up to '6', Japanese only goes up to 4.

But to tell you the truth, I am half Japanese but I seem to have forgotten most of it () but I wasn't a complete beginner and I feel like I've definitely learnt a fair few things in these 2 years.

Thinking about the people in my class, the people who were genuinely interested and put in work outside of lessons did well and learnt stuff, and then there were one or two people who definitely did nothing and struggled in class. (I know that they did nothing because the teacher tested them on something, they couldn't do it and still couldn't do it for the next 2 or 3 weeks and it hindered their learning quite badly). The teacher is such a lovely person and in terms of lectures/classes etc, Japanese is probably the highlight of my week.

I didn't even know they did Japanese! This all sounds very exciting I can't wait.

I've taken languages through the foreign languages centre all the way through my degree and loved it. Some additional information:

- Some languages and stages have multiple timeslots - Beginners' French, German, and Spanish, for instance.
- You should sign up as soon as you possibly can. Before Freshers' Week or on Monday of FW at the very latest. Most of the beginners' classes and many of the others were full by Wednesday of Freshers' Week.

Can you take up a language if your course doesn't permit it as part of the degree (ie instead of some module)?

iirc, you can't. Can you?