second year abroad at leeds instead of third year for modern languages degree

Similar situation to you - I do Arabic at Exeter (1st year) and next year have to go to Jordan for my year abroad. Every other course go in the 3rd.
We are already being prepared for it (lecturers and older students are happy to answer our questions, we are being taught more about cultural awareness next term, etc) so really it depends entirely on how willing your department is to help you.
I think the biggest downside is that since a year abroad in the second year is so rare, keeping and finding friends over the four years might be difficult.

Leeds - have heard nothing but great things about here and their Asian Studies department (which is very well established). Leeds is also a lovely student city. Potential major con (or pro) to studying Japanese at Leeds is that they send their students to Japan in 2nd year. I'm not convinced that sending students to Japan at a post-beginner's level (the level you'd attain after 1st year) would see them reach advanced stages of the language after a year. In other words, sending students in 2nd year lowers the skill ceiling that students can reach. Generally, everyone improves their language abilities the most during their YA, so sending them at a higher level means that they can become all the better; but, sending them at a lower level, although helps them improves rapidly, lowers the ceiling. They'll probably come back post-intermediate whereas students going in 3rd year go as either intermediate or post-intermediate and come back advanced.

This is either good or bad depending on how you view this.

A Japanese degree graduate wrote this about the Leeds course (in comparison to other Japanese courses but just posting the bit about Leeds) and talks about the 2nd year abroad factor:





He notes that the year abroad is the year people's language skills develop the most so good for getting you up to a minimum level of proficiency quickly but might not let you "cap out" quite has highly as other courses potentially.

This probably is more of a factor for languages studied ab initio though - post A-level languages may be less affected by this as you'll have already studied the language in school?

Thank you for responding!! I did think that it might be less effective due to being in second year. It is ab initio, but I was planning on then doing a masters abroad in Japan for further immersion - do you think that this would help me get past the skill cap??? Just in your opinion of course 🙂

Ah you were planning to do Japanese - serendipitous I'd definitely recommend looking at the full post from that user here then for some more comparisons of other Japanese courses (quite in depth): https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=6484190#post88544496

Also highly recommend looking at this post the user made about year abroad destinations for Japan - it's very illuminating (and notes one university you absolutely should avoid, which may not be one you'd think to!): https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=6701470#post91181654

In any case, any time spent in the country speaking the language will be very valuable I gather. It's the immersion experience of staying in the country for an extended period of time, having to use the language day to day which helps with that! Whether that's doing a masters there, living there for a period of time (or even indefinitely) after graduating etc - it's really just that immersion experience which seems to make the big difference where you gain a lot of experience in the language

I suppose also you might be able to spend the summer between 3rd and 4th years there as well potentially?

oooooo i think i've seen those posts!! i made a definite note of the post about which universities to avoid for the year abroad - i will certainly NOT be going to kyoto university, it seems!

again, thank you so much for your advice. i figured any abroad time will be valuable, since i spent a couple of weeks learning spanish in salamanca during last summer and noted a great improvement, which i figured would be replicated in japan!

not sure about spending the summer between 3rd and 4th year there as it seems quite expensive, but i could look into work placements etc?

for modern languages students who studied at leeds and did the second year abroad, how prepared did you feel/what was your level of fluency before going?

most other unis do a year abroad in third year so i wanted to know if there are negatives or not. it's a bit late to be asking this as i've already firmed leeds/insuranced manchester, but i just wanted to know!

any help/experience would be appreciated

hiii i'm applying this year for french and chinese at leeds, so i asked a ton at open days and the people i spoke to said they were pretty confident in their speaking ability to get by abroad !! they told me that the first year was quite intense since it has to prepare you for the year abroad, but when the time came to study abroad, they felt fine !!!

the second/third year abroad had me considering other unis but i reeeaally loved the atmosphere at leeds and i just slowly came to terms with it and it doesn't seem that scary anymore !! it seems exciting !!!!

omg ty!!! i forgot to ask abt that at the open day so im SO glad somebody else did LMAO - thank you for telling me this bc i figured they wouldn't just send you w a beginners level of a language but it's good to have the reassurance.

i also LOVED the atmosphere and environment at leeds and eventually realised i loved it sm that all the pros outweighed the only con i could think of!!! where else did you apply???

yeah !!! i made sure to ask a ton about how comfy they felt, even with safety aspects like . im not going halfway across the world if other people dont feel safe there. i'd prefer to go to taiwan instead of mainland china and thats what the students did that i talked to and they felt suuuper safe, they talked about the reverse culture shock abt how dodgy the uk is LOL. i think i was meant to go to another open day on oct 14 but i went back to leeds instead because i knew i'd love it there so i wanted to ask even more abt the study abroad year.

i applied at manchester, liverpool (although i really dont want to go, i just put it to make sure i applied to 5), newcastle and manchester met !!!

NIIICE - i originally applied to do chinese and japanese but ended up switching to spanish and japanese bc i realised i was gonna miss spanish too much and i thought starting two complex languages ab initio was gonna kill me a bit, so i was also at the talks for chinese on the oct 14 open day!!

i do like the way leeds set up the year abroad so i'm glad someone else feels the same LMAO. the uk is just so dodgy let's be real so getting away from it for a year is a blessing to me especially as someone originally not from the uk!!

i also applied to manchester!!! have you made your choices yet or are you waiting for offer-holder days now? i firmed it already bc i just got too anxious thinking about my choices and just did it so i could stop thinking abt it, but leeds is definitely the place for me i think

i'm still waiting for my college to check my ucas application, hoping to get it sent within the next week or two !!! my friend said that leeds takes the longest to get back to you so the wait is gonna be paaainful for a month and a bit.

did you go to the talk for chinese at manchester ? the guy there was so softspoken and kept aplogising for his english but he was so sweet and almost convinced me to go there beccause of how nice he was

still definite on leeds though, its close enough but also far enough from home and i love how the campus felt like a small town !!!!! even though im sure i'll end up loathing all the stairs by a couple months in lol