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Spanish question!!

03lldunn

Is it possible for me to learn spanish from scratch in one year for me to do a gcse in it?

Reply 1

MindMax2000

Universities Forum Helper

Original post by 03lldunn

Is it possible for me to learn spanish from scratch in one year for me to do a gcse in it?

What's the context? Are you intending to do it as a side subject? Do you have all the free time in the world? If not, how much time do you have to dedicate to this?

According to the FSI ranking of difficulty, Spanish is under Category 1, meaning it's typically a language reasonably similar to English and you would need 24-30 weeks (600-750 hours) to master the language i.e. past degree level. See: https://www.fsi-language-courses.org/blog/fsi-language-difficulty/
30 weeks is roughly 7 months. So to answer your side question, yes you can master the language in 1 year, but I think it's a bit excessive if you intend to just do a GCSE in it.

You can typically do the GCSE from scratch and do it without any prior knowledge. You can be a bit slow at first, but if you study hard you can excel in it. Just for the record, a typical GCSE takes 200 hours to study the material, and it's recommended to do another 200 hours to revise the material learnt.
200 hours is 5 weeks, and 400 hours is 10 weeks (roughly 2 months and a bit) at 40 hours per week.

So what's the context of your question?

Reply 2

03lldunn

Original post by MindMax2000

What's the context? Are you intending to do it as a side subject? Do you have all the free time in the world? If not, how much time do you have to dedicate to this?
According to the FSI ranking of difficulty, Spanish is under Category 1, meaning it's typically a language reasonably similar to English and you would need 24-30 weeks (600-750 hours) to master the language i.e. past degree level. See: https://www.fsi-language-courses.org/blog/fsi-language-difficulty/
30 weeks is roughly 7 months. So to answer your side question, yes you can master the language in 1 year, but I think it's a bit excessive if you intend to just do a GCSE in it.
You can typically do the GCSE from scratch and do it without any prior knowledge. You can be a bit slow at first, but if you study hard you can excel in it. Just for the record, a typical GCSE takes 200 hours to study the material, and it's recommended to do another 200 hours to revise the material learnt.
200 hours is 5 weeks, and 400 hours is 10 weeks (roughly 2 months and a bit) at 40 hours per week.
So what's the context of your question?

I was wondering of it was possible to do International relations with Spanish at University. To be honest, I have no idea what to do with my life or choose a degree anymore. Thank you for your much needed help!!

Reply 3

MindMax2000

Universities Forum Helper

Original post by 03lldunn

I was wondering of it was possible to do International relations with Spanish at University
Typically, to do a joint modern European language degree, you would need to do the A Level in the language before doing the degree. (I'd say modern, because you can have Ancient Greek and Middle English; I'd say European because you don't need to have done it at GCSE or A Level of Asian languages or African languages - ancient or modern.)
If you were to do the joint language degree, you should just jump straight into the A Level - it will be very difficult without having done anything at GCSE level prior, but you should be able to do it if you work extremely hard.
As a side note, there are learning/studying courses that you can take to fast track your learning of particular languages, although I am not endorsing them. It's worth googling for them if you need to.

To be honest, I have no idea what to do with my life or choose a degree anymore.
Sounds good. If you're not sure, it's best to wait on it for a year before deciding, should you do a degree at all.
If you just want to study languages, then I very much doubt you need a degree - unless you want to teach in it, then it gets a little messy.

Reply 4

izE_

Original post by 03lldunn

Is it possible for me to learn spanish from scratch in one year for me to do a gcse in it?

i would say it's not impossible but it would take a lot of work and free time! you could and see if it works out though, i guess it's better to try and fail than to not bother. Maybe speak to your teachers about it to see if they would let you or what advice they have