I’ve talked a lot about being a language student and having a year abroad – in Switzerland, in my case. You might not know about that. I might not have mentioned it in the last five minutes (I wrote a blog about my year abroad last month).
But I haven’t talked a lot about the three years I spent as a language student in the UK.
The first thing about being a language student is that I found it pretty similar to being at school. Everyone else I know who went to uni talks about seminars and lectures and lecturers and supervisors. I had teachers and lessons, although the uniform policy was hugely relaxed and we called the teachers by their first names. I can only recall one module taught by lecture. I went off to a classroom with 20-40 other students, depending on the module, and we got out our grammar books and we went through exercises. I remember having to go around the room and read out loud – I’d done a lot of that at A Level and although I was the shyest silentest teenager you’ve ever met, reading out loud was something I was comfortable with and no one else was.
But the biggest thing about being a language student is how little language learning is involved. I did joint honours, French and Spanish because in Year 13 when I was applying, I couldn’t decide which to drop and Kent had lower requirements for joint language degrees than my other five applications for French and European Studies, which was my original plan. I was looking at my modules today. I did 120 credits a year and 60 of them were devoted to the compulsory language modules – 15 credits per term per language. Out of curiosity, I looked at the course layout for pure French. I’d still have done 15 credits per term of language and then the remaining 75% of my degree would have been something else.
(I did 15 credits of Business French in my second year. It involved language learning but the sort of language I had no interest in and was never going to use.)
The “something else” that made up half my degree was various literature and culture modules. I very quickly learnt that I hated literature and culture. Let me list the literature and culture modules I took over my three years:
- Questions of French Cinema
- Introduction to Hispanic Culture
- Myths, Symbols & Mysteries
- Paris: Myth & Reality in the 20th Century
- Spanish Literature: Identity
- Catalan Culture
- The Readers & the Text
- Culture & Modernity in 20th Century Spanish America
- The Carnivalesque in Modern Spanish Theatre
One very valuable lesson I learnt about French literature, by the way, is how to not read the books. I have a miniature library of French literature – in French. If I got to the end of the first page of any of them, I’ll…. well, I don’t think I did. One module, and I forget which it was but it was final year, was assessed by seminar presentation, essay and exam, all on the same book. A book I never read. A book about a man who took a train from Paris to Rome. Nothing happened. French literature – or the books I was taught about – is all excruciatingly pretentious. It’s all about style and symbolism and the authors being so very special. Plot? No, we don’t include anything so plebeian.
I survived the Carnivalesque module by being almost performingly subservient over it. There was a lot of slapstick and pantomime-style stuff and I sat down in the language library to watch a video in order to write an essay or a presentation or something and it was tedious. But I remember putting in a line about how I didn’t get it at the beginning but partway through I did get it. Also, I wrote an essay about how the Lamborghini Gallardo is carnivalesque, including pictures.
But then there were other modules. Still not about learning languages, mostly (I did Ab Initio Catalan, which was a beginner’s Catalan module – the textbooks were sold out for the first three weeks but Catalan is a gorgeous hybrid of French and Spanish that tastes like silk. I’d have happily abandoned three years of Spanish for Catalan) but I discovered linguistics. Oh glory glory.
- Description of Modern French
- History of the French Language
- French Socio-Linguistics
I enjoyed those modules. I learned a lot about phonetics and I came out with a whole load of new ideas about teaching languages, which it turns out I’m unable to apply to my own attempts to learn Norwegian and Russian as an adult. I had a great teacher who oozed ability and enthusiasm in linguistics. And it wasn’t literature or culture!
And then there was the year abroad. I’m seeing a lot of flap about the future of those years abroad under the dual onslaught of Brexit and coronavirus. I’m seeing second year language students talking about how difficult it is to win your place on a year abroad and how everything they’ve worked so hard for is about to implode around their ears. And of course I sympathise. But.
The year abroad was compulsory. There was never any question of anyone missing out on it because their marks weren’t good enough. The year abroad was the big language module. I suppose technically it was worth 120 credits alone and the website says it’s “assessed on a Pass/Fail basis” and that if you go to a university abroad, you have to register for a “full-time load” and and you need to pass two-thirds of those credits. I’m pretty sure I failed my year abroad. I went to language school and did the year-long Certificate of French Studies. Failed, resat and failed again. But the only involvement I remember with my home university was one of the staff coming to visit us during our first semester, sitting in the common area in the basement of our tower and telling us he was perfectly happy for us to come back with a “carrot-cruncher Swiss accent”. I can’t hear the difference between Francophile accents but apparently the Swiss-French have the equivalent of Somerset accents. Fine by me. That’s more or less what I have in English.
So getting onto the year abroad was simply a matter of the progression of time. Passing the year abroad and getting to final year, ditto.
And then came my favourite thing about a language degree. I discovered that I had the choice of doing a dissertation or doing the translation module. Well, guess which I chose? Even as recently as earlier this year, when I was still at work, my colleagues have kids at uni or who’ve recently graduated and the dissertation is a big deal. And I’d have had to do it twice! 10,000 words is no problem – this post is already more than 10% of that and you get an entire term to do it – but it has to be researched and detailed and original and on a very specific subject.
I don’t remember much about the translation module. I’ve got a vague idea that it featured an oral exam but a lot of language learning revolves around oral exams. People hate them but I did oral exams every year for eight years. I became pretty comfortable with them. My entire year abroad was assessed by oral exam (with the next student sitting three rows back doing last minute revision!) and if you remember, I resat it. My Rangers are at the age when they’re doing their GCSE language oral exams, which – not to put them down, after final year degree orals – mostly consist of repeating the question with a couple of extra words at the end. Don’t just answer the question, make a full sentence out of it. “What is your name?” “My name is Juliet.” “How many brothers do you have?” “I have seven brothers” etc.
It must have been interpreting rather than translating. I’ve got a vague memory of interpreting. Consecutive translation. Repeat whatever the examiner says but in the opposite language. Simultaneous translation, which is translating literally as it’s being said, is an incredible skill. Talk in one language while listening to another language and mentally translating it ready to say out loud in two seconds.
Another thing to note is that we mostly didn’t have textbooks. Languages are living things; just as they’re not taught by lectures, they’re not generally taught out of decade-old textbooks. I remember photocopies – maybe we had a stapled book of grammar exercises or maybe they were handed out in lessons as we went along. But essentials are dictionaries. Well, they were in 2003. Mine were massive – they were the ones required for A Level and I obviously brought them with me to uni too. They make a phone book look slender. I’ve just taken the Spanish one to the bathroom to weigh – around 2.7kg.
I also acquired two smaller… well, phrasebooks is probably the right name for them. Mot à Mot and Palabra por Palabra, Word for Word. Opening them now for the first time since 2007 makes me think I’m opening them for the actual first time. And of course, I eventually got the Catalan book, Llengua Catalana, Nivell Llindar 1. But apart from that, these are the books I have from university, none of them read:
- Trois Contes – Flaubert
- Le Petite Bijou – Modiano
- La vie devant soi – Romain Gary
- La Modification – Michel Butor (I think this was the one I did an essay, presentation & exam on)
It’s not bad to come out of a four year degree with just seven books.
The last thing I have to say about my experience of a language degree is that it was very heavily female-dominated. I can think of two boys and a man in his 70s during those three years. The year abroad had four or five of them. I tried to make friends with one of the boys. He was also doing French and Spanish and he seemed to have picked all the same modules as me. I was shy and silent and unsociable but I made the effort and I got absolutely frozen out. I succeeded with the second one. I did a Business French module and Laurent bounced up and volunteered to do the first presentation. He needed a partner. He looked around the room and a room full of bronzed girls with long blonde ponytails and south-eastern accents pointedly looked away so I stuck my hand up. He’s the only person from uni – well, from the lessons rather than the caving club – who I’m still friends with on Facebook.
I didn’t quite fit in either. I’m not from London, Essex or Kent. I didn’t have the sleek blonde hair. I’d come straight from school rather than college. I’m a summer birthday and plenty of them had had a year abroad so I was younger than most of them and quite a bit younger than some of them. I didn’t do the uni thing of drinking and clubbing and being 19 and glamorous. I spent my free time crawling around muddy holes in the ground in Somerset and Wales. My linguistics buddy was the man in his 70s.
Let me summarise being a language student. Female-dominated, compulsory year abroad, surprisingly little language learning, lots of oral exams, no lectures and very few textbooks.