MFL degree and language experience

[bevelino]

Dd is currently on a gap year and has a confirmed university place to study 2 MFL languages. Do universities assume all post A'level students have a similar ability? How are the lectures/seminars arranged where you have near fluent speakers and others who are not?

Are students tested and grouped by ability or are the less fluent students expected to catch up with the more experienced speakers?

My dd has been in Spain since Christmas taking 20 hours of Spanish each week while working as an au pair and is ok with grammar. Her language and grammar has been examined at C2 CEFR standard so I hope she will be ok.

Depending on the workload she will try a 3rd language if she is able, but said she would love not to have to work hard at learning the languages and grammar during her degree. She is quite a grafter but likes her sport and fun as well.

She has visited her close friends at uni while on her gap year and it has been quite an eye opener for her.

They would not see themselves as a training ground for business skills I suppose Business skills? Go and wash your mouth out immediately

Joking aside, I went to the Fen poly and did a pretty useless degree in respect of skills acquisition, but which stood me in good stead nonetheless. I am definitely not pining for a world where we all do business studies with a side in mandarin and structured finance. I appreciate that it's hard to set up a faculty from scratch, that the linguistics and cultural parts of the curricuum would be hard given that it takes years to become competent in Chinese, and that demand for specific modern languages waxes and wanes (when I was young we were all being urged to learn Japanese) but most of my linguist friends did go into jobs that employed their languages in some capacity (i.e. it had a practical application), so it's a shame that they cant incorporate the "in demand" languages as options, especially as the political and cultural history of China is so fascinating.

Anyway, good luck to your DD OP

Interesting thread as dd1 is looking at Unis for languages. She likes linguistics and translation plus wants to learn lots of languages, wide range of choices.

How did your dd get the au pair job bevelino

TheDrs dd found her au pair position on the Au Pair World website. It was a very straightforward process and dd sorted everything out herself.

Can't Oxford do do Oriental Studies - you can do a Chinese degree, you just can't tag Mandarin onto another double language degree. I'm sure the other lot have something similar

TheDrs is your dd y12? Does she have some open days lined up? My dd mostly applied to universities where she could do her two A level languages and start a third - the courses tend to be called simply Modern Languages rather than listed by language. Pm me if you want to chat more.

DS2 is also on a gap year and is going to a Scottish university he's applied to study 1 MFL. He doesn't have any languages at A level although he does have 4 A's in 3 MFL's and Latin at IGCSE and is still studying Latin (which he particularly excels at) for fun. He realised he'd chosen the wrong A levels (sciences and maths) in Dec of yr 12 but it was too late to change to 2 MFL's and Latin. He finished his A levels and despite absolutely no effort on his part has 3 A's and I assumed he would change his mind and study science at uni but he's not interested and in fact wouldn't have gone to university if that was his only option. Then he talked to one uni at an open day who said they might consider him for an MFL (not a common one like French so few will go knowing it) so he applied to 5 top universities including a famous London one and was offered places at all of them! At one uni he was told that his 4 IGCSE's in languages and his A level results showed good ability in general and an "aptitude" for languages.
In Scotland you do three subjects in your first year, he can't do Latin (he's been told they only run beginners Latin, so too good) but is hoping to also do French, apparently they run a "beginners set" and a set for those who's studied it to A level (who will have an A minimum) but by yr 2 if he keeps one or both of the MFL's up he's expected to be on the same level as those who've done it for A level. So he'll see how good his "aptitude" is.
He got the impression from the university open days MFL's are very undersubscribed even for the top universities and that providing you had good A level grades in sensible subjects, could demonstrate some sort of aptitude for an MFL and the necessary enthusiasm, he's visited the country of his main chosen MFL numerous times (and France) and watches films etc in the language, you were in!

I studied French and German at Leeds. And took Italian (from scratch) and Philisophy in my first year too just to widen the subjects.

I honestly can't remember being that aware of other students' language levels. There is one guy that I remember in particular because he was native level fluent, but apart from that I didn't notice anyone else.

Agree with PP that you have to be careful of your level of language. When we came back from our year abroad, the first thing we were told was to forget all the slang we'd learnt and use more polite/formal language.

If your DC want to live abroad after uni, get them to research very early on what the country requires. I wanted to work in France, but here a lot of high-flying careers require a masters level from a Grande Ecole (business or engineering). So I did a masters degree at a Grande Ecole in France after my bachelors. Which opened up all the doors (been here well over a decade now)

Oh and we weren't set in our languages. They had specific modules for beginners (e.g. my italian) but everyone else who had A-levels was just mixed in together (usually alphabetically)

I think it might be only Southampton who set for language ability.

Yes she's year 12, we are going to a few but she's had Sheffield recommended for broad options.

I think Sheffield was a last minute addition to my dd's UCAS form, lol - although I seem to remember that your third language takes up a smaller proportion of your degree? Which was why she'd ummed and aahed over it. I had to listen to all her indepth analyses of each course l

There's Dutch and Luxembourgish as extras I remember that.

violet the Scottish universities offer much broader based degrees. My DC could do two languages and a humanity in the first year. In fact we know students who've been put off Scottish universities because of the fact that you have to choose three subjects in the first year and they can't think of three to study, and then in the second year do at least two if not three.
The university my DC is going too let you do one subject outside of the faculty your in, (arts in the case of an MFL), so much to my surprise has chosen maths.

Will he be doing five years altogether strawhats? Four plus a year abroad?

Yes. So a long commitment but he wanted to have the flexibility over his subjects. Ultimately he could at the end of the second year chuck in his MFL and just do maths or we even met a few current students who completely changed their subjects in the second year. It obviously suits those who aren't totally sure what they want to study/do.
You pay the same as a four year degree.

I think you have to be quite careful about doing three languages because it can compromise choices for your year abroad. You will be gone for a year plus but being a teaching assistant may well be impossibe if you can only spend 4 months in each country. It is possible to do the year abroad, but actually you have less immersion in each language and culture. Usually a third language is an add on option and not studied in such depth. When choosing a university for languages, try and apply to ones which are the best universities. Few employers will care that Polish is best taught at the University of X if they do not rate it for anything else. Not all graduates use their languages by any means and you need an employer to value the university and see that the course is academic and rigorous. More languages is not always seen as better by employers. Other skills are highly valued and this also includes the student doing work, volunteering, getting involved in university life and have a good CV a well as language acquisition and a rigorous course that employers trust.

Lots of people have done translation at school but very little in depth study of novels, art and culture. It is easy for a 17 year old to think they want translation; they have been exposed to it in school. In the event, lots find it boring and move onto other things because job opportunities are very narrow and it can be lonely for translators. (A brother of my BIL is one. Sits at home all day translating academic texts). Few people actually get jobs as translators at the UN or equivalent. There are translation schools in the universities abroad, but again a semester at one is required, not a quick drop in session, so choose wisely and do not spread your skills too thinly. Employers will also put employees on language acquisition courses if they need them to upskill so it does not all have to be done at university.

The universities are desperate for language students and ab ititio is offered in lots of languages. The more desperate they are, the lower the offers and the more flexible they become on entry requirements, even top class universities. Someone with an A will not be as good as someone with an A at A level in the target language but there is time to improve. Reading and discussing literature may present initial problems. My DD did not study film at all. So few state schools are churning out linguists, the subject is very short of top class applicants so aim high!

That's funny, I have a friend who's a freelance translator and she loves it, gives her so much flexibility

I do agree about the three language year abroad - my dd will be using the whole time from June 2018 to September 2019 to get as much time as possible in all three countries. It's apparently quite hard to get any sort of job in Spain due to the unemployment rates, so most people do a semester at university there. She has to start planning properly after the summer.

Also remember that to be a good translator it's the level of your "target" language that is the decider. You have to be able to produce flawless texts that are a pleasure to read (sometimes surpassing the level of the original). Lots of bilingual people struggle to produce translations that ring true.

Also 1st year the language classes will take a "scorched earth" policy, like @gannet said to bring everyone up to speed

Scorched earth?
Is Spain really so sparse on work experience?

Yes! Italy too. Unless you have personal connections, it is a struggle. Many students going to these countries either go down the language assistant route with the British Council or study at a university. Both require a semester. At DDs university they were told that the university would not agree to some jobs because they deemed them unsuitable for an academic course. She understood that to mean working in a coffee shop or where the student was used to translate into English all day. If you want translation, go to a translation school in a university.

I think if you are a person who thrives on working on texts alone, and wish to stay at home with a family, it could be for you. If you want a bit of social life with work colleagues, translation may not be for you. My DDs friend that did it says a lot of it is computer program based as well and my friend who owns a translation company says the same. A lot of her employees are working at home but there are not 22 years old.

DS did three languages at degree level but was already fluent in Spanish. As Gannet123 says his grammar did require polishing. His university agreed that time in Spain during his year abroad would be pointless so he spent his year abroad in France as a teaching assistant through the British Council, then did 3 months as an admin assistant at a language school in Germany during that summer, independent of the university. He got his degree a couple of years ago then did a post grad at Oxford and, for his sins, is now a teacher of MFL. His course was very language heavy with almost no literature. He would hate to be a translator as he is very gregarious and likes every day to be different. He did toy with an EU job but decided it wasn't for him.

What course does virtually no literature? I am amazed. What was the post grad?

I've described dd's first and second year modules already - barely any literature. Don't know about year 4. If you do 3 languages there's not a lot of time left for culture modules!

And, I should add, that's very much what she wanted - she wants to learn as many languages as possible (so she's adding in Italian next year, she's disappointed that she won't be able to do Dutch at uni she thinks) and she's interested in politics and history. She's never been much of a reader and didn't do e.g. English A level, so the idea of studying literature wasn't appealing to her.

Hence my repeated advice to look carefully at the make-up of each course

We had no compulsory literature modules either.