MFL degrees - single vs dual language

[tobyj]

DS is edging slowly towards degree course choice, and has decided on MFL. He was considering joint honours (language and classics or language and history), but has decided to stick with straight MFL. Next decision is whether to a) just take a single language (German), or b) take German plus a semi ab initio (he did French GCSE so could pick that back up) or c) take German plus a fully ab initio (eg Italian or another European language).

Ultimately he just needs to go with what he wants of course, but I wondered if the MN hive mind had any pearls of wisdom or things to consider - or indeed any uni/course recommendations or ones to avoid? First time going through this, and feeling a bit rabbit in the headlights!

A good friend of mine did Russian / Persian / Arabic (swapped around a few times - took her 5 yrs) and was offered a secret service job.

So some of these more "obscure" languages can be very worthwhile!

Re. ab initio French, some unis don't offer it because they don't need to - there are still enough strong post-A-level candidates applying to Oxford that they don't have to go to the expense and difficulty of setting up ab initio in order to keep their programmes viable. 20 years ago when more schools taught German you wouldn't have found that many ab initio German courses either.

OP, has your DS considered Scottish universities? It's potentially a 5-year undergraduate course, but there are often options to take the year abroad as part of an integrated 4-year course if you study abroad so it's actually no longer than the 4-year degrees at English unis. And students tend to do three subjects in their first year so he'd have flexibility about whether to continue with single or joint honours or do some other combination entirely. Glasgow offers beginners' French; I don't think Edinburgh or St Andrews do, but they have other beginners' language options.

@Namechange101again It’s getting more difficult to get paid work and visas are an issue that’s made everything more difficult. And expensive! DD found quite a few of those who worked had family connections in the countries.

The university route abroad doesn’t make you less employable and you are in classes in your target language. There are young people around to be friends with which suited my DD. Plus the travel opportunities with them were good for her too. After Erasmus it’s more expensive for parents because many universities don’t ring fence Turing for MFL students. It seems means tested for any year abroad - necessary or not - and based on need .

No doubt about the year abroad being worthwhile. Many students say it’s a wonderful year and a great achievement.

Not sure all unis would allow a 2 grade drop. Oxbridge and Durham probably not.

DD is at Durham! Hence my comment.

Reading through this thread, it seems that the conclusion for MFL at university is that you either study French and Spanish with the view to becoming a teacher OR you study whatever languages you feel like in the knowledge that you won't be using them in the working world.

Meanwhile, all sorts of plurilingual students study other subjects and go on to use them at work.

Or that MFL degrees, like most other arts and humanities degrees (and indeed many other degrees in the UK) are not purely vocational and that they develop many other skills and competencies that could be valuable in a wide range of career paths?

Sure, they are a form of finishing school.

Oh give it a rest Ceramiq, you clearly have no idea what you are talking about

I am actually okay with it if @Ceramiq thinks that all degrees which are not specifically vocational are 'finishing school'. I don't agree, but it's a point of view, albeit a slightly depressing one. I think it's a fundamental misunderstanding of MFL degrees if she thinks this is only true of languages but not English, history, classics etc.

DS is just coming to the end of MFL degree: German, Japanese (his ab initio language) and he threw in Translation Studies too. Year abroad for two languages means a semester in each country, so he was in Germany end August to start of February, and Japan March to August last year, and he had to go to universities that had ties with his UK uni and acquire the correct number of credits from each before he could start his fourth year. Brexit and a UK passport were a pain. He was lucky and got a substantial amount of Turing grant. He has added in ab initio Italian in his final year 'for fun'. He is planning to teach as he was a TA at a London school in his gap year, loved it, got enough money to pay his way through uni and started an impressive pension pot, though will also be doing the Civil Service exams; plus German opens up rather a surprising amount of management training schemes with various companies - he went to a day long event at the German embassy a couple of years ago about what you can do with German, and it was quite eye-opening for him: lots of banks, lots of German supermarkets with high flying management schemes, journalism etc etc. Teaching PGCE for MFL comes with a £26,000 government bursary. He might still do the JET scheme application to teach in Japan. He is also thinking of doing a TEFL course this summer.

Ignoring the doomsters and gloomsters who always pile on to MFL threads, lots of people do get great jobs after language degrees, just as, as @clary said, they do after History, or English, or Geography or Forensic Science or many other subjects. DS's uni's most recent figures for MFL are 87.5% in graduate level jobs or further training within 15 months of graduation so someone's doing something somewhere on the jobs market.

Edited for a total hash up of sentence structure in final paragraph!

I think it’s a fundamental misunderstanding of university education in general and of the graduate job market.

@OMGitsnotgood true but people always single out MFL for some reason, which rankles!

@ZacharinaQuacktotally agree, and whilst of course everyone is entitled to their own opinion, it rankles more when they are making claims which just aren’t true.

Degree quality varies wildly across universities within a single discipline. MFL in the United Kingdom are atrociously badly taught, right through the system. My grandmother read French at Cambridge in the 1920s and my sister, who read French and Italian for Part I in the late 1980s, followed an almost identical curriculum to the one my grandmother had ie there had been almost no change in that time to the curriculum or to assessment. We all know that standards of MFL in the English education system have declined substantially since the 1980s - there have now been changes, but for the worse. Students graduate with MFL degrees with little ability to use their MFL in real life ie they speak, read and write them incomparably less well than they do English. What is the point, apart from having a fun and personally enriching year abroad? And if that is the point, there are all sorts of ways of doing that without going through the farce of a UK MFL degree.

What subject was your degree in @ceramiq?

MFL

Weird you didn’t mention that where it woukd have made sense to in your previous posts.
And funny how your views are so different to all the successful MFL grads on this thread.

I did extremely well in my degree (starred First), speak several languages and went on to do quite a big deal postgrad and have brought up plurilingual children so perhaps I have a bit more perspective on MFL quality than most ;)

Different perspectives are always good on threads like these, including yours @Ceramiq, good for you and your DC on your achievements to date.

It’s just a weird that you feel the need to gate keep the provision and acquisition languages to you and your family.

Motivation to study MFL is always hindered by views that include yours, but thankfully you do not represent Industry, and most of the posters on this thread are more able to give the OP some first hand, non bias to counter.

There will always be YP who are enlightened enough to undertake the less molly coddled paths of study - opting for independent living in foreign countries, study/work in language, navigate complex living and cultural barriers and then be able to articulate the value it has brought them in their professional and personal lives. Some may never use their languages again, so what? But many will too, including professionally, like mine is able to.

Of course it’s not all equal. YP are not all equal; some will be more successful than others at acquiring necessary skills and leveraging them to effective jprofessions. But surely that’s the same for most study programmes? If anything, UK students can be perceived more positively by prospective employers in a post Brexit world for taking a more challenging path of study with all the hurdles of access lower down the education system.

Finishing School. That’s funny.

@ealingwestmum "It’s just a weird that you feel the need to gate keep the provision and acquisition languages to you and your family."

Pointing out the inadequacies of UK MFL provision is the very reverse of gatekeeping: there are many ways that are far cheaper and more efficient to learn MFL to a high standard. Gate keeping is what UK MFL provision does: preventing British children from attaining fluency in modern languages, at great personal expense.

It actually doesn't surprise me that the curriculum didn't change much at Cambridge between the 1920s and 1980s; it would surprise me if it hadn't changed quite a lot since then, however. And I've taught MFL at various UK universities and can confirm that there has been a great deal of change, though hampered by the fact that the standard of language proficiency students come in with has declined over the last 20 years.

There is so much here that is just not true that I am not sure I can bear to respond. But I will just say that I am not sure why you are so very down on MFL degrees specifically @Ceramiq? IS the end result so much worse than someone who takes social policy, or history, or any of the other non-vocational degrees out there?

Acutely aware how MFL is being diminished in the UK education sector, it is indeed a very sad state of affairs.

But you do keep referring to a MFL programme a language alone. This is just not true across the board. And if a YP does choose to study in a university setting overseas, majority will be taught in local language. So they will be taking classes in history, politics, film studies, English literature, law and so on alongside the local students with very little latitude given to them being UK/Erasmus, ON TOP of their language modules.

Of course some study programmes will be pants, or the student will not put in the effort needed for quality acquisition. But poo pooing all MFL, you can only do this if you’ve experienced it all. Which I do doubt even you have managed that.

Thank you though for your concern for DC like mine, but there is no need, she’s doing fine.

Sure, the decline in the standard of language proficiency among MFL graduates is inextricably linked to the decline in the standard of language proficiency among A-level students. My grandmother, who was a very normal sort of girl from a very normal sort of English family albeit with an extremely ambitious mother who sent her to Sutton High School, read French at Cambridge and remained fluent in the language throughout her life despite being a SAHM and rarely travelling to France. I recall her rereading Proust for pleasure in her late 80s. All her children learnt French and other languages. It was another era for MFL.

Yes, I think that the intellectual qualities developed by graduates on MFL degrees are lesser than the intellectual qualities developed on most humanities degrees within the same or similar universities.