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Why is the UK so poor at languages? | ||
Tags: Language Politics | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4665 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 9 of 13 05 December 2012 at 7:41pm | IP Logged | ||
I know you can get into a uni course in Italian with essentially no previous qualifications (i.e. not even a GCSE). For Spanish (and French and German) I expect that's less likely to happen because they expect you to have had the opportunity to pick up GCSE and/or A-Level at school. There's no reason why you couldn't study GCSE Spanish (and probably A-Level) on your own at home. When you say "regardless of your actual Spanish level" that implies to me that you already have some ability in the language. If that's the case, I'd be surprised if you couldn't get yourself up to a decent A-Level pass in a year. At school you'd be studying 3 A-Levels so you'd probably only get 4-6 hours of Spanish in a week. Add to that that you'd only be at school for 30 weeks and you can easily see that an A-Level (over 2 years) is something like 300-400 hours. If you are studying on your own I'd say you only need to put in about 10 hours a week to get from scratch to a reasonable A-Level standard in one year. Of course, if your goal is "Spanish" rather than "University" then there's no need to go so slowly :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| darkwhispersdal Senior Member Wales Joined 6040 days ago 294 posts - 363 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Ancient Greek, French, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Mandarin, Japanese, Latin | Message 10 of 13 05 December 2012 at 8:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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There are ways around that Cardiff University allowed students to minor in languages such as Spanish, Russian, etc if they were studying a humanities subject such as English, History, Religious Studies, etc.
One friend of mine got around the GCSE and A Level problem by studying Russian and French after school in an adult's learning centre and now she's currently studying linguistics at univeristy. Her A level subjects were all technical ones but her personal statement and interview secured her a place. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| PistolPete Newbie Scotland Joined 4382 days ago 28 posts - 33 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Latin, Italian | Message 11 of 13 06 December 2012 at 1:01am | IP Logged | ||
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I know at the University of Glasgow as long as you were accepted into the 'Arts' Faculty you could take whatever subject you liked including all the languages taught, many from complete beginner level.
I think the main problem with the British system is that we only start seriously learning foreign languages at High School. I remember at primary school we dabbled in some French occasionally but didn't have actual language lessons until we went to High School. Furthermore I think languages are seen as an 'extra' rather than as essential like Maths and English, and more recently the drive to get more kids into Science and Computing subjects. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 12 of 13 06 December 2012 at 1:34am | IP Logged | ||
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Take this as a warning!
If you are keen on majoring in Spanish, at least find a specific place and get acquainted with current/former students. Find out more and make sure this is really what you want. In Russia the language education isn't so bad, and yet it nearly killed my love for English and German. Don't let your education interfere with your language learning! 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Liv Newbie Australia linguallife.com Joined 4384 days ago 3 posts - 3 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Swedish | Message 13 of 13 07 December 2012 at 4:38am | IP Logged | ||
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It's a similar situation here in Australia. Most high schools have two years of a language as compulsory then after
that you're free to drop it. The number of Australians born here in English speaking families who speak another language is ridiculously small. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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