Keeping up with languages over the summer (/Schols)

takemyshoesoff

So I think I'm going to go for schols next year. I study TSM French and Spanish, and while I obviously won't study any actual coursework such as texts, I'd like to keep up to date and improve them over the summer. I'll be spending approx two months in Spain (aupairing) and 1 month in France(Independent travel). I'll obviously be immersed in the language 24/7, so hopefully I'll imrpove subconsciously.

However, what course of action would people recommend to continuosly improve my languages keeping in mind that I want to (If at all possible), have a fighting chance in schols and hopefully come close to those who began JF fluent in either..

I;d love to know what all current/previous schols did in their language study to help suceed..

stesh

takemyshoesoff wrote: »

So I think I'm going to go for schols next year. I study TSM French and Spanish, and while I obviously won't study any actual coursework such as texts, I'd like to keep up to date and improve them over the summer. I'll be spending approx two months in Spain (aupairing) and 1 month in France(Independent travel). I'll obviously be immersed in the language 24/7, so hopefully I'll imrpove subconsciously.

However, what course of action would people recommend to continuosly improve my languages keeping in mind that I want to (If at all possible), have a fighting chance in schols and hopefully come close to those who began JF fluent in either..

I;d love to know what all current/previous schols did in their language study to help suceed..

Hey. I only study French Language (CSLF), so I can't speak about the coursework side of things.

Anywho, around mid-July or so I started having a go at working through the SF French language dossier (you can still download this year's edition from the department website) once a week, just to keep up reading the style of text that you come across (the actual content of the dossier doesn't seem to change from year to year, but that's besides the point). The idea of practicing writing essays crossed my mind, but I decided against it, firstly because I actually wanted to have fun over summer, and secondly because there'd be nobody around to correct or critique them. Eventually I sort of forgot about the dossier altogether and just kept up what I normally do, reading stuff and finding words that I don't know. I presume you have some sort of similar routine...

To be honest what you do when term starts will probably be a lot more important that what you do now. There are just three hours of French language a week, with just one of those devoted to writing. There are also much fewer essay-type assignments compared to JF, so even if you weren't planning to go for schol you'd have to keep forcing yourself to put time into studying it on your own.

In a nutshell, it's definitely a good idea to keep it up over the summer, but don't go nuts either -October to December last year were the craziest, most stressful four months that I care to remember.

languagenerd

Dunno if this helpful, I went for Schols this year in TSM French/Spanish and didn't get it, was 4% off. No-one has got in French/Spanish in a long time, but I'm considering trying again next year (yep, I'm clearly a masochist).

It's definitely a good idea to keep the language up over the summer (that's where I fell down, my coursework marks were grand). The French language paper is just an essay, so as boring as it sounds, it might be a good idea to practice writing essays over the summer, or at least write a little bit of French every week. Stesh is right, you don't write as many essays in SF as you did in JF, they branch out to translation and (pointless) résumés.

As for Spanish, the language paper is translation and an essay, although you do have the choice to do two translations (Sp-Eng and Eng-Sp). The translations are often tricky, but if you keep reading and gathering vocab, you should be fine. I've been reading Harry Potter books in both languages - if you've read them in English, I recommend them, it's a great way to study translation, esp for Spanish, because you see how the translator worked with the complicated parts. Also good for vocab, cause you'll already know the story.

You're travelling over the summer, so you should have no trouble with the oral. Something to bear in mind though - the oral is only worth 10% of each language, or 5% overall. I had it in my head that it was worth 30 for some reason and when mine didn't go so well, I thought it was worse than it was and put too much pressure on myself for the written papers (and doing those on 3 hours sleep is no fun!).

Read the newspapers, books, translations. Watch Euronews or TV5 if you've got them, use the WordReference (www.wordreference.com) forums if you've any questions (or just to help other people, they can be good for writing practice) and speak the languages as much as you can .

Oh, and the coursework does include first-year stuff so re-read the JF texts if you can muster up the enthuasiasm! Spanish also has unseen literature, so reading lots and taking good notes in your poetry/short story/drama lectures will help with that

Good luck, and I'll probably see you in the horrible yellowness of Luce Upper in January