...oh, and reading. Lots of reading.
Now, please don't get me wrong here. I love languages. I love reading. But I'm sure I'm not the only person who's slightly daunted by their reading list. Particularly scary for me is the French literature on the left - as someone who's not studied any literature before I am concerned about my ability to absorb so many complex ideas in a foreign language. I'm confident that I will eventually succeed, but it will take some getting used to.
We'll all, doubtless, suffer from this as we see our reading lists for the first time and come to terms with the differences between school and university. But I can't deny that, in spite of all of this, I am looking forward to the challenge, as I'm sure many of us are.
Most of these books (apart from the Spanish dictionary, which I already owned) were bought either on Amazon or in Grant and Cutler, the massive foreign languages bookshop in London. If you're a fan of languages, I'd recommend checking it out since it has a massive selection in a huge variety of languages. I'm making an effort to keep the receipts, since Clare College operates a really impressive money-back scheme where you can get upwards of 50% of the money you spend on essential book purchases returned to you. The catch is that you need receipts and that there's only a very narrow time window in the second term to apply! While in Grant and Cutler, I was also delighted to be able to meet someone else who was buying the books for French, so we had a lovely chat.
I've also been thinking about my first-year papers. Owing to my options (post A-Level French and ab initio Spanish) I don't actually have to make any choices between papers. For me, that means that in 2011 I'll have exams in: Use of French; Translation and Oral for French; French Literature, Linguistics, Film and Thought; Use of Spanish; Translation and Oral for Spanish; and Introductory Spanish Literature.
It will be a lot of work, and, as with the literature, I'm certainly nervous. That doesn't mean, though, that I'm not eagerly anticipating actually going up to university in October. Because boy, I am.
You have studied literature before! Not in a foreign language, admittedly, but the A-level you did was called "English Language and Literature"...
ReplyDeleteNice blog, by the way - it's living up to usual very high standards.
Hi Chris! Glad you like the blog. You are of course right about the literature: I meant to say that I haven't studied any French or Spanish literature.
ReplyDeleteJames Richmond here. We're not all worrying about reading lists. As best as I can tell, I haven't got one. Suppose that's a perk of a Maths-based degree that works from the ground up. (Still got a bit of reading up to do on the Further Maths stuff I didn't do at A-level, but s'cool.)
ReplyDeleteNonetheless, university terrifies me. And I have a lot of paperwork to sort out. Gah.