studying French in ucd

rawwrrrr

Hi,

My friend is interested in studying french in ucd. He would be a C/B student at school. He has heard that it is very very difficult, is this true?

Eathrin

I find my French elective very tough and I was a C/B student in LC.
Though this is probably irrelevant to the French course.

Canard

I'm studying International Languages with French as one of my languages, and yes, it's very difficult. I was an A1 student in LC and often taught myself extra French when I got bored because I love the language, and because of that the grammar is easy - you start off with pronouns. At the same time, though, there are people in the class who don't find it easy. My sister is in my class and got a C1 and she finds it difficult.
There are two modules of French in the first semester and that's the easy one. Aural work is part of that and that is where it gets difficult - you literally go from the easy LC aurals to watching French TV and having to pretty much listen out for words you don't even know. Really, really hard, and everyone I've talked to (All A1/A2/B1 students) agree, but I'm sure it just takes practice.
There's one more part to that module which is comprehension. They're not too bad - you do a reading comprehension with multiple choice answers, so it's quite handy, but if you get it an answer wrong not only do you not get the 5 marks for the correct answer, you actually lose 2 marks. It can build up easily, i.e. one wrong answer loses you 7 points.

The other module in semester 1 is Reading French. It's literally English through French, you have to analyse French short stories and plays but in less detail than LC English of course. I don't really know why, but they don't teach you the simple past tense beforehand, and that's what all the literature is written in. And I don't hold it against the French department because this is what university is about, but they really don't give you much help with it at all.

Overall it's pretty intensive and I'd say you'd have to love French to do well in it, or you'll end up hating it. The reason is pretty much because there's only one level of French taught in the college - whereas in Spanish or German there's beginners and advanced. Some of my friends are in advanced Spanish and they're doing extremely basic stuff, but that's definitely not true of French!

It's great though.

haro124

Yup i'm doing Commerce international so I only have one module of French !

It's grammar,grammar,grammar !!!! Absolutely no emphasis on speaking:eek: but the goal of it is to make sure your french is perfect!

Comprehension is quite easy ! It's come to a stage where half the ppl dont show up to class so I would advise that if he/she is coming that they go to all classes !

greens

What about LANG10170 French Gen Purp 1 ?

greens

greens wrote: »

What about LANG10170 French Gen Purp 1 ?

Any information ??