Best Languages Course around??

Seaic

Which of these courses would give me a greatest grounding in languages and allow for greatest career opportunities:
-European Studies TCD
-International Languages UCD
-Applied Languages UL

Dingle_berry

Depends on which language(s) you want to do. Also what you want to do with them. Some degrees, like Applied Languages in DCU (not on your list for some reason?) incorporate translation studies, linguistics, speech pathology, etc. while others just focus on the language.
If you just want to speak the language I'd look for a straight language course. If you want to use the language in some way, like translation, I'd look for a course that incorporates some of that.
A year abroad is almost essential for language proficiency. As well having native speakers of the language teaching parts of the course. While all that info may not be directly available from the prospectus it's easy enough to find email addresses.

Seaic

Dingle_berry wrote: »

Depends on which language(s) you want to do. Also what you want to do with them. Some degrees, like Applied Languages in DCU (not on your list for some reason?) incorporate translation studies, linguistics, speech pathology, etc. while others just focus on the language.
If you just want to speak the language I'd look for a straight language course. If you want to use the language in some way, like translation, I'd look for a course that incorporates some of that.
A year abroad is almost essential for language proficiency. As well having native speakers of the language teaching parts of the course. While all that info may not be directly available from the prospectus it's easy enough to find email addresses.

Thanks for that ta id be hoping to look at a course with a couple of languages and thanks for putting me in the know of that course I didnt know it was there.

Canard

I do the UCD one, it's pretty good. You have the option of majoring in two while keeping a third one on all the way through; it's the equivalent of minoring in it but you won't get a degree in it. There's also the applied languages centre for the option of dipping into languages like Russian, Arabic, Swahili, and a lot of others. Personally I'm only doing two languages, one as advanced and one as a beginner, and most people I know who took up two will be dropping one next year - it seems to be quite difficult from what I've heard. Your options are majoring/minoring in any 2 of French, German, Spanish or Italian, and you can also minor in Portuguese.

The UL course sounds fantastic though, I have to say. You can do 3 languages to degree level. You can also do a few other subjects instead of a third language like politics or economics, but you could do that as arts in most colleges anyway. You can also do TEFL in it I think. Overall this course would be much better if you plan on doing 3 languages, but if you're going to do just two I'd say just go to whichever is nearest to you / appeals to you more tbh.

European Studies is the highest points, and it has options like Russian and Polish, but you do a major/minor situation. I dont know how that affects career prospects, but personally I didn't like the sound of it, and there's a lot of history/sociology/economics in it from what I've heard. It really is more studying Europe than languages I think. All language courses (unfortunately!) have cultural modules etc which no one seems to like, but I think the aim of European Studies is to give those who do like that stuff an option more suited to them. :P

Oh and just noticed an above post mentioned native speakers - my Spanish teacher is native and so are both of my French teachers. It's really, really useful, they know the stuff better than a non-native ever could, but I think that's the norm in college.

Dingle_berry

Seaic wrote: »

Thanks for that ta id be hoping to look at a course with a couple of languages and thanks for putting me in the know of that course I didnt know it was there.

You're welcome
The DCU course currently allows you to study one intermediate language (that you've done for the leaving cert) and one beginner language (options include Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, German, etc). You also study the history and culture of the respective countries, translation, linguistics, speech pathology, etc. they have been planning for a while to allow people to do two beginner languages with your intermediate one to degree level. You have to spend third year in the country of your weakest language. The school also runs optional lunch time classes in all the languages they teach as well as ones like Afrikaans, Arabic, Swahili, etc. there is a mix of native speakers and Irish graduates teaching the languages.

There is no easy way to choose, language or college! I wouldn't put too much emphasis on people saying things like x is a growing economy or no point in learning y they all speak English. Also people find languages difficult based on different things, the tones in Chinese are easy to a musical person, the grammar in Japanese is easy to a grammarphile. Do a little varied reading about the languages and courses and rank them in order of interest to you.

Seaic

Is there any of these courses that you can go straight into Translating and Interpreting without doing a Master's?

Dingle_berry

Seaic wrote: »

Is there any of these courses that you can go straight into Translating and Interpreting without doing a Master's?

I don't know. You'd have to speak to a professional or a professional body to find that out. But I doubt it's possible - at least for any of the higher paid jobs. There's a difference between translation and interpretation too - translation is written, interpretation is verbal.