St.Aidan’s Modern Languages department received a visit from three students from Strathclyde University. The students all study languages and came to discuss with second and fourth year pupils the benefits of languages and also university life.
The ambassadors talked about their personal experience of languages and when deciding what they wanted to do in the future they decided to go for languages as they were a good foundation for any career they became interested in for the future as its considered an ‘added bonus’ by most employers.
However, for pupils who didn’t feel the academic pathway to languages was right for them the ambassadors reminded them that there was other more practical ways of learning a language e.g. taking up a job in a foreign country.
The ambassadors prompted the second and fourth year students to participate in the talk and went on to discuss the differences between university and high school life (contact hours, work load etc.) and then also told the pupils about their experiences spending a year in a foreign country as part of their studies and how different it was compared to living in Scotland.
Speaking to one of the ambassadors – Paul Farrell- he commented on why he decided to study a language “At first it was kind of an accident, it was only after I started studying the course that I realised how much I enjoy it. For anyone who’s going into it I’d just say it’s very practical and interesting.” Paul also commented on why it was important to share their experience of languages with the younger pupils “I think especially here there’s not a lot of awareness about foreign languages, a bit of an attitude about it. I’ve had people say to me they’re not keen on learning a language because “everyone speaks English.” I don’t think that’s a great attitude, I think some people are scared of learning languages because they may find it difficult or a waste of time. I’ve personally found that not to be the case, it’s been the best thing I’ve ever done for myself. I’m here to get people to be more aware of it and more relaxed about it. I think it would do us the world of good.”
