Catching up with last year’s graduates

One of the great things about this blog is that it gives us a means of keeping up, not only with what colleagues in French at Stirling are doing, but also with what our students and our graduates are up to. As we get closer and closer to this year’s graduations, we thought it’d be good to catch-up with some of our graduates from last year so, with no further ado…

Shannon studied for a BA Hons in French and Spanish at Stirling and as a 2022 graduate moved on to pursuing her PGDE in primary education: “I am now working full time in a nursery setting in Liverpool as the curriculum practitioner. And my languages have not been completely forgotten. My pre-schoolers enjoy having a Spanish lesson once a week and we may add French to their curriculum soon! Wishing this year’s graduates all the best in the future no matter how you do or what you do!” Sophie also graduated with a BA Hons in French and Spanish and, since graduating, has started another degree studying Theology and Christian Leadership: !I’ve loved using the skills I learnt at Stirling to help this degree and next year I have chosen to study New Testament Greek which makes me excited to be able to use my language skills again.”

Meanwhile David, who graduated with a BA Hons in French and History, spent time in the US after he graduated but has since returned to do an MSc in Heritage at Stirling, and is currently researching and writing his thesis: “You will also be happy to know I have been able to make use of my French skills I acquired at Stirling, in my capacity as a volunteer at the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders Museum. As a guide, not only can I assist French tourists, but behind the scenes I have also been able to translate material into French to help the Museums accreditation and be more welcoming to foreign tourists.” Our other David, who joined us as a mature student, and graduated with a BA Hons in French, explains that “after 7 years of re-education which concluded with four unbelievable years of involvement with French at the University of Stirling, I promised my wife and my three grandchildren that I would devote more time to them which I have done but that has not stopped me for continuing to learn and practice French.” In the year since graduation, David has kept on reading French books (including re-reading some he’d studied with us!), revising French grammar, listening to podcasts and regular news bulletins and trying to speak as much as he can through websites such as Language Exchange: “My appetite for learning has not waivered or reduced in any way. I have always had the will and motivation to continue although, I do miss being a student on campus and the camaraderie of my peers and being able to have the skills of our tutors to hand for advice when required.”

Lara, who completed her BA Hons in French and Spanish last June, has just finished working for a year as an English Language Assistant in a secondary school in Madrid with the British Council: “It’s been a very enriching experience and I plan on returning for a second year.” Ceinwen, having graduated with a BA Hons in French last year, has stayed on at Stirling for postgraduate studies on our MRes Humanities programme carrying on the research she did during her undergraduate degree and “When I’m not doing that I’m making full use of the Institut Français’ cinema programme in Edinburgh.”

Valentina, who graduated with a BA Hons in International Management with European Languages and Society, she has spent the past year working for Global Voices, our local translation and interpreting company, as a credit controller: “I call and email every day in French as I look after the debt for the French and Swiss market, as well as the Italian one. So, naturally my languages skills have improved, I now feel comfortable to speak on the phone to a native speaker which is great! I’ve also learnt all about chorus pro which is the public administration invoicing system in France!” And Muirne, who completed her BA Hons in Business Studies and French last year, has been doing an International Business Master’s here at Stirling this past year and is starting work on her dissertation now: “I’ve really been enjoying this programme and it has opened up lots of different routes I can take to start my career journey. I was also one of the programme reps for the course as I wanted to have a bit more responsibility and show more leadership. I have still been keeping up with my French as I think that will be a useful tool in the future for me. I have also been able to keep in touch with a French pen pal I made in 3rd year which has been helpful for practicing French.”

Sofia, who graduated with a BA Hons in French and Spanish last year, has almost finished her MA in South Asian Area Studies and is currently working on my dissertation, which is focusing on the legacies of trauma stemming from Partition and how this has affected the diasporic descendants of the Partition. Sofia was also recently accepted into a summer programme for Our Shared Cultural Heritage which is a programme that experiments with ways for museums and heritage organisations to work better for young people. Their focus is on the South Asian diaspora in the UK and young people in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh: “I’m not quite sure yet what the programme will entail but it will be interesting to look at heritage, culture, and of course language and to look at the Scottish South Asian community.” Vasiliki, having graduated with a BA Hons in Business Studies and French, moved to Madrid after graduation to do a Master’s in International Trade and Business: “Classes are finishing at the end of July, then I have to submit my thesis by mid-September, so in the meantime I am looking for an internship in the field of marketing or HR mostly, and I am really just looking across Europe, as I don’t want to limit myself. I would also be very much interested in moving back to the UK.”

And Morgan, who graduated with a BA Hons in International Politics and Languages, is currently in Belfast where she has just started writing her Master’s thesis exploring who is responsible for the deaths of displaced persons who drown while attempting to cross the Channel: “While I no longer directly study French, my knowledge of the language and the country have been particularly helpful when conducting research for my thesis. I work part-time as a hotel receptionist where I regularly get to talk with guests from French-speaking countries who always love to be able to chat in their native language.” Brendan, graduated with his BA Hons in French and Spanish last summer, and applied for a Masters in TESOL (Teaching English to Students of Other Languages) here at Stirling Uni and started that at the end of September. He hopes to complete that, including his final teaching portfolio/dissertation project by the end of August at the latest: “Afterwards, in September and October, my programme may offer an external placement in various countries, one of them being France, where I would be asked to observe and do some English teaching in a language school. However, it is not clear if that will materialise yet so right now I’m just taking each day at a time and focusing on what I have to do at present. If everything goes according to plan, I will officially graduate in November. My reasoning for doing this Masters was to prepare me to be able to teach English and get employment more easily when living in France and Spain in the future. If I’m to be completely honest with you all, this has been the most challenging year in my academic journey so far (even more so than third year of undergrad when everything was online due to covid, which says a lot!). However, I’m hopeful that it will bear some fruit in the not-too-distant future in my pursuit to become a languages teacher, which is my dream job.”

Pauline, who graduated with a BA Hons in International Politics and Languages, is just finishing up her Master’s degree in Applied European Governance and Policymaking: “I will have written and oral exams throughout June. I am doing last revisions for my master thesis on the economic impact of integration of migrants in Germany and I expect to graduate at the beginning of July. I am also applying for traineeships and jobs, mainly in Brussels, for EU policy positions, with hopes to not be unemployed in August. We shall see how that goes. I’ve also been involved with a new volunteer network (Generation Climate Europe) and have moved up to now being the Network and Outreach Lead, which I am quite excited about.”

And finally (for the moment… if you’re a 2022 French at Stirling graduate reading this and you haven’t been back in touch yet, there’s still time!) Fiammetta, who graduated in Modern Languages and Business Studies says that her life has completely changed since graduation in June 2022: “After graduating, I was unsure which path to follow for my career. I wasn’t happy with my life and I almost decided to go back to my home country. I started a job in Edinburgh as a customer service assistant in a travel agency. The team was great, however after only 3 months I realised that it wasn’t the job for me so I decided to apply for a job I thought I would never get.

In February I applied for Emirates cabin crew and a few days later I received an email asking me to go to one of the company’s assessment days. Being cabin crew for Emirates has always been on my mind but I always thought it would be really hard for me to get that job. The day after the interview I received the “golden call” and after less than a month I moved to Dubai. I have now been living in Dubai for more than 3 months. It was hard to leave my friends again (I had left my family and friends in my home country 6 years earlier) but it was one of the best decisions I ever made. Now I get to travel and visit so many countries and I get paid for it! I am in contact with so many cultures and during my flights I can use my language skills to interact with customers. The best advice I can give to the graduates of 2023 is to always pursue your dreams, even if it’s not easy or if you have to leave everything behind, it will always be worth it. Now I’m having the best time of my life!”

It’s always lovely to hear from our graduates and to learn where life has taken them after their time as undergraduates at Stirling. Thank you very, very much to all of our 2022 graduates who have been back in touch and who have contributed to this blog post (and to Joanna whose earlier post started off this particular catch-up) and do keep in touch and keep us posted on what you go on to do next. Bon été to you all!

And we’re back!

Le blog est de retour! It has been an incredibly busy couple of months for students and staff at Stirling and we are already a few weeks on from the end of our teaching semester so, firstly, well done to all our students for all the hard work over this spring. There’s lots of news for us to share and, although the teaching is over for this academic year, life remains busy for us all but we hope you’ll bear with us as we catch up with overdue blog posts and bring you up to speed with everything that’s been happening and lots of what lies ahead in French at Stirling (and beyond!).

To get the ball rolling once again, it’s fantastic to be able to start with a post from our former student Scott who graduated with a BA Hons in French and Spanish. Scott’s post is particularly timely against the backdrop of the presidential elections that have taken place in Turkey this past week. Confused as to what the connections might be with French at Stirling? Read on…

‘Herkese merhaba! Nearly two years since leaving Stirling and, almost like a rite de passage for French Studies’ students, I was asked (quite a while-ago now) to write a blog piece about my destinations following graduation. I did my undergraduate at Stirling in French and Spanish from 2016 to 2021. Although I was studying French and Spanish, I was always interested in the Middle East and what the Middle East is/was; as the saying goes, Middle of what, East of where?

A country that I was always interested in was Turkey – a good example of the East/West question depending on who you ask. I had been there a few times on holiday and had heard about Orhan Pamuk, but I hadn’t really done much reading into the history of the country or the language and culture. It wasn’t until I was on my British Council year – which should have been used to improve my French rather than being on first-name basis with the bakers in the nearest boulangerie to my flat–, that I began to study Turkish language and culture. Before I knew it, I was dead-set on doing something Turkey-related after finishing my degree at Stirling; it was either further study or finding work in Turkey in some kind of capacity. Luckily for me, Turkish studies was offered as a two-year Master’s degree in the UK; the only issue being, moving from relatively cheap Stirling to incredibly expensive London was quite the shock. Lockdown helped for the first year, I was able to stay at home then I completed a three-month term at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul last summer. Then, I did the London thing; saw the sights, rode the subway, and paid an exorbitant price for oh-so-fashionable city coffee. I’m now back in Scotland getting ready to hand in my end-of-year essays, and preparing for my dissertation.

One of the many things I liked about the studies at Stirling was the breadth of literature we read. I particularly enjoyed Didier Daeninckx’s Cannibale, Hygiène de l’assassin by Amélie Nothomb and Guy de Maupassant’s Boule de suif – which I still return to now and again for how good it is. And, even though I did my French dissertation on film studies, I really enjoyed the close-reading of texts and the ways in which literature had so many different layers of meaning to what you initially read on the page – something you can see very clearly in Boule de suif. It was this interest in literature that I’ve been able to develop in my Master’s through the works of Ottoman writers from the mid-nineteenth-century who, similar to de Maupassant, wrote about the changing world and peoples’ relationships to one another, even though it’s written in a language that no one speaks or writes in anymore – unless you meet a diehard Ottomanist. And, if the stars align, I can take what I’ve been working on mixed with what I learned at Stirling and use it for a PhD programme – hopefully somewhere across the pond.

I initially thought that what I was involved in was far removed from all things French at Stirling but that’s just not the case. After picking up Ahmet Mithat Efendi’s Avrupa’da bir Cevelan (A Jaunt in Europe) and Recaizade Mahmut Ekrem’s Araba Sevdası (The Carriage Affair) – two authors I’m currently working on, who write pages upon pages of French written in the Ottoman-Arabic script  –, I’m back in the deep-end, flicking through French Grammar in Context trying to refresh my memory of French tenses and what subject and object clauses are – something that still plagues me in Turkish. Or if it’s not French grammar I’m reading up on, it’s French literary and cultural theory which, currently, is almost completely incomprehensible to me – but we march on.

Funnily enough, there is quite an interesting history of the use of French language and French culture in Turkish. Just under one-hundred years ago, then president, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, using similar policies to those of my favourite Académie, wanted to shake-up the Turkish language by removing many Arabic and Persian loanwords and instead create new Turkic words mixed with Western language. So, in Turkish, if I ever forget the word for suburb, truck, or screen I can just use banliyö, kamyon, and ekran respectively. And apparently, if you squint your eyes a little, the word for school (okul) in Turkish comes from the French école – but no one really knows.’

Many, many thanks to Scott, firstly for his patience as it has taken rather longer than we’d have hoped to get this post online, but primarily just for this excellent article that does so much to show the wide range of avenues that open up to our students after their degrees involving French at Stirling. We look forward to reading more about Scott’s progress over the years ahead and will keep our fingers firmly crossed for the PhD applications!

More news and updates to follow… À bientôt!

Semester Not-Quite-Abroad: Inspiration for life beyond University

Time for more (non-)Semester Abroad tales today. Following Pauline’s post last month, July is getting off to a fantastic start with this article from Isobel who has just finished the 3^rd year of her BA Hons programme in French:

‘When I first decided to study French at the University of Stirling, it was the amount of time abroad offered that really swayed me. In 2019/2020, I had the opportunity to be an English Language Assistant at a lycée in a suburb of Paris. Unfortunately, COVID-19 sent me home early. During the summer of lockdowns and restrictions, I thought to myself, “It’s okay, you still have your semester abroad next year.” For my semester 6 abroad, I was lucky enough to get my top choice University; I would be studying in the sunny south of France at Aix-Marseille Université. Suffice to say that this was not the plan that COVID-19 had in store for me…

An online semester abroad, studying classes at French times, while living in Scotland, is not quite what I expected from my semester abroad to say the least. When the decision to cancel the in-person aspect of our semesters abroad and move it online was made, I was devastated. I worried for my French language skills that I already felt like I lacked. What would happen now without this immersion in French culture? Nevertheless, it turned out to be a semester I won’t be forgetting in a hurry.

The online learning that has resulted from this pandemic has certainly been a learning curve for everyone. From a lack of classes available for international students, to my own constant internet connectivity issues, it felt like one thing after another. In the end, at AMU, I took classes in translation and in FLE (Français langue étrangère), alongside an extra French class with the University’s language learning centre. As well as a 30-minute conversation class with Stirling. While it wasn’t your normal semester abroad, and it wasn’t quite the level of cultural immersion I had been hoping for, I realise now that it was a semester focused on language learning, where I could get to terms with the bits of the language that I had struggled with up until now. Even though my French still isn’t at the level I’d like it to be, this semester ‘abroad’ helped me become a little more self-aware to the fact that my French is miles better than it was this time last year. I am improving. Maybe not as quickly as I’d hope, but that’s okay. If anything, it just gives me more motivation to go back to France after my degree and get the cultural immersion I want. The lack of classes gave me plenty of free time to work on my independent research project that was compulsory for semester 6. In fact, this project turned out to be my favourite one I’ve researched and written throughout my entire time at Stirling.

While it was recommended that we write about the area we were in for our semester abroad, I never made it to Marseille. I have never been there, and I know practically nothing about it (which is essentially the main reason I wanted to go there in the first place). Therefore, I was lucky enough that my supervisor agreed that I could draw inspiration for my project from the place where I completed my British Council English Language Assistantship, Aulnay-sous-Bois, a banlieue of Paris. My experience of living in a diverse area such as the suburbs of France, as well as my personal values, led me to my choice of research topic. I have always had an interest in Human Rights, and I try to be as much of an ally and activist as I can. Therefore, I decided to focus on something that is prevalent in our lives – police violence against people of colour.

In the end, this project was an extremely enriching experience for me. Not only in terms of how much more I learnt about the Black Lives Matter movement and learning all that I did about systemic racism in France and how it disproportionately impacts people of colour who live in the banlieues of Paris, but also the way it impacted my French learning: I learnt so much vocabulary, including slang, and lots of grammar structures were really driven in. I read two French books, watched films, and I deciphered many official French reports. All of this culminated in over 12,000 words of research (which was practically a dissertation in itself), which I then narrowed down to exactly 2,470 words (in French). The funny thing is that it never felt like an assignment. It was so easy to get lost in researching a topic that genuinely fascinates me. I was extremely invested in this project because it truly meant something to me.

This project, along with many other experiences I’ve had here at Stirling, helped me to realise how much more I can do with my French degree. I am so proud of my project, and the grade I received, that I hope to use it as a foundation for my final year dissertation next year, hopefully being able to branch out to a similar topic from this project. This has inspired me to look down other paths such as working for international organisations, exploring the third sector and volunteering with charities. Even now, I have just completed a business summer school with EM Strasbourg in order to gain more experience in that domain.

I can say for certainty that I wouldn’t be in this position were it not for my online semester abroad…’

Many, many thanks to Isobel for this brilliant post and we’re really pleased to hear that you feel you’ve got so much out of the past semester, despite the challenges! We hope you’re able to enjoy a good break over the Summer and are looking forward to welcoming you back into your final year in the Autumn. More news from our students to come…

Semester Abroad – Killing time? Me too!

This past year has been particularly challenging for our Year 3 students. In most cases, they would ordinarily have spent their Autumn semester preparing for Study Abroad and then their Spring semester away at one of our partner institutions. This year was very different and, while our Study Abroad Advisors (Jean-Michel DesJacques for French and Jose Ferreira-Cayuela for Spanish) did a fantastic job matching students up with our usual partners, the changing conditions over the course of the Spring meant that the shape and form of their online contact with those partners varied quite a bit. The one thing that united all of the students on their Semester Abroad, though, was that they were all also working on independent research projects for us at Stirling throughout the semester. That’s a standard part of our Semester Abroad and the topics this year were as varied as usual, from Simone de Beauvoir to representations of activist movements onscreen and much else in between.

Anyway, we thought it would be good to get some perspectives on this unconventional Semester Abroad from the students who’ve actually been involved and we’re delighted to be able to post the first of these articles by Pauline, who has just completed Year 3 on her International Politics and Languages degree:

‘Studying on the beach on the Côte d’Azur, hanging out with friends and practising my French at the same time, learning more about the French culture and lifestyle first-hand. That‘s how I thought my semester would go. Well, it did not. Due to Covid and ever-changing restrictions in France concerning classes and in-person teaching, I was not able to go to SciencesPo Menton for my semester abroad. However, Menton was not lost. Online classes were still on and allowed me to experience a part of French teaching from afar. This was no real replacement for the adventure on the French Riviera I had hoped for, but it was better than nothing. So, I made the most of it and tried to do my best in classes alongside my French classmates. To be honest, I did not do very well. The topics were complex, assignments were usually based on personal opinions and the way SciencesPo is organised was unbearably chaotic and spontaneous for my strictly-structured ‘German brain.’ My favourite class was my C1 French class, since it was one of the few opportunities I got to practise my French. Although it was on a Wednesday at 7am, I did not miss it once, especially since it was tailored specifically to international students.

One major difference that distinguished Semester 6 from my previous Uni years was the workload. Rather than spending my time organising friends and hobbies around my daily studying, the latter was not very present. There was not much preparation needed for the classes I attended and because I did not have to bring back grades from my classes, the motivation to throw myself into assignments was lacking. So, I threw myself into the assignment that did count, namely the individual research project I had to complete for Stirling.

The work I put into my project could be seen as excessive. I spent most of my time this semester on research for a 2250-word paper. That probably sounds like a bad thing, but it was my way to kill time. It was easy to get into it, too, because I enjoyed learning more about my topic and perfecting phrasing, vocabulary and critical thinking. I knew from the beginning that I wanted to write about police brutality in France. I study International Politics together with French, so the political touch was a must for me. My supervisor, Aedín ní Loingsigh, recommended different articles and sources I could focus on. Among these was also a film by Ladj Ly called Les Misérables. Sounds familiar? I thought so too. I made the connection to the Victor Hugo novel, searched for police brutality and was guided smoothly to my research question: “La représentation de la police dans Les Misérables de Victor Hugo et dans Les Misérables de Ladj Ly.”

One struggle I encountered right to the end was the length of my project. The effort I put it would have been better placed in a dissertation than a 2250-word project, which resulted in 5000 to 6000 words at one point in the process. I was too enthusiastic. I had read so much, I had too much to say. Cutting down my arguments was probably the hardest part. It hurts when you have remove sentences in French that you’re really proud of because they sound so good and you used such fancy vocabulary. But I did it and I was proud of the work I submitted in the end.

Other than focusing all my academic energy on my project, I spent most of my semester 6 recharging and reenergising, climbing Scottish mountains and going for walks. And as good as that felt, I am more than ready for a semester where the thought of how to kill my time will never cross my mind.

Although my Semester 6 experience was not quite the one I had planned, it is still one I appreciate. The little insight I got into the French education system only inspired me to put studying in a francophone country on my bucket list for the future.’

Many, many thanks to Pauline for starting this series of reflections on Semester Abroad and for this honest account of the semester. We hope you have a great Summer and we look forward to being able to welcome you back to Stirling in the new academic year!

‘Studying a Masters in 2020 has more than equipped us for the challenges to come’

It’s been great, over the past few weeks, to be able to post about the virtual outreach work our Language Ambassadors are doing and about research and publication news, reminding us all that student and academic life continue, even in the current challenging context. In a similar vein, we’re really pleased to be able to post the following article by Agathe and Ewan, very recent postgraduate students who can give their perspective on the highs and lows of the past academic year:

‘We’ve both recently come to the end of our Master’s degrees in Translation Studies at Stirling. Although our programmes of study were slightly different – MSc in Translation and Interpreting for Agathe, and MSc in Translation and TESOL for Ewan, in conjunction with the Faculty of Social Sciences – we worked together in translation workshops throughout both semesters.

There is no denying that the past academic year was a challenging one, and probably not in the way that either of us expected. Towards the end of our first semester, there was a prolonged UCU strike which resulted in disruption to our normal schedule for classes, although we were grateful to the academic staff for giving up their time to continue giving us help and advice when we needed it. We even had a teach-out so we wouldn’t be at too much of a disadvantage.

Not long after the strike ended, the university campus closed completely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Although some of our remaining classes took place online, it wasn’t the same as being on campus. It was particularly overwhelming for international students. The question of whether going home to your loved ones or staying in Scotland – in case things improved – was all we could think about for several weeks. And even when the decision of staying in Stirling was taken, it didn’t bring much peace of mind. The uncertainty of it all and the worries it brought definitely didn’t help us to put the preliminary work on the dissertation at the top of our list of concerns. Then of course, it was already the second semester exams. However, pandemic or not, things always happen quicker than you think. Our advice would be to keep this in mind, before you dive into the preparation for tests, which will leave you with very few moments to work on your dissertation.

We initially thought it would be a short-term closure, but eventually weeks turned into months, and we found ourselves with a translation project dissertation looming ever closer, with limited access to academic staff and no access at all to the university library (for either resources or dedicated study space).

Fortunately, Aedín ní Loingsigh, our dissertation supervisor, was on hand to provide as much support as possible online during the initial months of lockdown. In the early stages, working from home was difficult. In the age of Netflix and social media, and with the option to do literally anything but study at our disposal, it was amazing what we found to do to help us procrastinate!

We both live in Edinburgh, so in the latter stages, as freedom of movement increased again, we were able to meet up for coffee and help each other. We found it was particularly helpful to be able to bounce ideas off each other and clarify linguistic issues with someone who is a native speaker of the source language we were working from. During these latter stages, Aedín made a couple of trips to Edinburgh too in order to give us some face-to-face (socially-distanced!) consultation time, which was particularly helpful. She was able to point us in the direction of useful e-books to use in the continued absence of the university library. We are genuinely beyond thankful for her, because she didn’t necessarily have to do it; but she knew it’s much easier to raise issues face-to-face rather than by emails or zoom calls.

We were initially a bit pessimistic about obtaining our Master’s degree under such circumstances. We were scared of what it would mean for us, professionally speaking, for the years to come: would our diploma be of less value? Would that mean fewer professional opportunities for us?

Eventually, and after the stress of the dissertation being behind us, we came to realisation that we should actually feel quite proud of ourselves for having completed our programme of study in such a turbulent year, because we’re now certain that if we can succeed even in the face of a global pandemic, then there is no telling what we can achieve in the future. Additionally, our teachers reassured us that the diploma will still be of the same worth.

To that end, we are now starting to form a plan of how we want to proceed now that our degree has come to its conclusion. We both joined the Institute of Translation and Interpreting (ITI) as Affiliate Members and intend to make full use of their training resources and networking opportunities. Ewan is in the middle of setting himself up a website to market himself as a freelance translator, and he’s starting to send out his CV to translation agencies to try and get a foot on the ladder. Agathe is on the same process, although she is more turned towards literary translation, which involves constant research for new material to translate, contacting publishing houses, while also keeping up with interpreting training.

The last thing we should mention is more of a warning than a piece of advice. Getting started as a translator is quite confusing and blurry. Despite many interesting classes about working as a translator or interpret in daily life, where we had the chance to meet with professionals, some aspects of the job remain a bit obscure. The financial aspect of it for instance: how much should we charge for a translation? Or what exactly do we exactly to do to go freelance, especially when you just graduated and have no experience? Regarding literary translation, how do you approach publishing houses, knowing that you need to be in contact with both the English ones and the French ones (in Agathe’s case)? Especially since there can be several publishing houses for one book: should you contact the author then? Their agent?

That is the one thing that we are both worried about; a shortage of time to discuss career prospects with professionals from the industry. Although we had the chance to attend lectures with people who have been in the industry for a long time, we realise with hindsight that we didn’t take the opportunity to ask them meaningful questions about starting out as freelancers and about even some of the most basic things (such as pricing ourselves, initially finding clients, etc.).

However, we are aware that the answers for those questions are part of what we will have to figure out along the way. We know it won’t be an easy journey to begin with, but we’re optimistic and feel that studying a Masters in 2020 of all years has more than equipped us for the challenges that are to come.

As a final point, we would like to say that we’ve both really enjoyed our respective programmes of study, so we would both highly recommend them to any prospective students.’

Many, many thanks to Ewan and to Agathe for having found the time to put together this post, among all of the other demands on their time, and we wish them all the very best for a successful future in Translation and Interpreting. Keep in touch!

Congratulations to our prize-winners!

Following on from our congratulations to all of this year’s graduating students a couple of weeks back, we’d like to offer particular félicitations to this year’s French at Stirling prize-winners whose performance really does stand out as exceptional this year. The recipient of this year’s Simone de Beauvoir Prize, awarded to the student with the strongest performance across their French modules, is Laura, who has just completed a BA Hons in English Studies and French with us. And the recipient of this year’s Faculty Research Prize for the highest dissertation grade in French is Evelyn who has just finished her BA Hons in French. Many, many congratulations to Laura and Evelyn on their achievements and we wish you all the very best for the future!

French and Psychology: ‘I still try and use French whenever I can’

As you’ll have gathered over the months and years of the French at Stirling blog, our degree combinations are many and varied ranging from, for example, French and Spanish to French and Philosophy via French and a range of subjects taught within the School of Management (Marketing, International Management, Human Resource Management…), French and Maths, French and Computing Science, and French as part of the range of Education degrees we run (Primary and Secondary).

One of the combinations that hasn’t featured as often here is Psychology with a European Language, a programme that enables students to combine modules in Psychology with modules in either French or Spanish, so it was particularly good to hear from one of our recent graduates, Luisa, who completed precisely this programme a few years back:

‘After graduating, I went on to do an MSc in Health Psychology at Stirling, as I was torn between what to continue with. I’d say the biggest overlap between the two areas (French and Psychology) was that I used a psychological approach called Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis for my French dissertation and it was one of my highest grades that year. It was the first time I had combined the two subjects but it worked well. I also had to write a Psychology dissertation that was due about a week after the French one: definitely a good test of time management and pressure having to write both at the same time.

I have taken a year to work in retail and I am now applying for jobs related to Psychology. However, I have also looked into jobs relating to French, as I had been told by a fellow 2016 French graduate that an organisation in Stirling was advertising translation jobs. I have always enjoyed the prospect of having more options because of having a joint degree. I still try and use French whenever I can and I hope to re-integrate it into my life in the near future.’

Many thanks to Luisa for sending us this blog post and we wish you all the best with the job applications, whichever route they take you down.

Why Study Languages? What our students say…

As promised, then, as well as having gathered responses to questions about language learning (which ones, why, why not, why keep going with them…) from colleagues, we’ve also been delighted to receive (and to continue to receive!) a number of responses from our students. We’ll post a couple of these separately but, without further ado, here are some of the initial thoughts and experiences from students across different years and different programmes:

For David, who is in the first year of a BA Hons in French with us, French started at the age of 13 at secondary school but, in his words, he was ‘a bad student and count only count to 10 by the time [he] left.’ He then restarted learning French at the age of 50 and is now, as I say, in his first year with us. The motivation for taking up French again came from David having had to stop work and he says that ‘French is not an easy subject but a great challenge due to its difficulty, beauty and culture.’ He also did Beginners’ Spanish in an access course last year but didn’t continue with it because he found that it was too difficult to be learning two languages at the same time.

Catriona is also a mature student, studying French with us who explains: ‘I started learning French in 1^st year at high school, aged 11. I think that was in 1968! I remember being delighted when I realised I could understand the French bit of the Beatles’ song ‘Michelle’!’ In her 3^rd year, she took up German as well and did two years of Latin in 1^st and 2^nd year. Her mum had also enjoyed French and German at high school (both to Higher) so she wonders whether that influenced her though she points out ‘it didn’t have the same effect on my brother so maybe that’s not the cause!’ She liked French and found it fairly easy (‘probably because I liked it’) and the same applied to German. She would also have liked to have done Russian or Spanish but neither was available. Having done Higher French and German, Catriona then pursued a career in nursing but has done various continuing education courses in both languages over the years. She’s doing French now because ‘I still like learning it and don’t want to forget what I know. I like the country and the culture and like being able to speak to the people in their own language and read things I see when on holiday etc. I suppose I’ve got a bit of a fascination with foreign languages and learning them.’

Chelsea is a final year student whose dissertation happens to be looking at language learning, anxiety and motivation in secondary schools so she has been particularly interested in the news coverage. She started learning French aged 10 (in P6) and initially, very honestly, continued learning it because she had to study a language up until S4. Chelsea’s decision to study Higher French was largely based on getting good grades and she says: ‘I didn’t actually start to enjoy French until I was studying it at Higher.’ She went on to take it at Uni because she enjoyed learning it and was good at it but also because she wanted to improve her spoken French. She also took Beginners’ Spanish in first year but had to stop because it didn’t fit any more into the structures of her degree.

Chloe is in the first year of her degree in Primary Education with a Specialism in Modern Languages, having started learning French in P7 when she was about 10. Her initial motivation for continuing with it came partly from needing a qualification in French to get into her University course as she wanted to do languages teaching and enjoys learning languages. She travelled to Romania and had to learn the basics of Romanian to get by there but found that she would get it confused with her French so stopped it after that particular trip.

Like Chloe, Lauren is also in the first year of a degree with Education but, in her case, our Professional Education (Secondary) programme with French and Spanish. The first language she learned that wasn’t her own was French and she started learning it at 4 years old. At that age, her grandparents got her involved with a French class outside of school but she stopped aged 8 after her teacher fell ill. She started another one around a year later and her teacher was a franchisee of La Jolie Ronde. Lauren says she kept up with her languages due to the influence of her grandparents: ‘my 84-year-old grandpa often texts me in French and we have conversations in French at dinner times whenever I visit.’ Lauren decided to study languages at University as ‘it’s the one passion I’ve had since I was little that hasn’t changed and has been ever present in my life.’

As is the case for those of us teaching French at Stirling, those studying it with us come from a range of backgrounds, having taken up languages for all kinds of reasons. We’ll keep adding any responses that come in from other students over the days ahead and we’d like to thank all those who’ve already been in touch!

‘Making life-long friends from all over the world is something I’d never have done if I hadn’t studied languages’

As part of the process of catching up with recent-ish graduates, it was lovely to get this update from Dawn who graduated back in 2011 with a BA(Hons) in French and Spanish which gives a great sense of the range of avenues down which our graduates travel once they finish their studies with us:

‘The summer after graduation I spent in Barcelona doing a six-week intensive CELTA course to qualify me to teach English as a foreign language all over the world. This is an internationally recognised qualification and can be taken at various locations in Scotland if you want to study closer to home. After my CELTA course finished I stayed in Barcelona for about a year and a half teaching English in private language schools to adults and doing after school tutoring.

I returned to Scotland and I got a graduate internship working with the local authority’s educational department. The role given to each of the interns matched with our background, interests and future career goals. My role was to develop the teaching of modern languages within primary schools. I was delighted! I taught some Spanish in schools, worked with pupils whose first language wasn’t English and acted as a mentor for foreign language assistants coming from abroad. I particularly enjoyed being a mentor due to having been a language assistant in France during my studies.

I moved to Glasgow a couple of years ago and I currently work for a third sector organisation which ultimately helps people with disabilities and health conditions to find and retain paid employment. I am a Networks Development Officer with responsibility for the west of Scotland. Although I am not directly using my language skills in this job, I am constantly using the skills I gained from my degree. The writing of a dissertation taught me how to accurately conduct research from various sources, collate information and present it in a way that someone with no knowledge of the subject would understand. This skill has been replicated in my job on multiple occasions.

Additionally, studying languages makes you a very clear communicator; you consider your word choice and phrasing before speaking. This is a transferable skill that has proved very important when speaking with clients who have communication difficulties or a learning disability.

Although I don’t use French and Spanish in my job I keep them alive by speaking with friends I made in Spain when I did Erasmus or friends in France when I was a language assistant. I read international magazines online and I still have a passion for foreign cinema. I look back on my time at Stirling University with very fond memories. I am grateful for the opportunities the degree gave me; working in France for a year and studying in Spain and making life-long friends from all over the world is something I’d never have done if I hadn’t studied languages at Stirling. Thank you!’

Many, many thanks to Dawn for taking the time to send this update and we look forward to more updates over the years ahead.

Congratulations all round!

As well as congratulations to our students who are about to graduate next week, it’s also the time of the year for other prizes to be announced so the perfect time to congratulate a range of French at Stirling prize-winners:

First and foremost, many congratulations to Jack who has just finished his second year in French and Spanish with us at Stirling where he is part of our Tennis Scholarship Programme. Jack has recently discovered that he has been awarded a Stevenson Exchange Scholarship which he will hold next Spring while he is on Study Abroad. The scholarship will enable him to study the internal structures of tennis development in France to understand how tennis within the United Kingdom might grow and what role he could play in that process. French at Stirling has a great success rate for these awards as you can see here and here! Posts from this year’s Stevenson scholars should appear on the blog over the next few weeks and we look forward to updates from Jack when he starts his Semester Abroad.

Congratulations, too, to the winners of this year’s Division of Literature and Languages prizes for French. Our annual Simone de Beauvoir prize which goes to the student who has achieved the Best Performance across their French Honours modules has been awarded to Jeanne who graduates in International Management with European Languages and Society next week. Our two other final year prizes with a French element go to Calum who graduates next week in French and Politics and has won our Translation prize for the Best Performance across the final year translation assessments and to Anne, one of the students on our Integrated Masters in International Management and Intercultural Studies, who has won our Languages, Cultures and Religions Research Prize for her dissertation. Strictly speaking, the dissertation is in Spanish but we’re happy to add to the congratulations here since Anne’s programme falls under the French remit!

And students at earlier stages of their degrees have also been receiving news of their prize successes… For the Best Performance by a student in our Year 1 Beginners’ stream, congratulations to Monika who is studying French and Spanish, while the Best Performance in Year 1 by a non-Beginner award goes to Yamina who is studying International Politics and Languages. The Year 2 prizes have gone to Jennifer Graham on our Primary Education and Modern Languages programme (for the Best Performance in our Advanced stream) and to Laura Castane Bassa who studies English and French (for the Best Performance in Year 2 by a former Beginner).

Extremely worthy winners all round and félicitations to you all!!