End of teaching already

It seems like the European Day of Languages was only yesterday and yet here we are, with our undergraduate teaching just having finished and our students and staff involved in oral assessments and final pieces of coursework. Many of our Year 3 students are getting themselves ready for a semester on Study Abroad in the spring and, for everyone else, it’ll be back to Stirling where we’ve got new modules launching and lots of exciting outreach work being undertaken by our Language Ambassadors.

There’s plenty to update you on and we’ll hopefully get a few blog posts up over the coming days. However, one thing we’ve been particularly pleased about this semester is that we’ve seen the return of former students who have decided to come back to Stirling, in one guise or another, and whose experiences give a great sense of the range of routes that studying a language opens up.

To start off the updates, we were really glad to hear from Erin, who graduated in June with a BA Hons in French and, in September, started our MSc programme in International Conflict and Cooperation, building on the dissertation she wrote on Islamophobia in contemporary French society: “In the beginning it was quite daunting and just a lot of work, almost everyone else came from a politics background and I was having a bit of an identity crisis thinking ‘well, I can speak another language’. After a couple of weeks, I relaxed into being an International Relations student and managed to impress one of my tutors by being able to speak French in order to analyse a speech by President Macron (that we happened to have studied in our French classes…). Despite the mountain of readings I am buried under now, I am enjoying myself.

As part of this Masters I have signed up to go on a study trip to Geneva in May 2024, the aim of which is to secure work opportunities and connections in UN organisations in Switzerland. I have already volunteered to act as translator for the class because I’m the only francophone in our class. Hopefully, it will provide an opportunity to practice my French – I have been reassured by Brigitte that the Swiss sometimes speak slower, which is a relief since I haven’t been able to practice all that much since graduation.

While it is sometimes strange to be back at Stirling in a new department, and not see the faces I became used to, it is nice to catch up every once in a while with the members of the French department in the corridors of Cottrell building which I am convinced is a maze. This is my fifth year here and I still get lost!”

We’re delighted to see Erin back on campus and grateful that she made the time to send us through this update. We’ll look forward to hearing how the Geneva trip goes in the spring, too. More news about other Stirling returnees, and other assorted updates, to follow…

Congratulations all round!

It has been a busy couple of weeks in French at Stirling, hence a bit of radio silence from the blog. However, before the month ends, we wanted to take a bit of time, firstly, to congratulate all our students, from Beginners to non-Beginners, from Year 1 to finalists, undergrads and postgrads, on having got through this very challenging year. Undergraduate teaching finished a couple of weeks ago and we’ve all been making our way through assessments and essay deadlines and oral exams and all the other work that comes, for students and staff, with the end of a semester. It has been intense but, on behalf of all of us in the French at Stirling teaching team, well done to everyone!

We’d also like to say thank you to all of the students who voted for French at Stirling colleagues in this year’s RATE teaching awards, particularly in the Best Tutor and Excellence in Teaching in Arts and Humanities categories. It really does mean a tremendous amount to receive the nominations and to see the quotes that explain why students have voted. Whether it’s for ‘insightful comments’, ‘excellent feedback’, for our ‘words of encouragement’, for being ‘friendly and approachable’ and ‘knowledgeable’ and ‘passionate’ about our subject and ‘very encouraging’, because we ‘make learning very enjoyable’  or because we ‘go the extra mile’ or because we give ‘every student their chance to air their views’, we’re all very grateful (thanks to all the individual students who put those lovely comments in their nominations!).

We were also particularly chuffed to be part of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities this year and to have been voted Faculty of the Year!

There’ll be more news and updates over the weeks ahead but, in the first instance, well done all round and thanks, in particular, to our students for all their hard work this year.