Spain, Colombia, Sicily… and back to Stirling again

Yesterday’s blog catch-up came from Erin who graduated earlier this year with a BA Hons in French and is now at the end of the first semester her MSc in International Conflict and Cooperation with us. Today, another opportunity to catch-up with one of our graduates but this time someone who has been away from Stirling for much longer. David graduated in 2017, with a BA Hons in French and Spanish, and has been a regular blog contributor over the years (we’ll link to some of his previous posts in this update so you can read more about his adventures). From January, he’ll be back in Stirling, starting his PhD under the supervision of Fiona Barclay:

“Last time I posted something on here was at the start of the global Covid-19 pandemic, when I had to return to Paris from Glasgow, to finish up my PGDE and graduate online – a very strange reality in which I started teaching in August 2020. After three years of teaching full time, I decided to return to studying and complete a PhD at the University of Stirling, almost 10 years after having left! Let me just rewind a little.

Born and raised in Paris, I was always attracted to living in Scotland as I used to go there regularly as a child (I am getting old…) to visit family. Scotland was always, and still is, renowned for its innovative, modern and forward-looking approach to higher education. I chose to attend the University of Stirling from 2013 as I would have had the opportunity to become a dual-qualified language teacher in just four years. However, the course was under review (it is now very much still in existence!) and I ended up graduating with an honours degree in French and Spanish. During my second year at Stirling, I was asked if I would be interested in completing a PhD after graduating. While I was flattered that I had been asked, I was quite taken aback, as I did not feel that I had the skills or knowledge… I had imposter syndrome! Thus, I declined the offer and focused on my undergraduate studies (although I did sometimes think “what if..?”).

However, during my third year at university, I was able to live, study and work in Spain for a full academic year as part the Erasmus+ programme and this is where I found a renewed passion for language learning but also academia as I had the opportunity to study a wide range of subjects in Spanish: sociolinguistics, heritage conservation as well as mythology! From then on in, I was hooked.

Upon graduating, I decided to work abroad in Colombia as part of the British Council language assistantship programme. To optimise my chances of being selected, I ticked the “send me anywhere” box. I was chosen to teach at a university in the coffee region of Colombia and it was life-changing from an academic point of view: I was treated like a university lecturer although I was only 21 years old and had only graduated one month previously! I discovered the research side of teaching and was given the opportunity to research and improve my teaching through interdisciplinary academic discussions, collaboration and conferences. 

Nevertheless, I was still sceptical about my academic ability and wanted to see if I could perhaps gain more experience as a secondary school teacher to, not only challenge myself further from a teaching standpoint, but also apply the skills I had learnt in Colombia while simultaneously developing my own interpersonal skills through my own language learning. So I applied for a second year as a language assistant to work and live in Italy. Once again, I ticked the “send me anywhere” box and was sent to… Sicily! I taught in two local high schools there and, while I did not speak a word of Italian when I first arrived, after a few months my Spanish slowly turned into Italian (including a bit of Sicilian slang apparently, unbeknownst to me!). Having studied at the University of Catania to improve my grammar, I then came back to Scotland, confident that I was ready to teach at high school level (although higher education had been at the back of my mind since Colombia…). 

My PGDE year was interrupted due to the Covid-19 pandemic which is when I first experienced the advantages and challenges of online teaching as both a student and a teacher! As a newly qualified teacher applying for my probationary year I could choose 5 different local authorities and as an international student I did not have a specific school in mind. I therefore ticked the “anywhere” box (does that sound familiar?), hoping to go somewhere new and ironically I was appointed to a school in the southside of Glasgow – I did not even have to change flat!

There were no permanent posts available at the end of my year teaching at St. Ninian’s and so I applied to several schools across Scotland. It was a very stressful time as I was in competition with my PGDE peers as well as teachers with a significant amount of experience. There are an incredible number of social codes and professional expectations which teacher training does not prepare you for! Indeed, interviewing is a skill in itself, regardless of one’s teaching ability. 

After a few awkward online interviews and Q&A sessions, I was offered a permanent position at Lomond School in Helensburgh. There, I was able to further develop my teaching while also completing my provisional registration in Italian by following an evening course at the University of Strathclyde. However, I missed academia and research. Thus, I decided to complete my Masters in Education while teaching full-time. After lots of coffee, complaining and maybe two (or three?) late nights, I submitted my thesis, expecting the worst! 

One month later, I received a notification informing me that I had been awarded a first class in my thesis and the University of Glasgow asked me if I would be interested in publishing it. I think that publishing my masters was a key moment last year for me as it enabled me to shake off the imposter syndrome which I tend to carry around with me! 

Finally, I was invited this year to apply for a PhD at the University of Stirling, in collaboration with the language organisation SCILT, to investigate the effect of the 1+2 Initiative on language uptake. I was delighted when I was selected and while it is strange to think that I will be leaving teaching in December, I am looking forward to returning to the University of Stirling where I was first introduced to Higher Education and challenged academically.”

Many thanks to David for having found the time to send us this blog post – we’re looking forward to welcoming you back in the New Year!

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.

Africa in Motion 2019 Programme Announced

As regular blog readers know, the annual Africa in Motion film festival was founded in 2006 by Lizelle Bisschoff, who was at the time a PhD student in the then School of Languages, Cultures and Religions at the University of Stirling, whose research project was supervised by David Murphy. 13 years on, Lizelle is now Senior Lecturer in Theatre, Film and TV Studies at the University of Glasgow, David is Professor of French at Strathclyde University, the School of Languages, Cultures and Religions is part of Stirling’s Division of Literature and Languages and Africa in Motion is still going strong with Justine Atkinson as the Festival Producer.

The festival has just released its programme for the 2019 edition which will run from 25 October to 3 November, with screenings and a wide range of other events in Glasgow and Edinburgh. The Division of Literature and Languages is particularly pleased to be the joint sponsor this year of the screening of Lost Warrior, a Somali-Danish coproduction being shown at the Edinburgh Filmhouse on 26 October. You can access the full programme of events via Africa in Motion’s website here. So much to choose from!

 

Summer 2019 Publications and Conferences

As we move closer and closer to the start of term, there’ll be more updates and news about all things French and Francophone at Stirling. In the meantime, we just wanted to let you know about a few new publications and conference papers written by some of our current and former postgrads and colleagues.

Former French at Stirling PhD student Martin Verbeke’s latest article ‘Unveiling the Myth of Mars and Venus in French rap: An analysis of the gender determinants of non-standard language use’ was just published in the August 2019 issue of the International Journal of Francophone Studies.

And our current PhD student Fraser McQueen gave a paper at the Society for French Studies annual conference at Royal Holloway in July entitled ‘Muslim is French: Zahwa Djennad’s Tabou. Confession d’un jeune de banlieue (2013).’ Fraser will be conferencing again later this week, at the Association for the Study of Modern and Contemporary France in Paris, where he’ll be speaking about ‘Transnational Paris and Peripheral France in Michel Houellebecq’s Sérotonine.’

And finally, for the moment, our former colleague, Bill Marshall, has a chapter on Xavier Dolan’s films out in ReFocus: The Films of Xavier Dolan, a new collection focusing on Dolan, edited by Andrée Lafontaine. The chapter was previously published in Nottingham French Studies. Bill’s chapter on ‘Quebec Cinema as Global Cinema’ was also published earlier this year in Janine Marchessault and Will Straw’s Oxford Handbook of Canadian Cinema.

More to follow…

‘Learning languages can open many doors’

And what better way to round off today’s blog catch-up than with a lovely post by our former student Stephanie who graduated a few years back in French and Spanish:

‘It’s been nearly three years since I graduated from the University of Stirling. I remember the stress of finding work and final exams looming. If only someone had told me to stop worrying and just enjoy spending time with friends on the beautiful campus.

When I left Stirling, I spent an incredible few months working as an English Language Assistant with the British Council just outside of Paris. Aedín, one of my lecturers, had told me “Take these fantastic opportunities while you’re young- they didn’t exist when I was in University!” Teaching with the British Council was indeed fantastic, and having not taken a placement during my studies, it was amazing to be able to go when I finished. Whilst I was there, I did some translation for the school where I worked, and this led to me doing a Master’s in translation and interpreting – this time at the University of Surrey. I loved this course, and although it was challenging, I would recommend studying translation and interpreting to anyone who has done a language degree, because these are transferable skills which can take you anywhere!

Other students from my year in Stirling have gone on to teach abroad, gained PGCEs, travelled the world as Flight Attendants, worked as translators and much more. Learning languages can open many doors, but even if you choose a career where you don’t use them directly, they will continue to be invaluable when travelling and meeting new people.’

Many thanks, indeed, to Stephanie for sending us this post and we wish you all the very best for the future – keep us posted on where life takes you!

Erasmus in Stirling: ‘A great experience I’ll never forget!’

The start of a new week in Stirling and, as we’ve already mentioned, we’re looking forward to welcoming Joëlle Popineau on her Erasmus staff mobility from Tours tomorrow, but we thought we’d start this week with the thoughts of Ulvi who is also in Stirling as part of the Erasmus programme but as a student:

‘Hi everyone, my name is Ulvi, and I’m a student in Master 1 at EM Strasbourg BS and currently on my Erasmus exchange year at Stirling!

At the beginning of my exchange I was a little bit scared because this is the first time I have ventured so far, alone! Nevertheless, it is a great experience that I will never forget. Indeed, the welcome at the University of Stirling is very warm. We are immediately supported by the administration which allowed me to know what I was doing.

The university and the campus suit me perfectly. We’re right in the middle of nature and I take full advantage of the University’s sports complexes which offer me a feeling of well-being every day. Moreover, it is a very international place where I have been able to meet many new cultures and share mine with my new friends.

Finally, since September, I have had the chance to lead informal conversation sessions with students taking French as part of their degree. During these sessions I work with groups of students who come from all over the world to enjoy a moment of discussion on any topic, all in French! These are very enjoyable sessions that we share with new friends, very well managed by Dr Johnston and her team. Personally, I have integrated myself well within this programme and it have helped strengthen my own speaking, confidence and openness in groups with many different nationalities. If you’re a potential (French-speaking) Erasmus student reading this, I would strongly advise you to get in touch with the French team about these great sessions if you get the change: they have already given me some great memories!!’

Many, many thanks Ulvi for the lovely blog post, as well as for all his much-appreciated hard work on our informal conversation sessions, and we hope you enjoy the remaining few months of your time in Stirling.

Erasmus+ Teaching Exchange in Limoges

As we mentioned in the previous blog post, this year’s French at Stirling Study Abroad cohort are just starting their semester at one of our many partner institutions across France and the wider Francophone world. Most of them will be doing so as part of an Erasmus+ exchange so, as they start that particular chapter, we wanted to post an article by Aedín ní Loingsigh who also benefitted from the Erasmus+ programme just before Christmas but, in her case, in order to undertake a teaching exchange with one of our partners:

“In December, I spent a week teaching at the Université de Limoges as part of the Erasmus + staff mobility programme. The location of Limoges in west-central France meant I was able to fly to Bordeaux and spend some time there before beginning my teaching. I had lived in Bordeaux as a student many years ago (I won’t say how many…). Although the city has changed a lot since my time there, it was wonderful to stroll around and recall the thrill of discovering the possibilities that France seemed to offer as I was coming to the end of my undergraduate studies.

I left Bordeaux early on the day that a large Gilets jaunes protest was planned. Driving inland to visit some friends in Agen, I encountered a small number of protesters at various roundabouts. These were all cheerful encounters and did nothing to prepare me for accounts I later heard of the violence that had broken out in Bordeaux after I had left. Chatting with people later, I noticed that the Gilets jaunes was an ‘event’ that people wanted to explain to me just as they wanted me to explain the story of Brexit dominating the news in the UK.

These topics of conversation did not disappear when I got to Limoges. If anything, Gilets jaunes/Brexit became the ‘must-be-acknowledged’ issue to broach, however briefly, each time I encountered somebody new. Some of the most interesting conversations were with the students I taught. They were particularly keen to learn how the Gilets jaunes movement was being interpreted in the UK and what I had understood was happening since my arrival in France. In my responses, I noticed how they ‘corrected’ what they thought was ‘inaccurate’ and how they sometimes disagreed amongst themselves as they tried to ‘explain’ the reasons behind the actions of the French protesters. In my own attempts to ‘explain’ Brexit, I became highly aware that my own views on the subject invariably coloured the version of events I was providing for my French listeners.

In the end, I saw that this was a really interesting way into some of the key principles of translation theory that I had been asked to teach during my visit. The key point I had prepared for discussion with the postgraduate Translation Studies students in Limoges was the question of ‘translator stance’, i.e. the idea that translators/interpreters are not neutral figures who simply transform the ‘same’ story into another language. As translators translate, they are also trying to explain. But it is inaccurate to imagine that as translators do this, they somehow remove themselves from the reality of the world they live in and become neutral figures. In other words, it is wrong to think that bias becomes lost in translation. Discussing this idea with the students in Limoges was really rewarding, especially once we had established how our own ‘stance’ can influence our explanation of events across different languages and cultures. As well as thinking about how we translate ourselves, we looked at different examples of translators/interpreters in the colonial era and tried to find evidence of their ‘stance’ in things like footnotes, prefaces, diaries and personal correspondence.

The seminars I taught were longer than I am used to in Stirling (two of the seminars I taught were 3 hours long) and the students weren’t quite as used to working in groups as students in Stirling are. But they were enthusiastic to work in new ways, they were well prepared, and they had lots of ideas they wanted to share. They were also happy to be active translators in the classroom and willingly helped me to find equivalents for any terms and concepts I couldn’t find in French. In the end, the length of seminars went unnoticed. Moreover, with my teaching largely timetabled for the morning (8.30am starts are quite common), I had plenty of time to go to the university restaurant for a delicious three-course CROUS lunch for less than 7€ — students pay even less. In some respects, the university buildings and teaching facilities in Limoges were less well maintained than in Stirling but the emphasis on healthy, affordable food and communal eating was really inspiring and made me wish it was done so effortlessly in our own university.

My time in Limoges was too brief. I only managed to see a little of the city centre and had no time to explore the beautiful countryside I had seen on my long train journey from Agen. But I saw enough to want to go back and make teaching in France something I try to do more often. Learning from the students in Limoges, translating at the same time as I was teaching about translation, and being confronted in real time with the complexity of communicating ideas back and forth between English and French was deeply enriching. I had many wonderful experiences in Limoges but what it reminded me above all else was the importance of exchange: of engaging with other ways of doing things, of learning about/from differences of culture and opinion, and of striving to be open at all times to new experiences.

Finally, two discoveries from my week in France might be useful to students in Stirling reading this blog as they prepare for discussion of topical matters related to France this Spring:

1. This podcast from France Culture called L’esprit public. It comes out every Sunday and is a really clear and accessible discussion of the big political events of the previous week.
2. This short text from Édouard Louis, Qui a tué mon père. It is a very moving, personal account of this young author’s relationship with his father crossed with a more detached, sociological attempt to understand the cultural and economic factors shaping working class life in North East France. Although it doesn’t directly address the ongoing political upheaval in France and the significance of the Gilets jaunes, it was the best ‘translation’ I came across of the deep frustration and anger that is underpinning this movement.”

Many thanks to Aedín for the great blog post and to our partners at Limoges for their hospitality!

New Semester

It’s already the end of our first week of the new semester here at Stirling so time for a quick round-up of our news. It’s been a busy little run up to the start of teaching here: new colleagues, great First Year numbers and those starting in our Advanced stream have been benefiting from our Bridging Materials, French at Stirling has been rated No.3 in Scotland and in the top 20 in the UK by the 2019 Complete University Guide… A period of great change and excitement!

Where to start? ‘New colleagues’ seems a good place. Beatrice Ivey, Research Assistant on Fiona Barclay’s AHRC Leadership project, is now in Stirling and settling into Divisional life. She and Fiona are working on the organisation of the exhibition that forms part of the project, more on which soon. We’ve also welcomed Emeline Morin who has joined us as a Lecturer in French for the next two years. Emeline’s research interests lie in comparative literature and fairytales and she’s teaching with us across a wide range of courses.

Alongside Emeline, two other new lecturers will be joining us over the months ahead. Aedín ní Loingsigh will be starting in October, with Hannah Grayson taking up her post in January. Hannah’s recent work has been on the Rwandan Stories of Change project at St Andrews. Much as we were sad to see Bill Marshall retire, it’s great to get a chance to welcome a fantastic group of new colleagues and we’re looking forward to working with them. We’ve also got some new faces among the Teaching Assistants who work as part of our Language team (with Language Coordinator, Jean-Michel DesJacques, Mathilde Mazau and Brigitte Depret): Fanny Lacôte and Fraser McQueen who have taught with us before are joined by Aurélie Noël who has previously taught at the University of Glasgow.

As ever, the start of the new semester also means welcoming back our students. Our finalists are back from their Semester Abroad (in France, Quebec, Morocco, Switzerland… or Hispanophone destinations for those doing French and Spanish) and our Year 3 students are about to start the process to select their destination for their Semester Abroad. With that in mind, Jean-Michel DesJacques, Jose Ferreira-Cayuela and Cristina Johnston are organising their annual get-together at the end of September that gives all those students a chance to meet over wine and nibbles to talk about Study Abroad and to exchange questions and tips. All the University’s incoming exchange students from French or Spanish-speaking partner institutions are also invited and it’s a great chance for the different groups of students to get to know each other.

Some of those incoming French-language exchange students are also currently being recruited to lead informal conversation sessions for students in a range of year groups, to offer a further opportunity for spoken language practice beyond the weekly tuition offered by our Language team.

And, of course, we have a great cohort of Year 2 students, many of whom will be applying for English Language Assistantships over the course of this year (welcome back to those who were ELAs last year!). For the first half of our second year, we run an Intermediate class for those who started as complete beginners with us in Year 1 and it’s great to see that numbers on that module are even higher than last year.

Finalists back from Semester Abroad, Year 3 students planning time abroad, students settling into Year 2 and good numbers of Year 1 students which is fantastic to see. Those on the Advanced stream – taking French with a wide range of other subjects – have been working their way through the Bridging Materials that we put together for incoming students each year, to help smooth the transition from secondary school language study to University-level language learning. And those on our Beginners’ stream are about to plunge into the intensive programme of language learning that will introduce them to French and build their confidence and ability as the weeks progress.

A great group of undergraduates and an enthusiastic intake of students on the French stream of our Translation and Translation with TESOL programmes who will work under the guidance of French at Stirling staff on their translation portfolios and, ultimately, on their dissertation projects. It’s been particularly nice to see some familiar faces on those programmes with recent graduates returning to undertake postgrad work with us (as well as across other TPG programmes at Stirling, of course).

As in previous years, we’ll be posting profiles of our students regularly, partly to catch up with those who’ve written for us before and to get a sense of how their studies are progressing, and partly to introduce you to some of our new Year 1 intake, so keep an eye on these pages!

As for French at Stirling colleagues, lots of news to report there, too. Fiona Barclay, Beatrice Ivey and Cristina Johnston are in discussions with the MacRobert’s film programmer, Grahame Reid, to finalise a programme of French Film Festival screenings that will take place at the MacRobert later in the semester. Details to follow but expect some great new French-language films! (It’s not directly French-related but do also check out Grahame’s Central Scotland Documentary Festival at the MacRobert from 4-8 October – a fantastic programme of documentaries lies ahead!) And on another film-related note, David Murphy will be involved with the Africa in Motion festival in November – more on which soon…

 

 

 

 

Aedín ní Loingsigh will be participating in a workpshop on Interdisciplinarity at the Université de Limoges in December and Elizabeth Ezra gave a paper in June at the Contemporary Childhood Conference at the University of Strathclyde examining the witch-familiar relationships in Harry Potter and His Dark Materials. Elizabeth has also just signed a contract for a book, co-edited with Catherine Wheatley of KCL entitled Shoe Reels: The History and Philosophy of Footwear in Film, which will be published by EUP in 2020. And with her non-academic hat on, Elizabeth will be talking about her children’s book Ruby McCracken at the Wigtown Book Festival later this month.

This weekend, while staff and students from French and Spanish are talking to prospective students at Stirling University’s Open Day (15 September – come and see us!), Jean-Michel DesJacques is off to Dundee where he’ll be taking part in the 25th Anniversary Conference UCML Scotland​: Looking inward and outward. Jean-Michel will be meeting actors from all education sectors from Primary to higher education. The 1+2 language initiative will be high on the agenda but not exclusively since challenges and issues in languages are multiple and complex.

And our Phd student Fraser McQueen has been presenting his work across a range of conferences since the Spring, including the ASMCF Postgraduate Study Day at the IMLR (where he spoke about Islamophobia and anti-Semitism in France), the Society for French Studies Postgraduate Study day at UCL (with a paper on female radicalisation fiction), Stirling’s own annual Arts and Humanities Postgraduate Research Conference and the Society for Francophone Postcolonial Studies Postgraduate Study Day at Birmingham. Fraser also co-organised the SGSAH Second Year PG Symposium in Glasgow in June and presented his own work there, too.

There is much, much more that we could include here but that seems a good taste of what’s going on to start things off this semester. More to follow over the weeks ahead! In the meantime, many thanks to the students whose photos from last semester abroad have made their way into this post and bon weekend!

We’re back!!

The blog has been rather quiet over the past few months but, as the teaching and assessment side of the semester winds down, it’s time to get things started again. There’ll be new student profiles, articles on what our students are up to on Study Abroad and news about research activities and plans but, by way of a starting point, a healthy list of congratulations!

We currently have three undergraduate students (Stefano, Nicolas and Annika) completing their Semester Abroad in France and working on fascinating and diverse research projects thanks to Stevenson Exchange Scholarships. Updates on the projects will follow from them but extra congratulations go to Stefano who – we have just learned – has been jointly awarded one of the University of Stirling’s Williamson Travel Scholarship which is likely to be put to very good use to fund fieldwork in Northern Italy and Southern France, examining  integration practices for refugees and asylum seekers between the two countries.

At the recent Conversation awards ceremony, our PhD student, Fraser McQueen, was the recipient of the Most Prolific Author award thanks to articles on the politics of contemporary France that have been read almost 13000 times.

And particular congratulations to our Language team of Brigitte Depret, Jean-Michel DesJacques and Mathilde Mazau who received an array of nominations at the student-led RATE awards (for everything from Excellence in Teaching in Arts and Humanities to the Santander Outstanding Achievement Award) with French Programme Director Cristina Johnston being awarded the Best Tutor prize.

And on a less strictly academic note, congratulations, too, to David Murphy for successfully completing the Stirling Half-Marathon and to our 2014 honorary graduate Mark Cousins whose new film The Eyes of Orson Welles premieres this very night at the Cannes Film Festival.

Yep, definitely a good place to start things off again on the blog! Congratulations to all and look out for more posts over the days and weeks ahead…

“To Infinity and Beyond…”: 2017 Finalists’ Future Plans

For our students who will be graduating with degrees involving French in June this year, the exams and assessment for French are now over, the essays have all been submitted, and we wanted to get a chance to share the plans of those who’ll be in our 2017 graduating class. They don’t all know what they’re going to do once they graduate and their plans may well change over the months ahead but, just as a snapshot of the range of directions our languages graduates end up going in, here goes, in no particular order:

Emily, who’ll be graduating with Single Honours French, is “planning to go into firefighting and just waiting for the next recruitment drive, doing whatever else pays the rent in the meantime. I don’t know where I’ll end up doing this in the long run, but I’m very happy to be able to have Montreal and the south of France as strong contenders.” Mareike, who’ll be graduating in Psychology with a European Language, is off to Bournemouth where she’ll be embarking on an MSc in Nutrition and Behaviour (and hopefully finding ways to keep going with French). Sarah, who will be graduating with Single Honours French, has already relocated to Italy where she is working as an assistant park manager for a company on a French campsite. She worked as an employee for the company for the last two summers in France and since finishing university has moved up the ranks thanks to earning her degree, and having more experience. She says this is “a great way to work abroad and meet new people whilst also giving you the chance to live and experience French culture outside of university.”

Lysiane, whose degree is in French and Spanish, is planning on doing a postgraduate degree at Stirling in Strategic Communications and Public Relations. Her plan is to be able to apply for jobs in the future with skills in languages and in another field such as marketing or public relations because “most of the jobs I have been looking at are looking for people with language skills along with something else. I think this postgraduate degree will give me more experience and knowledge so that one day I might be able to become a PR in the hotel business or the airlines.” As for Kitti, who studied French and Global Cinema with us, a TEFL course beckons and she plans “to move to Grenoble for a year or two to teach English and in the meantime work on my French until it’s perfect. At the moment I’m doing an interpreting job and I love it, but I feel like with Hungarian there are not enough opportunities, so it would be good to add French to the list. Plus, I would love to try teaching so I think this would be a perfect opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.”

For Hannah, who’ll be graduating in French, teaching also lies ahead but in a different context: “After graduation, my plan is to complete a PGDE Primary course at UWS. My very rough business plan for this summer is to start up a French club for babies/toddlers and their parents/guardians where they will be able to learn some nursery rhymes and basic numbers, colours, and animals in preparation for starting French in primary school.” Alex, who’ll also be graduating in French, “will be working an internship in project management/operations for Ironman (the triathlon company, not Robert Downey Jr. sadly!) until October and then I will begin work as a Management Trainee at Enterprise Rent a Car on their graduate scheme. At some point in the next 5 years, having gained some business experience, I will seek to do a Masters or MBA (likely at Stirling) in order to improve my chances with larger employers.”

Julie, who started studying Japanese (informally) alongside her French and English Studies degree, is keen to get the opportunity to develop those language skills further so has applied to “Waseda University and the International Christian University in Japan for a postgraduate degree (Comparative Cultures at ICU and Culture and Communication at Waseda). In case I’m not accepted, I have also applied for a job at two different teaching companies that provide English teaching in Japan (Aeon and Gaba). I also plan to apply at Interac, which is a company that hires Assistant teachers to help with English teaching at Japanese High Schools and Junior High Schools. I am quite determined to get to Japan in one way or another, so I’m hoping…” We’ll keep our fingers firmly crossed! And Luise, a student of French and Spanish, has similarly potentially intercontinental travel on the horizon, having been accepted for an English teaching assistantship in Colombia. For administrative reasons, that might or might not work out, and, in the meantime, Luise has a summer job in Deanston Distillery (as a tour guide): “If Colombia does not work out, I might just stay in Scotland until October and work, then return to Germany and work there (helping families with new-born babies. My au pair experience will come in handy here.) In spring I will look for another opportunity to teach English in South America or Asia, something will eventually work out. I am hoping to get a certificate for teaching German later on – but first I need some experience. Should I feel that I am not a good teacher, I will go into translation (English and Spanish into German).”

Another of our Single Honours French students, Rebecca, is delighted to have just found out that she will be “heading to Canada for the British Council in August. It was a lengthy process and a nerve-racking wait but I now have a position in a secondary school as an English Language Assistant.” And Colm, who has been studying French and Spanish with us, is planning to spend the Summer and possibly the next year working to save some money to be able to undertake a Masters in Translation and Interpreting the following year. And if that doesn’t work out, he and Kitti have grand plans involving taking photos of students proudly holding dissertations on the banks of the beautiful campus lake…

We’ll update this post as and when we hear back from other students among this year’s finalists and, most importantly, we wish them all the very best of luck for the future, wherever it might take them!