Rosetta Stone

**Mes T** · 05-27-2011 04:56 PM

Oh cool Korean is exactly what I tried the Rosetta Stone for. It was alright. Helped me learn a few key phrases quickly before moving to Korea, and I did end up using exactly what I learned!

Yeah take a class in Korean, it'll be quick and easy, especially since you already have an interest in it.

**owtte** · 06-04-2011 05:33 PM

Originally Posted by Little

In defense of middle school French classes: If you know how to implement it, it is useful!
Education is expensive. Whether that be the classes or the textbooks. I don't know how scholarships and student loans work in the UK, but you might research them too. It is a college course after all!

Having studied French at school for almost 7 years, and only just being able to sustain ordinary day-to-day conversations with people despite being top of my class, I beg to differ =P
Unfortunately the UK is a little less lenient with money. If I wanted to take a class (even at that university) I'd have to fund it on my own. Reason being, it's not a formal university course (minimum of 3 years), which is what we get the loans for. I'm heading off to uni this fall, and I've already applied for my loan for that, but that's paid straight to the university, as opposed to giving it to the students to manage.
Scholarships are near impossible to come by if you're a 1st year undergrad, and you can only apply for the generic ones/ones to fit your course. My course is engineering, so as you can see, that's of little help (the other minor detail is that the uni I've applied to isn't the one that's offering the course).

I guess I'll have to wait and see if I can happen across some money at some point before I get any further.

**ItsASecret** · 06-05-2011 12:49 AM

My course is engineering, so as you can see, that's of little help (the other minor detail is that the uni I've applied to isn't the one that's offering the course).

Ah but Engineering is a science, and a science degree often requires an Arts component of varying amount of credits. A huge majority of science based students despise taking those arts credits like English writing, sociology, child psychology and so on but a lot take language courses to cover the mandatory arts credits for the actual science based degree. I am not sure how it is in the UK with your engineering/science based degrees but here those mandatory 12-18 credits (4-6 courses over 4-5 years) in arts is a huge bother but if you want to take Korean than use it not only for credits but also as the learning experience you want and because it may be covered in the degree credits it would also be covered by the student loan.

**Little** · 06-06-2011 02:50 PM

Having used two semesters' high school Spanish to engender real human relationships with monolingual coworkers - it's a matter of the quality of teaching and what you do with it.
I was also able to jump from one and a half semesters' middle school French to an upper-division French college course (thanks mostly to the skills I learned while using Spanish.)
Honestly, if you have had trouble learning one language, you will find the same troubles with another. What do you suppose were your problems with French? In my experience (having studied five foreign languages with at least twice as many teachers in different areas of the US at middle school, high school, and university level,) the amount of time devoted to material necessarily diminishes with each successive level. A university professor will not hold your hand and will not have the time your schoolteacher had for you. Pinpointing your area of weakness with languages in general can greatly help you.
I assume it's not aural comprehension of native speech since you watch dramas and presumably understand them? That's an important skill, and one many people never hone. If it's vocabulary, only you can teach yourself more and expose yourself to more (vocab is the tenet that seems to suffer most with increased level of education.) Circumlocution is also a necessary skill, whether vocab is lacking or not (ie, despite having heard this example a million times, I still don't know the Spanish word for doorknob. But I know how to explain that it's the item that you open a door with.) If your problem is with speaking (actually getting the words out of your mouth,) you need to take the time to practice with native or fluent speakers, not fellow students. Seek them out.
What about reading and writing? I don't have any tips here - I find these skills less immediately useful, but for Korean, you won't be able to simply sound it out.
I hope you are able to overcome the difficulties you've presented and learn the language as you want to. I was under the impression that post-secondary education in the UK was a better system than in the US, kind of disappointing that it doesn't seem to be.

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