I chose to spend my year abroad in China rather than a French or Spanish-speaking country as I saw it as a great opportunity. My level of French and Spanish was already quite high but as I'd started Chinese ab initio (from scratch) in first year, I wanted to improve it as much as possible.
In order to graduate from the BA Modern Languages degree you need to have completed Stage 6 in at least two of the three languages. For those unfamiliar with Southampton's language stage system, there are 7 stages. and each stage normally takes one year to complete. Stage 1 is where I started with Chinese. This is when you have little to no previous knowledge of the language but, on completion, is similar to GCSE standard. Stage 2 is roughly equivalent to AS and Stage 3 is roughly equivalent to A2. I therefore began French and Spanish at Stage 4 having completed A-Levels in each. I was fortunate enough to take part in a 6-week summer programme at Nanjing University in the summer after my first year which counted as my Stage 2 as it was an intensive course combined with the immersion of being in China. This meant that in second year at the University of Southampton, I completed Stage 3 - the required standard set by the university for spending your year abroad in China. It was agreed that it was possible for the year abroad in China to count as two stages - Stages 4 and 5 - on the condition that those wishing to do this write 2000 Chinese characters rather than 1000 for their YARP. I did this so am now hoping to complete Stage 6 in all three of my languages in my final year at university.
However, choosing to spend my year abroad in China meant somewhat neglecting my other two languages. It was not possible to continue studying French and Spanish at Xiamen University as Spanish was not taught and French was taught on the main campus - a 45 minute to hour and a half bus journey away. This would mean that I had to use my time either side of the year abroad wisely to ensure that I maintained a good standard in both my French and Spanish.
I spent two months in Madrid last summer working as an au pair and found that my Spanish did improve a lot and I am still quite confident with it. I occasionally spoke Spanish with some of the Spanish-speaking students in Xiamen as well. Although I learnt a lot from the experience, I was not keen to repeat it as things did not go very well with the au pair family. I decided that I would need to find a more formal job in France the following summer.
I started job searching after the month-long holiday for Chinese New Year, week in Nepal for my cousin's wedding and week of my family visiting me in Xiamen. After all of that, this ended up being February which I thought was still quite early for finding a summer position. I was interested in finding jobs that allowed me to speak French but applied for English-speaking jobs as well just to have the opportunity to be in France. I applied to various jobs such as receptionist, hotel assistant, childcare, camp site work, TEFL teacher etc. but struggled to find anything. The issue with a lot of the jobs in the hotel and tourism industry, were that they either wanted people to work the entire summer season - from beginning of May until the end of September - or they wanted to interview in the UK. I obviously could not conform to either of these requirements as I was in China until 24th June.
Eventually I received two job offers. The first was working as a hotel assistant for a UK-based company in the Alps. They had not yet filled all of their summer vacancies so wanted me to start straight away (after a week and a half in the UK) and stay until mid-September. I found out that all the staff and customers were British so I would therefore not be speaking French whilst working, that I would be working 6 days a week for a low wage doing menial jobs such as cleaning, and that I would not be allowed an extra day off to go to my cousin's wedding in August. After much consideration, I decided not to take the job as it seemed unlikely I would speak French and I would miss out on spending time with my family and friends, visiting Alex in Denmark and attending my cousin's wedding.
Instead, I decided to take the other job I had been offered. This is a three-week TEFL placement for newly qualified TEFL teachers in Châtellerault, Western France. I completed my TEFL qualification with TEFL England in February this year consisting of 20 hours in a classroom and 100 hours online and found this job advertisement on their site. This seemed the perfect opportunity to get some teaching experience and use my new qualification. I will be working as one of three teachers at a children's holiday camp. There will be classes in the morning and activities in the afternoon. Although I will be required to speak to the children in English, I do get weekends free and will be in a more French environment than the holiday resort. The position is unpaid but accommodation and food is provided and I think it should be a great experience and am really looking forward to it. I leave on 10th August.
On top of this, I have also
enrolled myself onto an Advanced Revision course at the Alliance Française
de Manchester. It is a four-week course with two 2.5 hour lessons a week
(20 hours total) costing £130 or £120 for students. The course focuses on
conversation but there is also some useful grammar revision. I have been to two
classes so far and am enjoying it. The teacher is very good and gives us little
bits of homework to do. I also get free one-year membership to borrow various
French books, DVDs and magazines from their extensive collection so am hoping
to make use of that soon! They also run a course specifically aimed at final
year university students in September so I may do that as well if I still feel
that my French is a bit rusty.
I may not have chosen the easiest option for my year abroad but I feel like it was the right one. It is nice having something productive to do during my summer holidays and spending a year abroad in China as part of my degree was not an opportunity I wanted to turn down.
