German & Scandanavian studies, University of Manchester

If you're picking this subject just because you were good at it at school and you're familiar with it, don't! Studying languages at university is a lot different from school! If you really want to see a significant improvement in your skills, then you've got to do the work alone. Uni is about independent work, but you'll find yourself wondering what you're actually paying £9k for! I've been doing this course for a year and I've barely heard myself speak a single word of the languages I'm learning. The uni environment doesn't really encourage you to even want to speak, and you'll hardly get any opportunities to anyway. There are barely any modules where the work actually feels like university standard. There's nothing encouraging you to think differently or inspiring you with new ideas, it's all pretty dull. A Levels was a lot harder than this as well! Basically I'm dropping out of this course. Good luck to anyone doing it next year!

I have enjoyed my course so far, I found there were a variety of options for french and abinitio German which included studying history, culture, linguistics etc. I found german as a beginner challenging but ultimately worth it. I had an hour a day of german with a small class of 10 (5/6 show up every day)