School to come
Posted on July 23, 2007
Feeling like I was spread thin last semester, I decided that for Fall I would only take one course instead of two. The general idea is that some people consider two grad level classes to be full-time attendance.
In May I registered for Second Language Acquisition, which is a requirement on top of sounding interesting. Although I haven’t officially submitted an application for the Master’s programs yet, I did a little investigating on doctoral programs in Linguistics offered by IU in Bloomington. One of the requirements is that a potential candidate know two languages other than their native tongue, and one of them should be a Latin/Romance language. To me that means French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and Latin, though their may be others. Of those, French, Spanish, and Latin are taught at IUPUI, along with some other non-Latin based languages. Today, on more-or-less of a whim, I registered for Beginning French.
When I worked in the clinic, I sometimes thought it would be nice to take Spanish – maybe even get the department to pay for it. However, since I wasn’t sure if they would actually go for it, I decided if I had to pay for any language classes, I would take something I wanted. I took Japanese in the past and have forgotten most of it. I’m still not sure why I decided on French. In this day and age in the US it makes more sense to take Spanish. Maybe I subconciously decided that Spanish has less cachet than French, since it is spoken by more people. Anyway, I’m signed up for French, so that’s what I’ll take. Maybe I’ll do a minor in it.
After I signed up, I looked online to see what the books will cost and I got some sticker shock. The required text with CD’s and workbook comes to about $150 new and $125 used. There is also a recommended CD set for $50 new and $35 used. On the upside, the materials can be used for one or two subsequent French courses.
I think it might be interesting to take a foreign laguage course at the same time I tak Second Language Acquisition. I can use SLA to gauge how I am learning French, and I can use the French class to gauge how appropriate the SLA course is.
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