I shadowed a student studying Modern Languages with Linguistics and sat in on two linguistics seminars, a German grammar lecture, two Japanese sessions and an extra credit Spanish class.

The things that struck me were:

• How dedicated language students have to be. They have long contact hours by HaSS standards and lots to learn. I was struck in the classes I attended at how well prepared and committed the students were and amazed that some of them can study three languages at once.
• It was great to see an extra credit Spanish class as I was instrumental in getting these additional classes set up. The class was fast-paced and excellently taught and the students, mainly non-linguists, were well prepared and coped well, rising to the challenge. They were certainly getting good value from their class and learning a lot in just two hours a week.
• Students studying Japanese not only have to cope with three alphabets, two phonetic and one based on Chinese symbols, but have to cope with textbooks which are 100% in Japanese and which cost about £150 a semester. I had no idea this was the case. I was also staggered that the students could keep up, as I had little idea of what was going on.
• It was interesting to do the linguistics seminars and see how techniques of basic analysis can be applied to completely unknown languages, analysing how words are made up of elements. I was pleasantly surprised to be able to keep up more or less, but it was a first year class. Previously I had in all honesty had little idea of what learning linguistics entailed. Now I have seen a small sample of it and know I would have found it interesting had I decided 40+ years ago to follow a language route rather than to study history at university.
• I did A level German in 1973, so was pleased that I was able to engage with a session on German modal verbs. I only made two mistakes in the exercises, which isn’t bad 40 years on, but the current students seemed to be doing better.
• It was actually very difficult in practice to find times for shadowing, not solely because my diary is very busy, but because my shadow was also very busy both with her studies and with all her extracurricular commitments. It made me realise that some students are very well organised and cram a lot into their lives, as of course we would wish them to do. It would have helped me if the scheme had been set up earlier in the academic year so I had more chance to find more substantial slots in my diary.
• I felt that the whole exercise was very worthwhile. I learned things I would never have learned sitting in the HaSS Faculty Office and was reassured to find myself experiencing some really good language teaching.

Simon Pallett.