Hello linguists!

Sarah

The language course is dominated by literature, so I really recommend reading as many of the texts as you can before you get to Oxford – term is very hectic and it´s hard to find the time! It’s a little known fact that Worcester book grants exist, so keep your receipts. Buying online is often a lot cheaper, but do it asap as they take a while to arrive. It may not be worth buying expensive paper dictionaries, as we inevitably find ourselves using online ones for the sake of speed (and finding obscure vocab). The Spanish RAE monolingual dictionary is online (http://www.rae.es/) and is incredibly useful for reading the Golden Age texts.

If your grammar is weak, some revision over the summer is also a good idea. Bear in mind that the Spanish course has no official oral element in first year – other languages are less extreme (not including ab initio, where there’s lots of language work) but your speaking and writing skills will still get rusty, so think about how you can keep them up independently. The Language Centre has a library where you can borrow films and magazines and use (non-literature) language resources, as well as a language exchange scheme which I highly recommend. I met a Spanish friend through it and we meet every week to speak both languages – it can lead to great friendships too.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me (sarah.peytonjones@worc.ox.ac.uk). I can also potentially put you in touch with people studying other languages.