Your Foreign Language Education After Transferring To University

by Chad Agrawal

transfer_languageWhen you first decide to transfer from a college course in languages to a University program, you have to go through the same process as you would if you transferred from any other program. Students apply to the transfer university with transcripts of their grades in the previous year or two years of study. If their grades are good enough, they can continue their studies at university. Students need to decide by this time what they want to do with their language skills, though, as by the third year, professors expect their students to specialize.

What Can You Do with a Language Education?

The ability to speak at least two languages is an asset. Although English is accepted as the dominant business language, the tourism sector, many companies, and the teaching community always want people who speak French, Spanish, Cantonese, Mandarin, or one of the more than 40 languages taught in North America.

Your studies could enable to you to teach English as a second language. They might prepare you to be a teacher at a French immersion school. Acting as a translator could be exciting. Having another language helps you to reach out to your multi-lingual congregation or clients at a community resource center.

Selecting a Program

Rather than moving from community college to a university and then having to move again, select an institution that can take you as far as you want to go. Some offer certificate programs. Others teach Bachelor's Degree or a post-graduate degree course.

Some Ivy League university programs might appeal to you in a non-academic sense. For instance, you could be moving from a community college to an ivy league university program purely for the sake of knowledge, which will help you in the job you do. Be aware, though, that certain language programs focus on business language, written language, conversational speaking, or literature.

You could be approaching the topic from another angle: as a business student who also wants to learn Korean. In this case, business studies take priority while you also expand the Korean you learned in college, this time with a focus on economics and management.

Community College to Ivy League University: Fees

Typically, Ivy League university courses are more expensive than community college ones. How are you going to pay for your course work? One way is to apply for bursaries, which are available from the university, but also to look outside the institution for grants. If you can prove the importance of the language studies you are taking, demonstrate good college grades, or offer some other incentive to a jury, this could help you continue your academic pursuits.

Another way to fund your ivy league transfer (and to fund studies, in general) is to apply for study abroad courses. Some universities even have students in foreign countries that have already achieved some level of college training but want to work and study simultaneously. This is a great way to apply what you learn as you learn it, and to excel as a student at the same time.

As a foreign language student, choose a transfer university which supplies funds to a percentage of students to help them travel overseas before their degree is finished. Using a language in an immersion setting is the best way to truly learn it.

Free Student Resources

After you move beyond college level Farsi or Portuguese, some resources will be obsolete. These include some of the free language training programs you can download via the college or local library. Community college and university students qualify for free access to online academic papers and periodicals. Chat sites open up lines of communication so that English students can help friends for whom English is a new challenge in return for the same help in that foreign student's language. Online resources include various websites with language learning software and translation services.

About The Author

Fred Johnson is a writer who focuses on the fields of education and languages. This post offers tips to students wishing to continue their foreign language education and aims to encourage further study with free Spanish resources.

Image from: http://www.ineedtranslations.com/

This post was written by Chad Agrawal

Chad Agrawal is the founder of CCTS, helping students transfer from community college to Ivy League, tier 1 or anywhere else by following this community college guide.

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