<p>I'm happy to hear the language program is good...and challenging. I'm currently taking elementary Spanish at Penn during the summer session. It's supposed to be intensive- a regular semester's material crammed into 6 weeks. And we have covered a lot. Yet I have very little work and the lowest grade I've gotten is a 95.5. Spanish is supposed to be a pretty easy language, especially since I've taken French for 6+ years, but I'm thinking "this is a ivy league college level class?" More proof that Chicago is the best.</p>
<p>wow im excited to learn that chicago is so intensive with the language programs. FINALLY.</p>
<p>I'm in a situation very close to yours- i love languages, took five years of french in high school, and learned basically nothing cuz it was a cake course. I'm taking it at UC, and it is definately excessively hard, but worth it. I'm a comp. lit. major, so i am also taking german- i'm starting with German 101 next quarter. So sure, its tough and time-consuming, but its a lot like taking chem and bio at once- labs all the time and a bunch of work, but if you love the stuff, what difference does that make? You can only take four classes no matter what- the collge tries hard not to let you drown yourself in work.</p>
<p>Am resurrecting this thread. I plan to major at Chicago in the Classics (Latin + ancient Greek, though with more emphasis on the former, as I haven't studied the latter quite as extensively), and would also (possibly) like to study Chinese.</p>
<p>Anyone have any more stories to share?</p>
<p>the best advice for pursuing two languages at once is to be at different levels in them. since you've already had a little french (and because french is quite different from japanese), i think you'd be fine taking both. but maybe not both starting out in the first year. keep up your french; consider adding japanese next year.</p>
<p>Has anyone taken introductory Russian at the U of C? If so, any thoughts on the course?</p>
<p>My child took an advanced spanish class ( It taught different dialects of spanish to advanced spanish students) and introductory portugese for spanish speakers at the same time. She did well in both and while she did have a lot of work, it was quite doable. However, the two languages are not that different and while one level was advanced, the other was a lower level. If it is something that you really want to do, go for it. There is a lot of support at Chicago.</p>
<p>My S (Class of 2007) took 2 years of Russian at Chicago and loved it. He got a FLAG grant and studied the language in Russia after his second year. I remember him saying it was a tough language to learn, but his classes were really small, and that helped a lot. It did seem to be a lot of work. I think he had 3 classes and 2 drill sessions a week. Though he stopped taking classes after that summer he still has conversational Russian which came in handy in the neighborhood he was living in for awhile in LA.</p>