<p>What are your general thoughts about certain language courses at Penn? I am trying to figure out what some good options are. I have four years Japanese experience, a little Spanish and Mandarin knowledge, and a year of German.</p>
<p>I hate learning languages (if that makes me sound ignorant, fine... I just suck at learning them, and find it hard to find the motivation to learn them).</p>
<p>That being said, I REALLY wanted to test out of German (I had taken it for four years in HS). However, Penn's placement tests are quite difficult, and I ended up in German 3. Therefore, I took both German 3 and 4 my freshman year.</p>
<p>I can't speak for other languages, but German is definitely a reading-geared class (as opposed to French, which seemed to me to be much more writing based). While we did a lot of conversation activities and had quite a few papers each semester, most of our classes focused on readings short stories in German, and then discussing them. It was much like you would do in an English literature class, although everything was auf deutsch. It was actually quite difficult to come to complex conclusions about the passages, while expressing yourself completely in German!! However, it was not an overly difficult year. In German 4 we had to read a 300 pg novel, which was demanding, although gratifying once you were done (I would recommend getting the English version of the book to read the assigned pages AFTER you have read those pages in German... it made it much easier to fill in the blanks). </p>
<p>My German TA was awesome. She was very friendly, always willing to help, and was very good at explaining things. </p>
<p>The class was overall not that difficult. While I felt like I was one of the "dumber" kids in class and rarely offered to speak, I still got a lot of experience and learned a lot. Despite feeling a little behind everyone else all year, I still managed to get an A... so it's not as hard as it seems as first!!!</p>
<p>Hope that helped as far as German goes.</p>
<p>Edited to add: Another nice thing about German is that not a huge number of students take it... so classes are generally pretty small. My German 3 section was 14 students, and my German 4 section was only 6 students! Great for individual attention!</p>
<p>Anyone have anything to say for Chinese?</p>
<p>hmm i'm taking the intensive chinese course---unless i can place out of it... =/</p>
<p>I only have a semester of Spanish to take and I'm out of the foreign language requirement (thanks to my SAT 2 score). I don't like Spanish. Still, it's only one semester. </p>
<p>On the other hand, I wanted to take Persian, but I would have to take 4 semesters of that to place out of the language requirement. I'm not completely sure I'm up for all 4.</p>
<p>What do you guys think?</p>
<p>if there's enough room in ur schedule, its definitely a great opportunity for you... however, i wanna get my language outta the way as fast as i can cuz i'm really strained for credits</p>
<p>I'm going to be taking the written department placement exam for French in the fall, so if anyone knows how this is like (or the written language placements in general), do tell!</p>