Tag Archives: year abroad

French, French life, Student life, Studying at Oxford, Why study French?, Year Abroad

A year abroad in Lyon!

May 27, 2026 Schools Liaison Leave a comment

This week’s blog post is written by James, a French and Russian student who reflects on his time in Lyon as part of his year abroad experience...

I spent the first nine months of my year abroad living in Lyon, France, studying on Oxford’s exchange programme at the École normale supérieure de Lyon (ENS Lyon). Initially, I was somewhat sceptical about studying during my year abroad, imagining that I would envy my friends who had opted to teach, intern, or volunteer; however, this turned out not to be the case at all. I should really say that I ‘studied’ in France (in huge inverted commas), as, compared to the hectic Oxford schedule, I spent remarkably little time actually studying. This occupied a few hours a day for maybe three or four days of my week, conveniently clustered around the midweek so that I had extra-long weekends, which proved excellent for travelling across France.

During such weekends, I managed to visit many other places in France, from iconic Paris to Pérouges, a tiny medieval citadel not too far from Lyon. If my maths (and memory) is correct, I visited at least 15–20 other places in France, personal highlights of which included Nîmes, Annecy, Nice, and especially Strasbourg for the Christmas markets the week before Christmas. Lyon also benefits from good transport links to other European countries, so I also managed to visit Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Monaco, and Spain too – all relatively cheaply, and with friends I’d made at the university.

Whilst all this travelling was absolutely the highlight of my time in France, I did also really enjoy the university side of things. I enrolled doing a major in Russian, with a minor in contemporary French literature, and my classes were both fascinating, and a great opportunity to immerse myself in the French language and challenge my abilities, giving presentations to classes full of French students, or even translating literary texts between my two non-native languages, French and Russian.

ENS Lyon is quite a small university, with two campuses about ten minutes apart on foot, and I found that this size made it quick and easy to settle in, meet people, and make friends. There was a really friendly atmosphere on the whole, and the university guaranteed accommodation for exchange students, so I got to live on campus and share a flat with French students. The accommodation itself is basic and not the most attractive in the world (though having come straight from an Oxford college perhaps skewed my perspective…), but it was incredibly cheap compared to Oxford – and made cheaper still by a French government subsidy, CAF, which was well worth the paperwork – meaning that I had plenty of money left from my student loan and Turing grant to fund my gallivanting across Europe on the long weekends. ENS Lyon also had a really active social scene, with regular ‘festives’ (basically BOPs à la française), ‘afterworks’ (French, believe it or not, for a weekday evening of drinks and a BBQ), a gala night, and plenty of extra-curricular activities. I joined the university orchestra and choir, and took beginner’s German classes too – but I had friends who did all kinds of sports, learnt to dance, and even joined the university’s beekeeping society.

James playing in a concert with Lyon’s university orchestra

Lyon itself is now possibly my favourite city ever. I think it’s like the Goldilocks of French cities – not too big, not too small, not too hot, not too cold, not too English-speaking, not too critical of my occasionally very shoddy French (or very good Franglais, depending on your perspective), and it’s a truly beautiful city to live in. From the cobbled streets of the old town, Vieux Lyon, to the breathtaking Basilique de la Fourvière atop a hill overlooking the city, to the Parc de la Tête d’Or (with pedalos on the lake and a zoo – what more could you want?!), there was so much to see and do, as well as lots of cultural activities (museums, galleries, concerts, films, etc.) with really good student tickets.

Although, of course, it took a little while to settle in, I soon felt completely at home in Lyon, so much so that I was very sad to eventually have to leave. Overall, my nine months in Lyon were some of the best of my life – it was transformative for my French language skills and cultural knowledge and appreciation, but more importantly I made great friends, saw so many amazing places, and left with nothing but incredible memories and a very full camera roll. And, as I discovered when I flew back home, 20kg of books I had ‘accidentally’ bought, perpetually unable to resist the allure of a good French bookshop.

French, Student life, Studying at Oxford, Year Abroad

The challenges and excitement of year abroad preparation

November 5, 2025 Schools Liaison 1 Comment

This week’s blog post was written by third year French & Philosophy student, Laurence, who talks us through the process of preparing for the Modern Languages year abroad…

As I prepare for my year abroad, it is worth reflecting on some of the challenges (and opportunities) I have faced along the way. I set off for Brussels, Belgium in September for a communications and advocacy internship at an environmental NGO. Here I’ll detail some of the key steps I’ve had to take to make sure I’m year abroad ready. Of course, these will vary quite a bit from person-to-person, but I hope reading about my experience will be useful for those who would like a little bit more detail on what the year abroad could entail. I certainly wish I’d had this blog when I was in sixth form!

*Sunset at Mont des Arts – Brussels, Belgium | Photo by Najib Samatar on Unsplash*

1. Find an activity

Many people choose to study on their year abroad (as I myself will do in a semester in Lyon from after Christmas). This is a fairly intuitive choice, insofar as we’re all students already and campus life offers a ready-made environment to make new friends and discover a new culture. Another popular option is to become a British Council language assistant in a school, and a third is to find an internship with a company based in a country that speaks your target language. It was the latter option that I decided to take for the first few months of my travels.

Finding an internship is not easy and takes diligent research, often outside of traditional avenues. Don’t wait for something to fall into your lap: a careers advisor told me to message fourth year Oxford linguists on social media to ask about how they found their work experience. They were all more than happy to help me out by telling me about their own experiences, and it was through this method that I found my work placement in Belgium.

2. Find somewhere to live

A scary but exciting prospect! Brussels has a competitive housing market, so I had to get creative. Facebook groups are used by landlords and groups of friends to look for house shares (“colocations” in French, or “colocs” for short). I had several video tours of different properties and was eventually able to seal the deal in a house of 7 with other interns from Belgium, France, and Germany. In this search, my French was incredibly useful in communicating about potential rentals: I’ve certainly developed my housing-related vocabulary! There are English-speaking house shares as well, but they are generally harder to find. Being a French speaker despite being British definitely helped me stand out from the crowd as it impressed a fair few people.

3. Visas…

This really will vary from person to person depending on whether you have British citizenship, are an EU citizen, or hail from elsewhere. What is key is to get in the know about what documents you will need for your stay as soon as possible. In the case of Belgium and France, visa services are currently subcontracted to a third party company which manages every stage of the application. They can be a bit slow to reply, but you can contact them by email with specific questions. Don’t leave this till the last minute! If you are doing an internship, you may also need a work permit. It’s best to make your nationality clear to your employer quite early on, so that they can help you get together all the required documents.

While the year abroad will feel a long way away at present, it can be interesting to get a behind-the-scenes look at some of the more logistical elements, as well as the dreamy travel snaps and new lingo learned. As you can probably tell, the year abroad will undoubtedly make you a better planner, a more fluent communicator, and if you play your cards right, a more employable future graduate!

Portuguese, Portuguese life, Student life, Studying at Oxford, Year Abroad

The Year Abroad: A language course in Lisbon

July 2, 2025 Schools Liaison Leave a comment

Hi! I’m Alice, a third year student studying French and Portuguese and I’ve just returned from Lisbon, Portugal. After studying at a university in Lausanne for the first half of my year abroad, I spent 4 months doing a language course in Lisbon and it was a really good, though at times challenging, experience. Now that my year abroad is over, I’ve had time to reflect on my experiences in different countries and think about what I would do differently if I were to do it again.

As I enrolled as a student at the Université de Lausanne for the first part of my year abroad, I wanted to try something different whilst in Lisbon. A language course at the Universidade de Lisboa with the Instituto de Cultura e Língua Portuguesa seemed like a good option as I had already completed a month-long course with the same language school a few years ago, and so I knew the general structure of their courses. However, I made my decision quite late as I had been considering different options as well as different Portuguese cities; this made it a little stressful, especially in terms of finding accommodation at quite late notice, but I’ve also realised that it’s quite common for year abroad students not to have concrete plans for the whole year at the beginning and for plans to change.

I’m really pleased with my decision to go to Lisbon because, although I was apprehensive about living in a much bigger city than I am used to and my concern about Lisbon being overrun with tourists, I ended up enjoying exploring different parts of the city and finding some really nice spots.

My accommodation was in quite a central location and I used the metro every day to get to and from my language classes, so I decided to get a ‘navegante’ travel card which was a little time-consuming to get initially but was definitely worth the hassle; this is a rechargeable card that works on the metro, buses, trams and ferries, and most locals have one. This meant that I paid a monthly amount and then had access to all areas of metropolitan Lisbon, and so I made the most of this by visiting different parts of the city. As well as visiting some of the main tourist hotspots (such as the Sé cathedral and the nearby town of Sintra), I also found some hidden gems around the city. For example, my favourite place to visit was the Gulbenkian, a series of museums situated in a park with lots of wildlife and quite near to my accommodation, so it was a lovely place to go for a walk. I also really enjoyed exploring the museums in Lisbon – on the first Sunday of every month several museums offer free entry between certain hours, including the MAAT museum. I also particularly enjoyed visiting the Museu Nacional do Azulejo, and the Mosteiro de São Vicente de Fora.

I had the afternoons and weekends free to explore the city and beyond, and on weekday mornings I studied for 4 hours at the language school. I found it helpful that the classes focused on a variety of topics, so we not only had grammar and writing lessons but also Portuguese history classes, Portuguese art and culture classes, and literary reading lessons. I found this to be a good structure as we studied aspects of Portuguese culture that I hadn’t explored before. Whilst I would have preferred more dedicated speaking classes, my spoken Portuguese still improved over the 4 months as we did several presentations in class, and I got to know my course mates.

Whilst I was initially concerned that I might speak English with my fellow students, in fact we spoke Portuguese together in and outside of classes, as our common language was Portuguese. This helped improve my language skills further and I also became friends with a few of them, meeting up outside of classes for coffee and also to go to the theatre. It was really fun going to see a Portuguese theatre production even though it was tricky to understand everything the actors were saying. However, it was a valuable experience and listening to Portuguese in a different setting was useful because I was still able to follow the plot.

I really enjoyed both parts of my year abroad and studying at university and doing a language course were positive experiences; I was able to improve my language skills and form new friendships in both cities, gaining confidence over the year and going further out of my comfort zone. There were of course challenges involved in the year abroad, but I really value the experiences I had and finding solutions made me feel more confident in exploring new places.

French, Student life, Studying at Oxford, Year Abroad

The Year Abroad: A semester in Switzerland

February 19, 2025 Schools Liaison Leave a comment

On the blog this week, third year student Alice tells us all about the first semester of her Year Abroad…

I’m Alice and I’ve just returned from spending the first part of my year abroad in Lausanne, Switzerland. As a French and Portuguese student, I spend time in both French and Portuguese speaking countries during this year – having spent one semester at the Université de Lausanne, next I am going to do a language course in Lisbon for four months. The year abroad offers quite a bit of flexibility in terms of the activities you choose, and I found studying to be a rewarding experience. Whilst many French year abroad students choose to go to France, I decided to study in Switzerland and I’m very pleased with my decision, despite my nerves before going!

Choosing to go to Switzerland was a tricky decision because I really didn’t know Lausanne as a city, and I knew of only one other Oxford French year abroad student who would be in Switzerland at the same time as me. So I was quite anxious about living abroad in a city without people I know. However, as well as having family connections in German-speaking Switzerland, I also wanted to explore more of a country that I had been to a few times as a child. Also, my decision to study at a university meant that I knew I would be able to meet other young people in classes and lectures.

I really enjoyed exploring different areas of Switzerland and as my family connections are in the German-speaking part of the country, this encouraged me to travel quite a bit during the semester. Although travel and the cost of living are expensive in Switzerland, I managed to find quite a few deals which cut the cost of journeys. I got a ‘Half Fare Travel Card’ that allows you to travel on trains at half price and so I made the most of this offer – I visited my aunt in Rapperswil, as well as Zurich, Montreux and the Jungfraujoch, using the efficient and reliable trains. As the city where I lived and studied for the semester, Lausanne, is quite small, I really enjoyed being able to travel and meet up with the other year abroad student in Geneva. That said, Lausanne itself was a lovely city to live in and felt just the right size for me, as someone who comes from a relatively small place in the UK. As well as having Lac Leman within walking distance from the university campus, I also enjoyed exploring the historic centre of Lausanne. Although it is quite a walkable place, I really appreciated using the metro in such a hilly city and I used it to travel to the university campus too.

Whilst the weekends often gave me the opportunity to explore different parts of Switzerland, during the week I studied at the Université de Lausanne. The first few weeks of classes at this university allow the students to try out all of the different courses, and so I went to a variety of classes in different faculties, before finalising my choices after the first four weeks. This system relieved some pressure as I was able to attend a wide variety of classes without having to remain in them for the whole semester, and it encouraged me to try some classes I might not have gone to otherwise. The majority of the classes I chose were taught within the French as a Foreign Language Faculty as they offered some really interesting courses aimed at international students. For example, some of the classes I took were: ‘Améliorer son écrit en français’, focusing on improving written French specifically; ‘Histoire du français’, a class looking at how French has evolved as a language from Latin to modern French; ‘Lire un texte littéraire à tous les niveaux’, where we got to present a book of our choice to the class for discussion; and I also took one cinema option ‘Analyse d’une séquence d’un film’, which I really enjoyed as I had never studied cinema before and I learned how to analyse films using specific terminology.

It was through these classes that I was able to meet new people who I saw on a regular basis which helped me to feel settled into the university quite quickly. One aspect of studying abroad that I appreciated was the ability to experience a different university system. Although it was overwhelming at first, I valued some of the different teaching methods, such as the focus on presentations, debates, and group work; this allowed me to improve my spoken French and engage with the other students. I became good friends with the international students in these classes and I enjoyed attending some of the Erasmus student network events. Although I did find it harder to befriend the Swiss students, I was able to take part in the ‘Tandem programme’ in which you are buddied up with another student in order that you teach each other your mother tongues. I met a Swiss girl wanting to learn English and so we met regularly, becoming friends whilst practicing our oral skills. It was a great way for us both to improve our oral skills because during our meetups we split the time in half so we could practice both French and English.

Overall, I had a lovely time studying in Lausanne and I’m glad I decided to explore Switzerland and a different university system. As well as improving my French, it has made me feel more confident about going for the second part of my year abroad to Lisbon, as I want to make the most of my time there and get stuck into different activities offered by the ICLP language course at Lisbon University.

German, German life, Student life, Studying at Oxford, Year Abroad

The Year Abroad: My time in Berlin

February 12, 2025 Schools Liaison Leave a comment

On the blog this week, final year German and Portuguese student, Aaron, reflects on his time in Berlin and what he wishes he’d known in advance of his year abroad…

My name’s Aaron, I study German and Portuguese at Wadham, and as I’m writing this blog post, I’ve been back at Oxford for one term since my year abroad. I recently wrote another post about the more general, administrative stuff that’s associated with the year abroad, but this time I want to talk about my time in Berlin and write something that I, myself, would have found useful before going abroad.

When I landed in Berlin and got the keys to my apartment, to be honest, all the fear came to a head. How was I going to meet people? What if I ended up holed up in my flat every day? The great thing about the year abroad is that it’s tried and tested – especially in major European cities. There are countless blogs (including this one!) that document the experience, as well as travel sites, and as an Oxford student in particular, you will usually be able to reach out to your college parents (a set of students in the year above who do your subject) and get their guidance too. Alongside all of this, it’s good to try and get an idea of the social media landscape, since it can vary from one place to the next. Things like TikTok and Instagram are generally helpful for finding stuff like exhibitions that you might want to go to, but for more personal events, there are apps like Meetup and Flock.

Meetup is particularly good for finding groups with specific interests – it has everything from wellness events to Dungeons and Dragons groups, from sports clubs to foodie meetups. It was through Meetup that I made some of my closest friends, and the great thing about using apps or sites like these is that the other people you meet are usually as new to the city as you are. We also ended up finding a lovely weekly brunch group, where they’d go to a different restaurant every Sunday and spend a few hours with some yummy pastries and good company. The other really nice thing about the major cities is that they’re super international, so if you’re not feeling very confident in your second language, you can usually find people who speak your first, whether that’s English or not.

While I do enjoy spending time with other people, I also love a good bit of ‘me time’ – the year abroad is great for this in general, there’s always museums and beautiful scenery to take in. For me, I often found myself walking the length of Berlin’s Tiergarten park, losing myself in its beauty and wandering through the Brandenburg Gate before grabbing a coffee and just taking in the view. This is another reason why it’s important to love what you do; Berlin is now one of my absolute favourite places to be, but being there on your own schedule and with total freedom is such a special and freeing experience. Berlin, specifically, also has two great museum programs: the first is Museumssontag (Museum Sunday), where entry to around 80 museums is free on the first Sunday of every month. The second, and my personal favourite as a certified night owl is the lange Nacht der Museen (the long night of museums), where a number of Museums are open from 6pm until 2am!

Berlin’s also known for its Sunday flea markets or Flohmärkte, of which there are many. One of my absolute favourite things to do was go and wander the Flohmärkt am Mauerpark, one of the best-known markets, with hundreds of small businesses trading out of it, selling artisan jewellery, art prints, and (the best part) all manner of different foods. Berlin is split up into a number of different districts, each with its own distinct identity and character. From one market to the next, you can really see the character of a given area and the difference in the locals, even what they’re selling. There’s a flea market at Rathaus Schöneberg, the same place where John F. Kennedy once stood and proudly professed himself to be ein Berliner (understood outside of Berlin to actually refer to a jam-filled doughnut). Anyway, this market completely encompasses the historical nature of the area – there you’ll find vendors selling anything from old books to items from the GDR, or even antique jewellery.

So, there was plenty of stuff to do! The last thing I’ll mention is that, because you’re not the only person trying to experience as much as possible, you get to watch friends find all of these incredible things too. A friend of mine from Paris found a local dance group dedicated to waacking (a street dance style, originating in Los Angeles in the 70s), while another friend, a local, was part of a university handball team – going to their performances and matches was great, as it pushed me to get out of my comfort zone and gave me the chance to see if those things were for me too. Unfortunately, I found that my waacking ability was inversely proportional to my enthusiasm for it…

All of this made the year abroad a really great experience and probably the best part of my languages degree so far!

German, German life, Student life, Studying at Oxford, Year Abroad

The Year Abroad: Practicalities

December 4, 2024 Schools Liaison Leave a comment

On the blog this week, final year German and Portuguese student, Aaron, reflects on some of the practical elements of organising and preparing for his year abroad…

My name’s Aaron, I study German and Portuguese at Wadham, and as I’m writing this blog post, I’ve been back at Oxford for one term since my year abroad. For the first half of my year abroad, which is the time I’ll mostly be focusing on here, I was based in Berlin. Before my year abroad, I had to take some time away from my studies due to some personal issues, so I hadn’t been in Oxford for two years before I went to Berlin, meaning I also hadn’t really spoken much German! As you can imagine, I was definitely nervous to go. I’m lucky enough to have had the opportunity for the odd visit to Germany before, but living on my own so far from home was this strange mix of nerves and excitement… The thing is, the one thing I think everyone comes to agree over their time at uni (whether at Oxford or not) is that you absolutely have to love what you do, and I really do love speaking German, so I’d been looking forward to the year abroad for a long time.

For a year abroad as an Oxford student, you agree what you’re going to do with your college tutor (often called your organising tutor – you may have two if you do two languages), with the general options being: teaching in a school via the British Council, studying at a university, or finding some form of internship. That said, I was doing a virtual internship with a company based in Hamburg, because I had a couple of friends in Berlin and wanted to be able to find other opportunities while I was out there.

Finding accommodation can seem super daunting, but it’s one of those things that always kind of works itself out – in my case, I found an apartment through a private renting website that was pretty central, but the great thing about Berlin (and most of Germany, to be honest) is that the transport links are much better than I’m used to, coming from Newcastle, so you could get to just about any part of the city within an hour. A lot of people tend to use something like AirBnB to find a temporary place to stay, then find a more permanent place after a couple of weeks. This is a great tip for saving money as you can usually find better deals locally.

The other biggest hurdle to tackle is visas – this is definitely something you need to research well before you arrive in your chosen country, around the same time as searching for internships and study places. Lots of countries require visas to be dealt with before you arrive in the country, and this can require sending your passport off too, so it’s vital to get this sorted in good time. There are also often requirements for what you need to do once you arrive in the country; for example, in Germany, you usually have to register at an address when you’re staying for over a certain amount of time.

Having said all of this, one of the great things about the year abroad is the flexibility of it all. For example, lots of people will get a study placement that lasts maybe three months, but book their accommodation for an extra three months and either travel around the country (especially with trains in continental Europe generally being drastically cheaper than in the UK) or try to find an internship, etc. I personally found a lot of time for this outside of my internship hours, but obviously this depends on exactly what your placement requires.

In terms of staying connected to Oxford, it was actually a lot easier than I thought it was going to be. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, societies and student groups on the whole have moved a lot of their stuff online, making it really easy to get involved with from afar. I wrote articles for R:Ed, Africa’s largest lifelong learning and mentoring resource, edited for a number of student publications and managed to set up my own student-led project, all from the comfort of my Berlin flat. This meant it was really easy to keep my finger on the pulse of the student community in Oxford and still feel connected.

That’s all from me for now – next time, I’m going to talk a bit more about my specific experience in Berlin and what sort of things you can do on the year abroad once you’ve dealt with all the admin!

French, French life, Studying at Oxford, Year Abroad

A Year Abroad in Paris: A time of study, theatre, and film

November 13, 2024 Schools Liaison Leave a comment

On the blog this week, former student and student ambassador, Elise, reflects on her year abroad. Despite logistical challenges, Elise managed to tailor her year to align with both her academic goals and professional aspirations.

My year abroad was over 2021-2022 and, as I think pretty much every languages student will tell you, ended up being wonderfully not to plan! Thankfully, having an EU passport meant I avoided the visa and administration challenges that many others experienced. Covid was the first spanner in the works. The pandemic meant that many organisations in France were not actively hiring, and consequently university partnership places were wildly oversubscribed. When someone dropped out of the Erasmus programme over summer 2021, I managed to secure their spot for the 2022 summer semester at the Sorbonne.

The summer semester goes from January to May. The teaching experience was very different to my first two years at Oxford. Classes came in two forms: CMs (cours magistral) which are large-scale lectures in amphitheatres; and TDs (travail dirigé) which are seminar-like classes often with about 30 students – bigger than typical Oxford class sizes which makes for a different participation dynamic. The CMs typically lasted 1hr-1h15 but the TDs were often 2hrs with a 5-minute break. From a concentration perspective, 2hr TDs took a little getting used to! Classes were also located all over Paris – definite metro distances, rather than Oxford’s walking distances. The Sorbonne has 29 different campuses over the city and I moved between two: the original site in the 5^ieme arrondissement which is informally called ‘La Sorbonne Mère’, and the ‘Campus Clignancourt’ which is the 18^iemearrondissement, the final stop on metro line 4.

Subject choices determine the campus you are taught at. As a French and Philosophy student looking to work in theatre and film after graduation, my priorities were picking anything which would sustain my Oxford studies, particularly for philosophy, and allow me to expand my knowledge of French theatre and cinema. I kept up my language work by choosing translation classes (English to French and French to English) and then fought for places on the oversubscribed Philosophy courses: ‘Histoire de la Philosophie Antique’ and ‘Textes Philosophiques en Anglais: Hume’. My favourite classes by far were ‘Initiation à l’histoire et à l’analyse de l’image’ in which we traced the history of cinema through a series of film case studies from the 1820s to 2008; and ‘Littérature et cinéma’, a class dedicated to the work of Eric Rohmer and the relationship between his films and literature.

The Erasmus community often bonded quickly in classes, but it was trickier to meet French students. I met the French friends I am still in contact with two years later through the extra-curricular opportunities. I jumped at the chance to get involved in student theatre. Extracurriculars are run more centrally at the Sorbonne than at Oxford. Student theatre is run by the university itself and they invite external practitioners to work with students and direct pieces over the term. I workshopped and performed two French-language devised productions.

The first, ‘Mère(s)’, explored motherhood and the figure of the mother, sewing together pieces in French, Spanish, Arabic and English. I was introduced to the work of Pierre Notte and Guillaume Gallienne and given the chance to perform extracts in French from their respective works ‘Moi aussi je suis Catherine Deneuve’ and ‘Les garçons et Guillaume, à table!’. The devising process also involved me translating moments from Andrew Bovell’s Things I Know To Be True into French as well as constructing a version of Act 3 Scene 4 of Shakespeare’s Hamlet in which I, as Gertrude, performed the original English text in conversation with a French-speaking Hamlet, whose lines were taken from a French translation of the play.

The second project, ‘Bienvenue chez nous!’, was a forum theatre improvisation-based show of conversations about ecology in different household settings. This piece was particularly terrifying to build as we were improvising on stage in French. It forced me to be quick on my feet, listen carefully to what was said by others and be brave in my responses before my peers and the later audience. By being willing to risk making vocab and grammar mistakes, I inevitably expanded my vocabulary and strengthened my confidence in my spoken fluency. With trust and risk taking at the core of an improvisation project, we also grew close as a cast. I am still friends with the girls I worked with and we have continued to reunite in London or in Paris over the subsequent two years.

The other way I made wonderful French friends, especially ones with shared interests, was through culture trips offered by the Sorbonne. Through an online portal, they organise free visits to theatre and dance shows, music concerts and museum exhibitions. A group of us started booking onto the same events and regularly going together. You often had an afternoon workshop about the event, and then the visit itself. It was a great way to see shows that I would not have realised were on in the city, might not have thought to book myself or would not have been able to afford. My favourite was Boxe Boxe Brasil a dance piece by Mourad Merzouki’s company käfig in which Brazilian dancers performed a blend of hip-hop and boxing to the classical accompaniment of the Debussy Quartet, on at the Cité de la Musique.

After the Sorbonne term ended in May, I turned my attention to professional development opportunities. I had long wanted to train at L’École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq, a drama school specialising in physical theatre and mime. I was accepted onto their ‘Le Masque Neutre’ course, over which we learnt and played with the ‘journey of the masked man’. Through mask and mime, we experimented with how our bodies interact with various different natural environments: sea, forest, rocky mountains, stepping stones over a river, grassy fields and desert sand. This was an incredible experience both professionally and personally, consolidating for me the importance of awareness of breath, active presence and specificity of movement when performing.

I also enrolled on a screen acting course at the Cours Florent, another French drama school. This was a brilliant learning opportunity, and fascinating to compare with my experience at Lecoq: there was an important overlap in the foundational need for active presence and grounded emotion for both mediums. These two experiences gave me first-hand exposure to drama training in France and allowed me to network within the theatre community in Europe. I am immensely grateful for the generous financial support of St Hilda’s College and the Liz Daplyn Travel Bursary as well as the Cameron Mackintosh Drama Fund through the University Drama Officer, which helped me afford both courses. Like the Sorbonne student theatre, the training was not only beneficial for my professional development in the performing arts, but also hugely advantageous for my French language abilities. Speaking and acting fully in the French language, enabled me to broaden my vocabulary and hone my fluency ahead of my return to Oxford. All that remained was a wonderful final summer month fully dedicated to touristing around the city. July was a final adventure of ticking things off my Paris bucket list in the sun and seeing as much French theatre and film as possible, before coming back for fourth year and finals.

Merci, Elise!

French, Spanish, Student life, Studying at Oxford, Why study languages?, Year Abroad

An experience of a lifetime in Argentina

May 29, 2024 Schools Liaison Leave a comment

On the blog this week, one of our final year French & Spanish students tells us all about their experience of being an English Language Assistant in two Argentinian schools…

As part of my year abroad, I spent five months in Argentina taking in the beautiful setting, learning a new kind of Spanish and meeting some lifelong friends. I was quite keen to push myself and make the most of the opportunity to go abroad so going to South America was definitely on the top of my list. After having applied to some other programs and been unsuccessful, I found an experience which offered the possibility of teaching English in school. The thought of being placed in ANY part of Argentina (the eighth biggest country worldwide with one of the most varied climates) meant that I was excited yet also nervous about what could lie ahead.

During my time in Argentina, I worked with two institutions in the Buenos Aires province which both offered unique experiences! I stayed at my first institution for two months and it was an amazing private school with some equally incredible teachers. The best thing was being able to share my culture with others as well as form a rapport with the children that I taught.

During my first placement, I had the pleasure to live with a wonderful host family who made me feel welcome despite the fact that I am naturally quite shy and introverted and they were always willing to help me with my Spanish, share their culture and take me in as one of their own. My arrival began with being invited to a quince (a fifteenth birthday party) which was overwhelming yet it meant that I soon made friends. The welcoming and kind-hearted nature of the people meant that I was invited on many outings, meals out and drank a lot of mate (a drink which has the same cultural prestige as a cup of tea in England).

The second institution that I worked with was in a small town of 5000 people in the countryside and whilst I did the same activities in regards to sharing my culture and teaching classes, I had a whole host of new experiences. I lived with two fantastic families who welcomed me as one of their own. Something I still miss to this day is the tasty soup and desserts that were made by Hebe! A memory that I will never forget is that I taught students the moves to the cha-cha slide and the Superman song. Whilst there were times that I missed home, these times were few and far between. I am extremely thankful to have met my supervisor as well as to have had the opportunity to go on outings with different families and of course, drink more mate! I still keep in touch with my supervisor and friends I made there and I hope to visit them again someday.

During my free time, I was able to organise my own travel around Argentina. My favourite trip definitely had to be visiting Iguazú Falls in the north of Argentina which definitely was a sight to behold! I frequently visited Buenos Aires and marvelled at what the city had to offer. Whilst there were some anxieties about being in Argentina as a result of cultural differences and general feelings of homesickness which comes with any experience abroad, I always had support around me whilst I was there and knew that I could contact my tutors back in Oxford in the face of any problems.

My advice to anyone considering a degree in Modern Languages is to go for it and make the most of the year abroad! The opportunity to further develop your cultural knowledge through literature alongside the different options available for going abroad is something I will always be grateful for. If you had asked me when I first started my degree whether I would have travelled to Argentina alone, met amazing people and have done the cha-cha slide with students in a small town in Argentina, I would have thought you were crazy. However, that’s something that became a reality and now a fond memory and, I am looking forward to going back one day.

Russian, Slavonic Languages, Student life, Year Abroad

We’re in Baltic business, people! The new beginners’ Russian year abroad

April 10, 2024 Schools Liaison Leave a comment

In this week’s blog post, third-year French and Beginners’ Russian student, Catrin, tell us all about her year abroad spent in Tallinn, Estonia!

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the beginners’ Russian cohort spends the year abroad in Tallinn, Estonia, engaging in an intensive language programme for eight months. At first, it disappointed me that I would not experience the legend that is the traditional Russian ab initio year abroad to Yaroslavl’ (seriously, it’s described like folklore in the department), spending a long winter only 270km outside of Moscow with a firm and matronly ’babushka’. However, this disappointment was of course dwarfed by the gravity of the situation in Ukraine and my sympathies for those living through the atrocities.

When I left the UK for my first semester, with two large suitcases and no expectations, I was yet to know the magic of Russia’s tiny neighbour; I was yet to learn the intricacies and nuances of life in a post-Soviet country, and I was yet to feel that I had truly built a life and home for myself abroad. All these things had become true as my time in Estonia came to an end in May of 2023.

The language course provided by the organisation ‘LanguageLink’ in Tallinn is the same as the one previously given in Yaroslavl’. There are daily lessons in literature, translation, grammar, essay writing and speaking. The lessons take up half a day, in a morning or afternoon slot, and in them we covered a wide range of themes. The courses are all provided by native Russian speakers, but what made the lessons all the more interesting and unique was the politicised lens through which Russian as a language is considered in Estonia. In 2011, nearly 50% of Tallinn’s inhabitants spoke Russian as their first language and the vast majority of Estonians are fluent in, or can at least understand, Russian. Relations with the language were already strained after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the re-adoption of Estonian as the country’s official language and were then made even more precarious following the invasion of Ukraine.

Our teachers had very personal stories and interesting views on their relationship with Estonia and the Estonian language: some had lived and worked in Estonia their whole lives, and others had moved to Tallinn more recently following the start of the war. A particularly memorable lesson included a discussion about the implications of displaying a destroyed Russian tank in the capital’s ‘Freedom Square’, with plaques in Estonian, Russian and English explaining the choice to put it on show. We pondered the task of translating and conveying the message in three different languages in such a tense political climate.

I loved the afternoons and weekends we spent in Tallinn, and given that our classes only took place in the morning, we had lots of free time to fill with many cultural activities… and cinnamon buns. Tallinn itself is very architecturally interesting, like a cultural canvas onto which various eras of history have been painted and blended together. You can spend hours wandering around the picturesque medieval Old Town and traditional wooden houses in the neighbouring creative district, or get swept up in the remains of the Soviet era the traces it left (including the derelict Linnahall, which for you Christopher Nolan fans, is used in the film ‘Tenet’).

Alternatively, you could lean into a more modern, slightly Scandinavian way of life. All of this together is what makes it Estonian. Some of my favourite habits included a weekly trip to a coffee shop with a friend after our Friday morning class, taking turns to pick a new café and explore new districts by the very efficient Tallinn public transport system, as well as a Sunday afternoon trip to the sauna to go ice-swimming in the capital’s seaplane harbour.

Many of us lived in the east of Tallinn in Lasnamäe, often called ‘the Russian ghetto’ given the high number of Russian speakers living in the area. Many lived with babushkas, but a friend and I lived with a man who trained Ukranian soldiers and ran a metal-for-furniture business on the side (whatever floats your boat?). We enjoyed conversations about his work and his family, which was spread between Estonia and Ukraine. His mother came to stay with us for a month from Kyiv, and we really enjoyed learning about her life and interests in a mishmash of Russian and Estonian, which she was learning at the time.

However much I loved Tallinn, one of the best things about it was how easy it was to leave. As in, it has excellent (and cheap) transport links to many parts of Estonia and other capital cities. The ferry trip to Helsinki is around £25 and takes two hours, other Baltic capitals are easily reachable by bus- although the overnight trip home from Vilnius to Tallinn is not the best night’s sleep I’ve ever had. One reading week at the end of March was enough time for a whistle-stop tour of Scandinavia by train: a friend and I interrailed from Helsinki to Kemi in the north of Finland, across the north of Sweden, before seeing Trondheim and Oslo in Norway, finally making our way down to Copenhagen. Many of our classmates travelled further afield to Georgia, Uzbekistan and Hungary during these reading weeks.

Although not what I expected when I originally applied to study Russian at Oxford, my time in Tallinn was formative, fulfilling and most importantly, fun. The beginners’ Russian year abroad seems highly structured, with little space to make it your own, but all our cohort came home with different experiences, stories and memories. Looking back, I realise that Tallinn to me was originally a ‘plan B’, an alternative, and a place I never would have considered home. How wrong I was!

Catrin, French and Beginners’ Russian

You can read more about Catrin’s year abroad experiences in Estonia here on the blog.

Russian, Studying at Oxford, Year Abroad

The Estonian Sauna

January 17, 2024 Schools Liaison Leave a comment

On the blog this week, French and Beginners’ Russian student, Catrin, tells us all about the wonders of the Estonian sauna, and her experiences of using them while on her year abroad last year.

The Estonian sauna is a weird and wonderful place.

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, our Beginners’ Russian cohort was told we would be going to Tallinn instead of Yaroslavl’, which had been the destination of choice for decades. I had no idea what to expect from Russia’s small north-eastern neighbour. Tallinn truly surprised me, and one of the things I miss the most is cold water swimming and the sauna culture that accompanies it. My favourite Russian word that I learnt on my year abroad was моржевание (morzhevanie); a specific, one word translation for “cold water swimming” or “winter swimming”, that comes from the word “morzh” meaning “walrus”.

Tallinn is a coastal capital, sitting on the shores of the Baltic Sea, which meant any ‘morzhevanie’ I would take part in would be, well, baltic. I was sceptical. However, when told that the Estonian way was to swim in the freezing cold water and then run straight back to a cosy, boiling hot sauna, I was more convinced. The ritual of the trip to the sauna became part of my life in Estonia- a friend and I went every Sunday through the winter swimming season, which lasts from the beginning of November through to the end of April. Estonians and the international community alike can buy season tickets for their favourite sauna for a discounted price, much like football fans would do in the UK.

Sauna culture in Estonia is sacred. There are approximately 100,000 saunas in Estonia for a population of 1.3 million. In the capital, it may be a somewhat trendy novelty that tech employees and Erasmus students dabble in for the period of their stay, but a more traditional kind of sauna, namely the “Võromaa” smoke sauna tradition in southern Estonia, has warranted cultural heritage status on the UNESCO list. It is part of a wider Russo-Scandinavian sauna tradition, with slight variations from Estonia to Russia to Finland to Sweden to Norway. Some of the most burning questions include: is it a wood-burning or a steam sauna? What sticks do you hang in the sauna to hit your body with to increase circulation? Should you wear a little felt hat to regulate your body temperature or not? And, for the sauna fashionistas amongst you, what colour should the little felt hat be?

A testament to its cultural heritage and importance, saunas are now being delivered from Estonia to Ukranian soldiers on the front lines of the war by the NGO “Saunas for Ukraine”, and the movement is garnering support online to send more. It has provided battalions of the Ukranian army with a place to wash, convene, and boost morale. The modern Tallinn sauna is part conference room, part cool hangout spot, part extreme sport training centre. During my first trip to the sauna- a repurposed small shipping container in the trendy, harbourside Kalamaja district- it was full of people who were attending the same technology conference which didn’t officially start until the following day, but business discussions had clearly begun as they scurried as a pack between the sea and the steam.

In the following weeks, we became regulars and noticed that the French embassy in Tallinn ran a group trip to the sauna every week; a mixture of diplomats and NATO soldiers who challenged each other to stay in the freezing sea as long as they could (one soldier managed 8 minutes!). I heard friends conversing in Estonian, Finnish, Russian, English, Spanish, French and Portuguese (that was just on one Sunday afternoon in mid-January). The sauna was a very international space, and a great place for cultural exchange.

One of the most memorable conversations we had was with two of the chattiest Estonians my friend and I had ever met (Estonians are famously quite reserved), who, upon hearing that I was Welsh and a Welsh-speaker, immediately asked “can you tell us that really long Welsh place name?”. I obliged before even thinking how incredible it was that two Estonians knew about the name of a tiny village, which happened to be my grandfather’s birthplace, on the complete opposite end of Europe. In exchange for my consonant-heavy declaration, we were told an Estonian phrase that was made up almost entirely of vowels- “on the edge of the ice” in Estonian is “jää-äär”.

On other visits, the sauna was completely silent, and a place for meditation and reflection. Desperate not to miss our habitual “ice swimming Sundays” on a trip around Scandinavia, we found the most intense group of cold water swimmers in Kemi, Finland (a mere hour outside the Arctic circle!). The sea was completely frozen over. The sauna was boiling hot, and very quiet.

The relaxed nature of the cold-water swimming community in Estonia eventually left me wondering: what kind of place would the world be if all diplomatic and political negotiations happened in saunas?

– Catrin Mackie, French and Russian student

A blog for school students and teachers and anyone else with an interest in Modern Languages and Cultures, written by the staff and students of Oxford University. Updated every Wednesday!