Dip. Lang

[bentennason]

Hello everybody, I'm considering whether or not to do a diploma in languages alongside my undergrad course (science).
I'll be starting at entry level 1 and was wondering how fast the content is taught, and approximately how many hours a week I will have to commit to this.

[ggxoxo]

How do you apply for a Dip Lang; do you apply now or next year in O-week?

[bentennason]

Dunno, I'll be overseas during all of Jan so I can't attend the academic advice day to find out. gg

[VivaTequila]

Fucking do it.

I made the mistake of deciding to take one up at the end of first year.

Basically a DipLang works by adding 100 points of study to your degree. That's the equivalent of one year. Normally, your science degree has 300 points of study. Unsurprisingly, that's three years.

Every semester, you have four slots which can be filled with subjects. If you are only taking a science degree, then you only fill those 4 subjects with Science subjects. Note that normally one of those is a breadth subject every semester. If you pick a conventional degree, then every subject is worth 12.5 credit points, meaning your overall semester is worth 50; and a year is worth 100.

With a Diploma of Languages, all you are doing is adding on an extra 100 points. Or an extra year.

The thing is that you then have to put in all these extra slots into the same amount of slots (four slots per semester). That means that for every DipLang subject you put into those 4 slots, you have to take one science subject (or breadth subject) out.

It might sound like you are really complicating your degree if you do that, but trust me - it makes everything a lot simpler when compared to what you need to do if you apply at the end of first year as I've done - my degree is a little bit of a headfuck at the moment.

Now don't think of taking on a DipLang as extra concurrent study time devoted to the normal degree, because you aren't going to overload every semester of uni to get it fast tracked (if you do 5 subjects per semester, then you knock off 62.5 credit points instead of the usual 50 every semester, which means you reach the destination 400 faster). That's virtually impossible because you need to maintain a solid GPA and not fail any subjects in addition to a bunch of other criteria in order to successfully overload.

Think instead that the DipLang simply adds a year onto the degree, because you can't study more at any one given time - so you have to spread the things you're choosing to study out over a longer period of time.

I personally believe it's highly advantageous for a couple of reasons.

1. You spend longer at uni
2. Languages are GPA boosters (at least for me, they are), and
3. You open up prospects of bilingual or even trilingual PhDs.

Now to elaborate:
1. You spend longer at university - this is great, because I love uni. I don't know about you, but I am absolutely loving the uni student life. I moved out and became fully independent thanks to tutoring and then basically live a typical broke student uni life - constantly going out whenever I'm not studying or working. This is a lifestyle that I absolutely love, and I'd hate to be a working professional simply because you can't go out on a Tuesday night. At uni, your timetable is fucked, but it's so variable, which means your get weekdays off if you play your cards right. There's so many perks of being a uni student - you can sometimes qualify for austudy/youth allowance etcetera. If you're choosing to be at uni and you don't have your mind set on a concrete career, then the more time you have to think things over, reflect, and plan for the future - the better. The only time I can see this not being great is if you don't enjoy university (you can just drop the Diploma and get out of there more quickly) or if you want to definitely become, say, a doctor in the minimum amount of study.

2. Languages at uni are stupidly easy. Remember how in VCE they were the subject to pick if you wanted scaling? Yeah, well, not anymore. Their difficulty pales in comparison to the content that you have to learn in even your first year science subjects. I learned more bio words in a year than I have Russian ones in my language subjects. I guess it depends on the mindset you have. I hardly had to put in any work into my Language subjects. In fact, I didn't. All I did was rock up to classes and learn the bare minimum for assignments (2hrs per week on the assignment was all I ever did, when I had to do much more for chem and bio). And I still got very good marks that I was very happy with - my highest mark ever in fact was Russian 2 with an 82 H1. I was elated. I love the fact that I can just pick languages and chill out with my degree, taking less science subjects - which are incredibly hard - so I can devote more of my time to fewer of them, and then still have spare time to learn langauges.

Note that this also plays well into my hands because my diploma extends the time that I'm at uni - meaning even MORE spread out language subjects.

3. If you get into and do well in an Honours year, then you're really opening doors for yourself if you pick a language which has good PhD funding. Maybe not so much Russian, is what I'm saying - pick something that's either good for research (i.e. German) or something a little more global with a lot of speakers in a lot of different countries (i.e. Spanish).

[spectroscopy]

at the end of the dip lang are you like fluent fluent as in you could go an work in a professional environment in the other country and understand everyone and everything no worries or is it like you can say alot of useful sentences but arnt quite as free flowing as a fluent speaker

[VivaTequila]

at the end of the dip lang are you like fluent fluent as in you could go an work in a professional environment in the other country and understand everyone and everything no worries or is it like you can say alot of useful sentences but arnt quite as free flowing as a fluent speaker

Depends on the language.

Try Chinese, and you won't get anywhere - it's a difficult language to learn.

Try Spanish, though, and you'd pretty much have most of the things down pat.

Check the below spoiler for a large infographic.

Spoiler

To elaborate from my experience..

Russian has a completely different grammar system to English. English focuses on using word order.

The dog attacked the cat
The cat attacked the dog

We get meaning from these sentences based on what came first in the sentence.

In Russian, it's a completely different system.

Firstly, all of the articles are dropped.

Dog Attacked Cat
Cat Attacked Dog.

Secondly, it doesn't matter where you put the word in the sentence - it matters how you conjugate and modify the word. It's the internal properties of the word which tell you how it behaves in the sentence. In this case, the blue text is meant to indicate that I've changed the spelling of the word "cat" in Russian to indicate it's relationship to the other words in the sentence - is it doing the attacking or is it being attacked?

Dog attacked cat
cat attacked Dog

^These mean the same thing in Russian, regardless of word order, because you change the properties of the words themselves (their pronunciation and spelling changes; the meaning is NOT dependent on the order of words in the sentence, unlike English).

This whole concept becomes very difficult in Russian, because to convey meaning, you need to fully grasp 6 different ways of conjugating words; known as "Cases". This is present in a lot of languages, like German, but Russian notably has 6 of them which makes things difficult; it's comparable to Latin.

Other languages like Chinese are Tonal, so the same word can mean four completely different things. Pronunciation and speaking is very different in Chinese, and to make yourself understood takes practice and time.

The below infographic explains the random phenomena of these languages. You can also google language syntax to understand a bit on how it works - maybe Linguistics could be a good breadth for you if you're interested in learning more languages. I know I find it fascinating.

[nisha]

How many languages can you do in a Dip Lang?

[michak]

When and where do you enrol in the dip lang?

[spectroscopy]

Depends on the language.

Try Chinese, and you won't get anywhere - it's a difficult language to learn.

Try Spanish, though, and you'd pretty much have most of the things down pat.

Check the below spoiler for a large infographic.

Spoiler

To elaborate from my experience..

Russian has a completely different grammar system to English. English focuses on using word order.

The dog attacked the cat
The cat attacked the dog

We get meaning from these sentences based on what came first in the sentence.

In Russian, it's a completely different system.

Firstly, all of the articles are dropped.

Dog Attacked Cat
Cat Attacked Dog.

Secondly, it doesn't matter where you put the word in the sentence - it matters how you conjugate and modify the word. It's the internal properties of the word which tell you how it behaves in the sentence. In this case, the blue text is meant to indicate that I've changed the spelling of the word "cat" in Russian to indicate it's relationship to the other words in the sentence - is it doing the attacking or is it being attacked?

Dog attacked cat
cat attacked Dog

^These mean the same thing in Russian, regardless of word order, because you change the properties of the words themselves (their pronunciation and spelling changes; the meaning is NOT dependent on the order of words in the sentence, unlike English).

This whole concept becomes very difficult in Russian, because to convey meaning, you need to fully grasp 6 different ways of conjugating words; known as "Cases". This is present in a lot of languages, like German, but Russian notably has 6 of them which makes things difficult; it's comparable to Latin.

Other languages like Chinese are Tonal, so the same word can mean four completely different things. Pronunciation and speaking is very different in Chinese, and to make yourself understood takes practice and time.

The below infographic explains the random phenomena of these languages. You can also google language syntax to understand a bit on how it works - maybe Linguistics could be a good breadth for you if you're interested in learning more languages. I know I find it fascinating.

you just answered 50 questions in one shot i love you

[VivaTequila]

You apply for a Diploma of Langauges once you are already a UoM student. You need to apply through the portal (portal.unimelb.edu.au).

You log in, then click on the Admin tab, then click "Enrol in a new UoM course" or something along those lines. It's there and note that you have to get onto it pretty much ASAP. The current admissions staff member for DipLang is on holidays until the 11th or the 14th when she returns, and then she has until the 29th to admit people into the DipLang.

I'd advise you to get in touch with her if you are keen, especially if you are at the start of first year, just to ensure yourself a place.

You can only undertake 1 language in a Diploma of Languages.

[nisha]

You apply for a Diploma of Langauges once you are already a UoM student. You need to apply through the portal (portal.unimelb.edu.au).

You log in, then click on the Admin tab, then click "Enrol in a new UoM course" or something along those lines. It's there and note that you have to get onto it pretty much ASAP. The current admissions staff member for DipLang is on holidays until the 11th or the 14th when she returns, and then she has until the 29th to admit people into the DipLang.

I'd advise you to get in touch with her if you are keen, especially if you are at the start of first year, just to ensure yourself a place.

You can only undertake 1 language in a Diploma of Languages.

Wait, January Feb or March...?

Okay, thanks!

[MJRomeo81]

If languages at uni are stupidly easy then why bother? An inflated GPA means nothing if you can't answer technical questions in a job interview (especially for a science graduate). I'd rather study something of value that I know will be useful later on (even if means taking extremely difficult subjects and scoring lower).

Also you can learn languages without paying top dollar these days. Unis love to con students into the idea that only they can provide the resources that are necessary to learn subject x.

However if you have a true passion for learning a language then go for it. You'll actually get something out of a DipLang if you're truly interested (and by this I mean if you go above and beyond what's expected). And please if you can already speak your native language fluently, don't take a DipLang in the same language unless you like throwing money down the drain.

[VivaTequila]

If languages at uni are stupidly easy then why bother? An inflated GPA means nothing if you can't answer technical questions in a job interview (especially for a science graduate). I'd rather study something of value that I know will be useful later on (even if means taking extremely difficult subjects and scoring lower).

Also you can learn languages without paying top dollar these days. Unis love to con students into the idea that only they can provide the resources that are necessary to learn subject x.

However if you have a true passion for learning a language then go for it. You'll actually get something out of a DipLang if you're truly interested (and by this I mean if you go above and beyond what's expected). And please if you can already speak your native language fluently, don't take a DipLang in the same language unless you like throwing money down the drain.

You can make direct vice versa counter arguments.

What good is a shitty GPA with decent interview skills? Good luck getting that interview in the future then. And even so, quantify exactly how much these uni subjects would help you in lieu of sacrificing all of the benefits of a language?

What subjects would you consider instead of a language?

As far as I'm concerned there are not many subjects that would help me in a Chemistry major going into postgraduate science, and in fact a language is quite a logical option because it gives me more breadth to study overseas.

As for languages being expensive at UoM, I have no idea. I payed $650ish for each semester, so maybe $1300 or just short of it all up for some decent proficiency in Russian.

Remember that a Language isn't something that needs to be formally accredited like a degree. You don't even have to pay for it if you want to learn it. There are plenty of resources and books online without tuition.

My point is that Languages can be a great option for the exact opposite reasons to everything you just mentioned - it's about who it suits and why.

[MJRomeo81]

What good is a shitty GPA with decent interview skills? Good luck getting that interview in the future then. And even so, quantify exactly how much these uni subjects would help you in lieu of sacrificing all of the benefits of a language?

Inflating your GPA (via irrelevant material in relation to your actual science job - assuming your position / future aspirations didn't require a second language) isn't any better than a student with a lower GPA (which was due to studying tough units to increase their depth of knowledge in their area of specialisation).

What subjects would you consider instead of a language?

Depends on the person's major and the structure of their chosen course. If a language seems useful to you due to future career plans overseas, then by all means study a language. However if you're completing a DipLang just to inflate the GPA when there are other subjects that were perhaps more suitable, it won't look good on the academic transcript. Again this depends on the person's major and what their future plans are. If you have absolutely no intention to ever work overseas or communicate with clients in another language, I don't see the point in completing a DipLang. If you want to learn a language for a hobby, do it for free.

Remember that a Language isn't something that needs to be formally accredited like a degree. You don't even have to pay for it if you want to learn it. There are plenty of resources and books online without tuition.

My point is that Languages can be a great option for the exact opposite reasons to everything you just mentioned - it's about who it suits and why.

I agree, and this is what I was trying to articulate in my previous post. For some, a DipLang can be an incredible stepping stone in their respective careers. For others, it's a complete waste of time and effort. I know people at La Trobe taking language units when they're already fluent in the same language. They're only doing it for the hope that the high scores will compensate for their average IT scores. Then you have others studying a DipLang simply because they want bludge subjects.