<p>Hello, I will be entering Wesleyin this fall and I was wondering about Language Center and Writing Workshop.</p>
<p>I’ve been taking French in my high school but I was thinking about starting Spanish when I enter Wesleyan. But I don’t want to forget my French and I saw on the website that there is a language center but I’m not sure how it works. Can I go there anytime and study whatever language I want? What kind of materials will I use there? Will I have time to go and study in the language center? Do many students use it?</p>
<p>And I wanted to get some help in my writing and I checked out the website but I didn’t quite understand all the office hours(?) and stuff…do many students use writing workshop? </p>
<p>I don’t know the full capabilities of the Language Resource Center. I’ve only heard of it being used for language classes that need computer lab space for teaching/homework, but you might be able to do the kind of things you talked about.</p>
<p>The Writing Workshop is really great-- there are various times at various places on campus where you can bring in a paper and get help on it at any stage of the writing process. Students are trained to be tutors, to help people with their work.</p>
<p>I used to work at the LRC (for 2 years) so I can tell you something about it. </p>
<p>It’s a pretty nice facility, but as jumble_j said it’s very focused on serving the students enrolled in language classes and unfortunately doesn’t have too much in the way of resources for people who want to self-teach or self-study a language. It’s mostly a general purpose computer lab with a lot of AV equipment so people can watch media (audio or video) for their classes. There is also audio recording since some classes require students to record themselves for homework and video recording for sign language classes. The LRC digitizes a lot of media and posts it online for students in classes to watch either at the lab or elsewhere. If you do take Spanish, get ready to watch tons of “Nuevos Destinos.” :)</p>
<p>On a more personal note, I was in a similar situation in that I came to Wesleyan with a significant background in French and wanted to keep it up. I placed out of the first four semesters of French and took French 215 my first semester, which was great. Unfortunately every post-215 French class is all about literature or philosophy. I’m just not that into those subjects, so it ultimately wasn’t worth it to me to keep taking classes I wasn’t interested in to keep up my language ability, especially when those classes involved relatively little speaking practice.</p>
<p>One thing that was recommended to me, but which I was not able to do because of a number of factors, was to study abroad in French speaking country. You might want consider this even if you end up not taking French classes at Wes (study abroad is VERY flexible here). Even if you don’t want to go to France there are other places (like Africa) to go. Hope that helps – keeping up language skills is tough. Good luck!</p>
<p>Another note about the writing center: if you want a lot of personal attention payed towords your writing, you can try to get a personal writing tutor (there are only a certain number, so I don’t think everyone who wants one gets one, but I’m not really sure how that works). You’ll be paired with a tutor for the semester and meet with them every week to get help with your writing…I have a friend who said it was really helpful to have someone who got to know her individual strengths and weaknesses and could help her work on them.</p>
<p>Also, there are a lot of launguge program houses. I’m not sure if there is a French house, but if there is living there sophmore year might be a nice way to keep the launguge up.</p>