Helen Venables, Linguistics and French

"I enrolled at Wolverhampton in 2005 studying a joint honours degree in Linguistics and French.  My initial contact with the linguistics’ department was very positive, and within days I was attending lectures.  While I already had a good grounding in French, I knew very little about linguistics, other than what I had read in the module guide.  The first module, an Introduction to Linguistics, was very general, introducing us to the subject in its broadest sense.  It was an excellent start and proved a really good grounding for years 2 and 3.

During the three years I spent at the university, I found that staff from the Linguistics department were always on hand to help with any problems.  The quality of teaching was excellent, and the added benefit of being able to download lecturer notes was invaluable to me. 

Every student had their own personal tutor and students were able to express their opinion of the modules and the quality of the teaching through staff-student liaison meetings, which students were encouraged to attend, and through confidential written module evaluations.

The variety of linguistic modules on offer was very broad, ranging from phonetics, phonology, semantics and morphology to more technical areas such as psycholinguistics.  Many of the linguistics modules had a balance of assessments, ranging from essays, presentations and final exams, which were spread throughout the semester, helping ease the burden.

I feel very privileged to have had the opportunity to go back to university as a mature student and Wolverhampton offered me excellent teaching, and the opportunity to change my career path."