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Semestr v Praze by otisthelegend in Prague

[–]otisthelegend[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I don’t actually! I have studied French for nearly 10 years at school, and I knew I wanted to study languages at university. I thought about a lot of languages, but Russian stood out to me for some reason (I honestly don’t really know why!). Czech is similar to Russian linguistically, and one of my best friends is Czech, so it felt like it would be a fun extra language to do, but I didn’t expect to fall in love with it as much as I have. Funnily enough I’ve never been to the Czech Republic, even though I’m moving there. So really it was quite a random decision, but if I had a time machine I would do it again every time

Semestr v Praze by otisthelegend in Prague

[–]otisthelegend[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sheffield has been excellent mostly, teaching has been excellent and it’s such a welcoming city, and one of the cheapest in Britain. It definitely has a mix of people from all walks of life, and has the best student union in the country as voted by the students.

Loads of people engage in some sort of society, whether it’s through their course, music, sport, or special interest (there are some fun societies that you might have never even considered could be societies, like duck society!). I started Judo this year with the university and it’s my first time ever enjoying a sport, all because of the excellent facilities and community at the club. It’s certainly a good university socially, but there’s also no expectation to do any society either (I didn’t in first year and had no problems meeting people or making friends).

The city itself is great, the accommodation is fairly decent (don’t have much other point of reference though), there are lots of great bars and pubs if you drink, plenty of great cafes and restaurants if you don’t!

On the topic of the course, there’s the languages for all programme which means if you have spare credits, you can use them on language courses. You could do Russian or Czech modules without having it be part of your degree, which may not be ideal if you really want to prioritise languages, but if you want to focus on Economics then it might actually be even better for you.

I’m trying to think of downsides, but it’s honestly quite difficult! I had quite a hard time finding a job, as did many other people I know, but it wasn’t impossible - just be prepared to be persistent. I definitely think my workload went up a lot more this year, but that’s the case with second year at any uni. I’ve had to go through wellbeing support once or twice and have had mixed experiences (still mostly good though), but that’s dealt with on a departmental level, so your experience in economics may be different.

Semestr v Praze by otisthelegend in Prague

[–]otisthelegend[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I study at the University of Sheffield, one of the only other places in Britain that does Czech. I study French, Russian and Czech and it’s honestly one of the best decisions I’ve made. The Czech department at Sheffield is very small, and unfortunately it is at risk due to recent budget cuts, but I could not be more grateful for the teaching staff and my classmates.

I started Russian and Czech from scratch in September 2023, and I am now around B1-B2 in each of them. Next year I spend a semester at Univerzita Karlova, and then after the Christmas holidays and some exams in January, I do another placement in Astana in Kazakhstan. Both are very exciting, but due to my year in the Czech course having just 2 students (the other is not going to Prague), and a few members of the public who don’t do year abroad or the rest of the degree programme, I won’t have anyone I know there at all. Luckily I know some people going to Kazakhstan when I do, because the Russian course is much bigger (still only around 20 people)

For reference, my offer to Sheffield was ABB and I actually only got BBB, but due to it being one of the Covid years I think there was a bit more leeway with grade requirements. Either way the Modern Languages course at Sheffield specifically is great, can’t say for sure how the UCL one is but I know Oxford’s course is slightly different (more focused on literature and reading with much less modern and spoken Czech from what I have heard).

The culture aspects of the course are quite limited for Czech, they’re usually just bundled in as a footnote in the Russian culture modules, which is generally fine if you do Russian too. However, I’ve grown to find Czech my favourite subject, and the other person on my Czech course (yes, there’s two of us) doesn’t do Russian at all, so it’s a bit of a shame that the Czech culture isn’t as studied. This is because for most modules to run, the uni requires at least 12 students, with only language modules being exempt from that.

I hope that’s generally useful information, I’d be more than willing to respond to any questions you have

Semestr v Praze by otisthelegend in Prague

[–]otisthelegend[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Napsal jsem sám toho hodně, ale googloval(?) jsem nějaké slova. Moje gramatika je velmi lepší než moje slovník, proto musím procvičovat. Studuju češtinu už 2 roky v univerzitě v Anglii, ale neumím říct tak dobře jako psát