Your comments: Modules FR30130 and SP30130- oral exams should be more spread out. For students who study more than one language, they currently only have one or two days between each exam. In addition, final year Spanish students last year only had to learn four oral exam topics yet this year we are expected to learn six, despite having had a much more disruptive and unsettling year due to the pandemic. I think this needs to be taken into consideration. It has been a very difficult year as a finalist, and as well as the oral exams, the final exams are very demanding considering that none of us were able to complete what we had planned for our year abroad. Not having this experience to acquire knowledge could impact severely on our performance in the final exam.
Our response:
Many thanks for your comment. Every year we only have a 4 day window in which to conduct all oral examinations, for all languages at all levels. This is because they need to be conducted after teaching finishes but before the start of the official examination period for the university, and this week always falls on the week of the first May bank holiday. We make sure that different languages at the same level are not conducted on the same day but it is unavoidable that there will only be perhaps a day or two between two languages at the same level. This is the inevitability of taking two or more languages in a degree scheme and students should be expected to be able to manipulate between the languages in this way.
The number of topics in final year reflects the level of learning achieved by students in their conversation classes during the year and has been agreed by external examiners as being effective in order to meet learning outcomes and fair given the current circumstances. All topics should have been covered during the weekly conversation classes
The current circumstances and the difficulties faced by students will all be taken into account when final degree classifications are made.
