Any OU language students?

Funnily enough I was pondering this myself the other day when I was looking through their courses. I think you would have to be extremely dedicated, and you would miss out on the chance to practice with other learners.

I was doing their beginners Italian - you use their conferencing software so you can do tutorials online with your tutor group and all get a chance to talk and your tutor will tell you where you are going wrong, plus obviously tutor group sessions (useless for the Italian course, I live in Bucks and they made me go to Southampton!) and groups of people would get together locally where they could practice.

It was the first year of the Italian and was very badly organised (and as I did my degree with the OU usually I cannot praise them highly enough) but some of the students said they had alreayd done French and Spanish and those were so much better.

I did beginner's Italian and first year French last year too!

The French course was much better as there were face to face tutorials much more regularly than the Italian, but the conferencing software was available for online tutorials (although it did have it's teething troubles). I passed both courses quite well, so it must have worked somewhere along the line!

I'm continuing second year French this year and there is a different conferencing software this year which seems more robust. The one thing I do find difficult is that there aren't any visual clues about what people are saying, but I guess my telephone French might improve!

Students do get together online for self help sessions, not that I've joined those so far.

One warning - I believe the fees are v. high for none UK resident students, even if you hold a UK passport.

I'm starting the beginners French one in November - it wasn't the option of the summer school afterwards that swayed me, oh no ?