Université Panthéon-Sorbonne: Paris I

At the beginning the Parisians were talking back to me in English because I was insecure and had quite a strong accent. I pretended to not understand English. Sure that was quite an extra obstacle at the beginning, but the easier I git used to communicating in French. At university teachers usually expect of you to already understand them brilliantly, I got called to the board in an Microeconomics class in the 4th week and didn't understand any of what the teacher was asking me about. I told him that I didn't understand but he thought that I was just pretending in order to be prevented from a "fail". I failed virtually all of my written class tests in the first bit of the first term. The problem was that my vocab was still too restricted, and it took me hours to read one page. I think I never worked so hard during the first term of university in my whole life. Although my marks were very bad in the first semester my French improved lots, and in the second semester I found it a lot easier to follow lectures and classes.

As a law student, I had to learn the judicial vocabulary in addition to brushing up on my French grammar. Legal essays in French were a great difficulty for me in my academic studies. Teachers will often give foreign students some leeway if they make mistakes. Additionally, on final exams you are given the opportunity to specify whether you are a foreign student or not, which is extremely helpful in the case of difficulties with the language.

As this experience is already 10 years old - I can only say that within the daily university environment, the literature classes with a genious teacher helped very much improve my language knowledge. But as I was also integrated into the local community because of my french boyfriend - it surely also improved because of this.

I am fluent in Spanish, and had begun to try and learn French. For me the reading part was initially much easier than trying to communicate. But immersion is allowing me to retain more of the language and distinguish words when listening to a native speaker.

It was hard to cope with the lectures when I first arrived, but my friends helped me lot and I have overcome this obstacle. During my 3rd year of studies I coped very well and spoke fluently as if French was my native language :)

For me was pretty easy because I had spend one year as Erasmus in an other University in Paris. I do not think if will be possible to undertake a Master degree in France without a good level of French.