The Guardian – Fred McConnell
“I did not choose Arabic for an undergraduate course because I loved learning languages. All that mattered to me was travel and adventure, and in that regard my degree was highly successful. But I loathed all forms of academic work and was under the delusion that academics could somehow transmit Arabic over the course of four years via exposure and mental trickery. By the end of my degree, I came no where near close to fluency. Yet, the fact I never memorised a thing or opened my mouth in class didn’t seem to bother anyone. I kept up just enough to pass and avoided having to overcome my terror of saying something incorrect.”(more)