Doubling up on foreign language in HS.

fogcity
Fri, 03 Sep 2010 01:12:47 +0000

I am familiar with language immersion programs that start as early as pre-K and continue through middle school (and beyond). Most typically these are French, Spanish and Chinese. Students who are in these programs have analogous background to your D. They (at least those who I know to have taken French and Chinese) are often bi-lingual when they graduate from middle school. Also in some of these programs (e.g. such as the handful of Lycees in the US) the “foreign” language is the primary language, and students in these programs take a second and often third foreign language.

So come high school – what to do? There’s a great deal of value in becoming bi-lingual in at least one of the languages. And there is a great deal of difference between being proficient and bi-lingual. There’s also a level of proficiency that makes study of the literature of the language of great personal value to the student. So I would recommend a variant of option three. Improve Spanish to the highest level possible during high school, using the high school resources and improving on them where possible.

Once you’re decided on the goal of bi-bilingualism for one language the question of which of the other languages has higher priority becomes clearer. I would pick the language that’s most different from the one chosen for bi-bilingualism. In your D’s case it’s Chinese.

And what about the 3rd and 4th language? I’m of the opinion that with age language study becomes more difficult. I don’t agree that the first 2 years of language study are a joke. Far from it for older (13+) students. The point is that the benefit of squeezing the third language (maybe with the exception of Latin) in high school is not urgent. The success factor is as high if the study is deferred to college.