Doubling up on foreign language in HS.

Consolation
Fri, 03 Sep 2010 12:34:17 +0000

S started French with a once-weekly group lesson–not in school–in around 3rd grade. When he entered 7th grade, where instruction begins in our schools, he went into 8th grade French because we figured that a)it would be very intimidating to be the sole 7th grader in class with HS students, and b) he would undoubtedly have gaps, especially in vocab, that daily exposure would help close. In 8th grade, he went to the HS for French 2, finished AP Frech Lang in 11th grade, and did the 2-yr AP French Lit as an independent study under the supervision of the AP French teacher and finished it in 12th grade.

Meanwhile, he wanted to start another language in 9th grade, and Spanish was the only living language alternative. At the suggestion of the head of the Spanish program, he was given the opportunity to skip Spanish 1 entirely and test into Spanish 2 in September. They gave him a textbook and a list of required chapters, and recommended an incoming Spanish 5 student to give him a little tutoring–mostly speaking the language with him–over the summer. Since he was away for the first half of the summer, this ended up being pretty much August alone. He had no difficulty with it and tested into Spanish 2. He completed AP Spanish in 12th grade.

S received 5s in all of his language AP exams, and always placed between first and fourth in the state on the yearly national exams in both languages. I think it’s fair to say that he has a strong facility for language.

It is my understanding that it is much easier to go from French to Spanish than the reverse–largely because of pronunciation–and that while Spanish 1 often moves very, very slowly for a student familiar with another romance language, the first year of other languages–and definitely the second year–is far from worthless.

S started Russian in college, and it has been, I gather, significantly more difficult than either of the Romance languages.

I agree that some variation on Option 3 sounds like the best course of action. The plan suggested by 2collegewego makes a lot of sense to me.