Doubling up on foreign language in HS.

WendyMouse
Fri, 03 Sep 2010 18:51:05 +0000

I started French in eighth grade and added Spanish in eleventh, while continuing French.

Academically, it was easy. Socially, Spanish was frustrating because I had to take the class with ninth graders who were not smart enough to be allowed to start a language in eighth grade, the majority of whom didn’t want to be there (or a minority who were strong-willed enough to ruin the tone for the rest of the class). Compared to the rigor of my French class it was a joke (I’ll spare the anecdotes). It didn’t help that I knew the grammar that we were supposed to be getting (our new textbook, “Ven Conmigo” seemed to not believe in teaching grammar for the early chapters), and waiting for January for the teacher to get to conjugating all the verb forms was maddening. The following year, I took Spanish with students who had started in grade 8 (so Freshman again) in an honors class at a faster pace and it was much better.

I did not continue with Spanish in college and I took two semester of German senior year. The pace of the German class was much better and more grammar focused, but I would say that I have a much better vocabulary and command of Spanish because there was not as much actual drilling time in class, and frankly I was not as into German as I was into languages in high school (and had depression at the time). I found the two languages also interfered somewhat in my mind (less of the French, though, oddly). When I spent 10 days in a Spanish speaking country (for research purposes), my language knowledge was good enough for tourism, but I wish my foundation was better.

I cannot speak towards how languages affected my admission potential- I had high stats and was admitted to several LACs (I attended Wellesley), but denied at Harvard and Yale. This was in 2004.

Since people often take one language and stick with it, you daughter should realize that she will encounter some social issues either by being much ahead or much behind her peers and take classes with people in a different grade. I know someone who went to a French camp, and therefore never took it in high school because the classes did not meet her needs. Depending on your school’s size, the highest levels of the language class may not be offered! Also keep in mind that adding a languages is adding another subject to a schedule and there are already so many periods in a day. From what I’ve heard, becoming a veterinarian is more rigorous than becoming a doctor, so if you think she may actually become a vet, and this is not the passing fancy of a 13 year old girl, she probably shouldn’t pass up taking some sort of math and science class every year in favor of fitting these in (in my high school those weren’t required for graduation, but college bound students were to take them). She will also not have a lot of time.