Doubling up on foreign language in HS.

bclintonk
Fri, 03 Sep 2010 14:13:32 +0000

My D1 is a bit of a language freak. She took 4 yrs of Latin, 2 yrs Ancient Greek, 4 college semesters French (while in HS), and 3 semesters college Portuguese (ditto). She placed into advanced French at her college and is now taking an advanced course on French literature/literary criticism as a college freshman.

By and large I think it’s best to let kids follow their own interests in studying languages; they’ll be more motivated and learn better if it’s a language they really care about. If your D is equally passionate about all these languages, one additional thing to think about is what’s going to look best to college adcoms. The most selective colleges look for 4 years in a single language as a baseline expectation. IB-level proficiency is a plus, though if I’m not mistaken in most cases the IB tests come too late to be a factor in admissions decisions. If Spanish is currently her strongest language then by all means I’d lead with that, and take it as far as she can in HS. French would probably be the next easiest to pick up as the Romance languages share many similar words and grammatical structures. But I would say that’s probably an argument against making French her second-priority language in HS. Mandarin is hard, and very unlike Spanish. Better to start younger. Mandarin is also very time-consuming as there’s an enormous amount of memorization of characters. In your situation I’d probably go with Spanish and Mandarin, and view French as something she can pick up relatively easily later with a strong background in another Romance language. Russian is also going to be hard but that can wait until college. Becoming fluent in Spanish and getting a solid start with 4 years of Mandarin in HS would be a very impressive academic accomplishment, one college adcoms will notice. If she’s doing very well in Spanish and Mandarin she might want to start in on French while still in HS, but I’d begin with two languages and add the third later if things are going well and as time permits.