The only language that I’ve ever heard of not being ideal is ASL. My kids’ high school offers it and some have apparently had comments from admissions reps that it’s not a great choice.
Sometimes it is good for your kid to get pushed. Most of S’s classmates in AP Spanish 4 were heritage speakers, so he had to work his butt off for an A because he was at a disadvantage. His other classes in his regular public HS, including AP’s, were less of a challenge. When he went to his HYSP, I think it was less of a shock to be in the same classes as kids who were better prepared.
I get it though, GPA and rank management is a thing. Your kid needs to pick her shots at the most challenging courses. But as others have said, I think you are overthinking, especially for 8th grade.
Not really. They are both Indo-European languages, so they are derived from the same surce language (as all European and Indic languages are), but they are not from the same language family. Latin would be a lot closer to modern Romance languages (French, Spanish, Italian, Romanian) than to Greek. Greek is in its own branch.
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That makes me so angry, tbh. Seems super ableist. There is zero linguistic justification to consider this a “lesser” language.
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You say your daughter is fluent in English and Greek. So…which of these languages do you speak at home. What was her first primary language? Do you speak the second in your home?
It is recommended that students complete through level three for most colleges, and level four for others. Some students do take FL in Middle School and are able to get to level 3 or 4 in 10th or 11th grade.
It sounds like your daughter cannot do this.
It’s nice that she has passed an exam for Greek, but that likely won’t exempt her from the college requirement of actually studying a language in high school to a certain level.
And in some cases it will mean she will be required to take FL in college.
So… my suggestion…have her pick a FL to take in school to satisfy this requirement. Can she start French 1 or Spanish 1 as an 8th grader?
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If the school doesn’t offer an AP course in a particular foreign language, no college will expect AP. There are plenty of high schools that only offer AP Spanish as an AP FL choice even if they offer Latin, French, and Chinese to level 4 or beyond. The kid taking French 5 is not disadvantaged in admissions, all else being equal, which is never the case.
There are a grand total of zero AO’s that ever said about a well qualified applicant from the Iolani School, “We would have admitted him if only he had not chosen Hawaiian as his foreign language instead of a more common one that has AP.”
And the total number of APs (or equivalent) that a college looks for will be viewed in context. But it’s noy a case that the one with the most APs wins.
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Does the school have limited periods that effectively preclude choosing electives outside of one of each of the usual core subjects?
Engineering courses in middle or high school are mostly to help the student determine interest in the subject, though 8th grade seems kind of early for that (10th-11th grade seems like a better time).
Are suitably high level Greek courses available at local colleges?
Agreed
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According to their website, " Each level is equivalent to a full year of high school classes. Students may choose to enroll in a semester only or a full year course."
As I recall, you can request a free sample lesson to see if your kid and the teacher are a good match, especially if they have several teachers to choose from. I think it was an abbreviated 20-minute lesson when my kid did that a few years ago. He opted to continue his language in his regular school instead of language bird, but I do know we were considering it.
After you check with your high school, it might also be helpful to contact a couple of college admissions offices and ask if they will accept Language Bird classes as meeting their HS foreign language requirements. Given my son’s high school’s acceptance of Language Bird, I would expect the answer to be yes, but probably best to make sure. Or ask Language Bird for their experience with that.
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It sounds like your son’s high school might use Language Bird as an approved online provider, so the courses technically count as HS classes offered by your school?
I was curious about Language Bird, so I poked around its web site. Here is Language Bird’s page about getting its courses approved for California a-g credit (necessary to fulfill a student’s language requirement for state universities in my state, CA). Apparently, a student must either get these courses added to their high school’s a-g list, or concurrently enroll in a separate school that offers Language Bird courses for credit. UC A-G
I don’t know what state @panos and their D is in, but if they end up making Language Bird (or any other online provider) a central part of their HS language strategy, they’ll definitely need to make sure they enroll in such a way that the courses are accepted by their own state university system (and any OOS university system they are interested in). Seems possible, but may be somewhat tricky.
Edited to add:
Even when supplemental educational programs are accredited, they might not count as high school credit to fulfill college entrance requirements unless approved by a high school and added to the high school transcript. For example, my kids have taken courses through ATDP which is accredited as a supplemental educational program through WASC (same as Language Bird). High schools can approve these courses and add them to the transcript, in which case they count as a high school course offered by your own high school. If the high school doesn’t add them to the transcript, however, ATDP courses count only as an EC on the common app, not as “high school courses” fulfilling requirements.
It’s different from taking a community college course (for example), which is accredited as a standalone course from that institution.
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We had that issue in school with all 3 available languages: Spanish, French and Chinese. There is no way to compete with native or heritage speakers…
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DD was dreaming to study ASL but it was not offered in her school or college.
This is actually the only other language that attracted her interest. My school showed the basics of ASL one day and she seemed to like it.
We speak Greek and she was ESL at 2nd grade. Does this matter for college application purposes?
She could, but she doesn’t want to. Also (based on the replies so far) it seems that in our case this wouldn’t give her any advantage for college applications.
Not sure if I understand the question, but if she chose a language at 8th grade she would need to remove another elective (which in our case would be engineering).
Unfortunately no, it will have to be online.
Then greek will be viewed as a heritage language. Not a language your daughter has studied and learned in school.
And since she is an ELL student…I don’t think English will be viewed that way either.
@skieurope am I correct?
In my opinion, for college purposes, whether she wants to….or not…she needs to take a foreign language in high school.
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Often, when students or parents ask if it is ok to drop a typical college prep core subject (the usual 5 are English, math, science, history or social studies, foreign language) to take additional electives, they are in a situation where the school has a 6 period day, and one period is consumed by PE or health, making it difficult to take any other electives if the student takes one each of the 5 usual core subjects each year.
I think this view would be unfair. Yes my kid is bilingual, and Greek is her heritage language, but she still puts the effort into developing her language skills and all this outside school. She has been devoting her Saturdays for so many years into learning Greek - yes we speak it at home, but (as others have noted) there’s a great difference between speaking a language and actually using it like reading and writing at a professional level. But I guess we will have to develop a college application strategy where admissions won’t be tempted to view it in this unfair way (either having Greek only as a “FL”, or as an extracurricular language along with the HS FL.
But we’re talking about 8th grade now… Spanish/French is offered as an elective in our middle school, they are not a “core course”…
So can your child take Spanish 1 or French 1 as an 8th grader, then FL 2 and 3 in high school?
Can she take an engineering class outside of school? (So she can start another language in 8th)
Language is a core course, engineering is not.
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See my reply above - again, based on the majority of the responses here, if we decide that we need another FL for high school to fulfill the admission expectations, starting Spanish or French at 8th grade wouldn’t provide any advantage.
Why? The student would finish the recommended years of HS FL sooner and have time for elective courses in grades 11 and 12…most likely (depending on whether the student completes level 3 or 4 of that language)
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