I’m going to dissent a little from the consensus in this thread. I am a huge believer in the value of foreign language education, and my own foreign language studies have been an important part of my life.
As a caveat, there are plenty of native English speakers whose command of English grammar, vocabulary, and syntax, not to mention reading ability, is awful because they have never had effective education in those areas. The same is true of lots of native or near-native speakers of non-English languages. It doesn’t seem to be the case with the OP, but many native speakers would struggle with some aspects of a college-level fluency test.
Any self-respecting Russian person should be able to converse in French. Boy’s parents should know that speaking Russian is for peasants. Tell him to take French ASAP.
Most kids who are proficient in Russian, simply take whatever other language (like Spanish) in HS and college. Easy, straight forward approach instead of going thru some hoops. My own D. has 3 foreign languages. It just happened to her, she did not mind. Actually it is a great asset as she is learning now after entering the real world!
In general, heritage speakers taking courses in their heritage language should choose the appropriate level to start in, which is usually a higher level than the beginner level. The person in question has taken a placement test indicating placement in at least second year college (like UCLA Russian 20) or fourth year high school Russian courses.
Would it make sense to apply to this program? Is it a “respected” program for college admission purposes or another summer fun, where almost everyone is accepted? Does it “looks good” on the application?
Summer is short. There are so many opportunities and so difficult to choose one.
QUOTE=JHS There are many elite universities that are happy to accept proof of fluency in a language other than English by test as satisfying the university’s foreign language study requirements, either pre-admission or as a degree requirement, even when the language is the student’s native tongue and English his second language. I don’t know if that’s true of the UCs, though.
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As noted in reply #4, the UCs and CSUs have listed various ways for native and heritage speakers to fulfill foreign language requirements without needing high school or college foreign language courses.
Personally, I know 4 languages: Spanish, English, native language of my grandmother’s tribe, and German (rudimentary). I still do not understand, why I had to study German in my school. Thus I don’t understand a requirement to study a new language in high school. IMHO only, but I believe that elementary school is the best place to learn another language, not HS.
if it were my child, I would contact the universities and see if the LTI certificate would satisfy the requirement. If they will accept it, he would not need to do anything else.
As far as NSLIY, from what we have heard from my dd’s Russian tutor, the state dept does not like to use native speakers, so I don’t know if that would make for automatic disqualification or not. You would need to investigate.
I think OP so much wants this kid to be able to use Russian that little will sway her to consider more. But I’ll offer this.
When you’re talking about admissions to top colleges, many kids/parents think this is a special snowflake whose interests set him apart, whose courses, some charity or club he founded, that internship, programming some app, some EC so wonderful they won’t even mention it, etc,etc, etc, somehow exempt him. They think his “cream” will so obvious and desirable.
They don’t realize just how many kids are out there doing as much (including academic rigor and significant outside experiences) or more. The wise path is to play by the rules. Don’t give adcoms a reason to pause, to have that “Umm” moment. They move fast and don’t stop to hand out hall passes. At the schools with fierce competition they don’t have to.
The far safer choice is for this kid to take some high level Russian course, considering he is already certified proficient by UCLA, in addition to picking up the Spanish sequence online and ending with AP. Again, for a bright kid, it’s not that hard. Then adcoms would have something to nod their heads at, not something to question. And as a STEM kid, this could be a positive.
NSLI-Y is pretty prestigious; it’s a State Dept sponsored govt exchange program.
I will say, however, that I think the student needs to be taking appropriate courses that scale with him (Heritage Speakers at Concordia, NSLI-Y, some kind of indepenent study that the counselor is willing to write about) instead of intro-level courses (BYU, Russian 20) or language testing. This is because there is a difference between “I am interested in Russian seriously but my school doesn’t offer it, so I did the best I could” and “I took the most basic classes to fulfill a requirement.”
Learning a new language (or another language) can also be important in its own way. English is my first language, I’m a heritage Chinese speaker, learned French in high school, and picked up Spanish in college. In real, job-related situations (and I’m a math major), those language skills have made a difference. I will say that even if the student knows Russian, I’ve found learning a language academically much different than my heritage language, and learning them both has given me different appreciations about language (which, one could argue, is important in comp sci).
Note: UCLA Russian 20 is an intermediate (2nd year college) course, and is probably what the placement test suggests (though it is possible for the student to be more advanced than that). Russian 10 is the beginner course.
Many colleges offering degrees in Russian have a graduation goal of an ACTFL of intermediate for their students. If the student earns a level beyond that with LTI, that would mean that those schools would not even offer Russian language courses for that student’s level. (I have been researching universities for months bc my dd wants to major in Russian and French and is at or beyond that level already.) Goodness, a 640 on a subject test will place you out of FL requirements at many top schools.
The student needs to contact specific schools and find out directly from them.
Thanks. Graduation is not an issue. HS doesn’t have ANY requirement for second language, they do not care at all. College graduation is not an issue either. Most selective colleges have Russian department that would test the student.