Would it confer an admissions advantage to say English as opposed to another language, or vice-versa?
e.g. Is ‘Spanish’(/Persian/German/French/Mandarin) more desirable as a (truthful) answer than ‘English’?
It may provide some context to your academic record. For example, if you speak Spanish at home, that can explain why your foreign language courses are AP Spanish in 9th grade and level 1 and 2 of some other language in 10th and 11th grades. It may also tell the admissions reader that English may be your second language.
However, it can also reveal grade grubbing with foreign language courses. For example, if you speak Spanish at home, but your record shows that you started in Spanish 1 in high school instead of a higher level course (or one for heritage speakers), that may not look so good.
@ucbalumnus - Say the student took a third (entirely other) language in school. Would the implication of English being, perhaps, a second language help/hurt the applicant? (Assuming high SAT CR/W scores, good English class grades, a nice essay, etc.)
I think you should just answer the question honestly. I know, what a concept!
Don’t try to read between the lines. The question is asked to learn more about you and to put the rest of your application in context. There is no gaming to system on the question.
@ucbalumnus is quite right and, as @MaineLonghorn said, just answer the question honestly.
@MaineLonghorn - There is more than one honest answer for some questions!
“Predominantly” means “most.” That means there’s one answer.
I can conceive of a situation where there really is more than one honest answer. In our household, we have 4 adults, who speak in descending order of fluency: Taiwanese / Mandarin / English, Mandarin / Shanghainese / English, Mandarin / Taiwanese / English / French, and English / German / Mandarin. If you counted words spoken by people, or minutes of usage by people, Mandarin is probably the language spoken most within the walls of our house.
But no one speaks to DD in any language other than English, because she understands about 5 words of Mandarin. Most of our books / music / TV are in English. For all practical purposes, English is the language to which she has the most exposure.
FWIW, I answer that question on school forms with “English is used more than any other language.”
@MaineLonghorn - Sorry, I have only estimates and thus can’t really empirically determine which is spoken most. They’re all spoken about the same.
Perhaps consider which language(s) are commonly spoken to you and do you commonly speak to others at home? Perhaps there may be more than one answer to the question.
Be honest. Don’t try to game the system.
We speak Spanish and some French at home, but mostly, we use English. So we put English.
It is very difficult to carry on a conversation with my Mother in Spanish, while my BIL and nephews are speaking in French and everyone else is speaking in English. It gets too loud and crazy.
Sometimes, they are confirming AP foreign language skills.
@ucblaumnus @aunt bea (et. al) - I speak a mixture of English and my other native language to my parents. It’s half and half - each sentence will have words from both languages mixed in. Neither answer is “more correct” or “more honest”. I’m less trying to ‘game the system’, and more instead choosing between two equally honest answers.
Yep, we also speak Spanglish. Everyone tends to do the ½ language thing here.
At least for the Common App, you can select more than one language spoken at home. FWIW, I speak 3 languages at home, depending upon with whom I am speaking. I listed all 3 on my application and nobody had an issue.