DE Spanish I?

[LAR]

Our DD16 will DE in August and is considering Spanish I at St Pete College along with a math course (not sure which math, that's a whole other issue!).   I've heard the workload is tough but DD likes the idea of one year of college Spanish as opposed to two years at a high school level.  (She already took three years of ASL as her foreign language plus one high school credit of Deaf culture.)  Any pros and cons out there? 

[Kidlit]

👂🏼

[mom2att]

Generally, college-level Spanish covers the equivalent of one year of high school Spanish in one college semester. It also tends to attract students who have already studied Spanish in high school, and take it to get an easy A, so the instructor may move quickly under the assumption that many are not actually beginners. My oldest took Spanish 1 and 2 DE, but only after she had taken Spanish 1 through our state's virtual school. She did well, but she did find that the DE class moved very quickly. Even though she had already studied Latin, she thought the DE class would have been tough without having first had a sort of intro to Spanish through the high school level class. However, the courses were solid enough to enable her to test into higher levels of Spanish once she got to the university, and she ended up minoring in Spanish.

 

Edited April 13, 2019 by mom2att

[igbu]

Our STEM DS took SPA 101 & 102 after a year of high school Spanish.  It’s his first on-campus DE course.  For this STEM kid, SPA has not been an easy A.

As a first on-campus DE experience, in our minds, it has been a very good experience.   It has reinforced so many previously “discussed” habits.  The pace is certainly faster, the need to study daily, the responsibility to keep track of assignments (he lost track of one), importance of getting to know the prof (and what’s important for the test), learning to ask for help when needed, have all been reenforced and valuable hands-on lessons at a younger age.

The fact that there have been several exams (not just a mid-term and final) has been a good first step for a college course and softened one misstep.

I think he has learned his current tracking/time mgmt system (largely using the refrig. to plan out only a couple days) may not be enough when he has more college classes.

He was worried about starting SPA 102, after SPA 101, knowing it was all new material and after hearing the new prof was much tougher.   He’s done well, not perfect, gained confidence, “owns” or should I say has taken responsibility for his learning.  

He’s asked to take a Comp. Sci course this summer and an Eng course in the fall. 

We were a bit worried during SPA 101 when he missed an assignment and didn’t put in the necessary study time for one exam, but he learned a great lesson, rebounded, learned the importance of saying ‘no’ to outside activities or at least not overload himself the week prior to an exam. 

He still needs our help to reenforce to good habits, but nothing like the real thing to get ready.

If we had to do it over, we would do it again.