Anyone wait until high school to start foreign language?

[Bethany]

Just wondering how common this is and if there are any big drawbacks. We are not going the Latin route. My kids will be going into 6th, 3rd, and 1st grades in the fall. I expect we'll want to learn Spanish, as it's prevalent in our area. Are there any big issues with waiting until high school to start Spanish? In general, when it comes to high school transcripts, etc.? I feel a bit overwhelmed homeschooling the 3 kids and think taking that off our plate until high school may help...I have foreign language on my list every year and we never end up getting to it. Thanks in advance for any perspective!

[teachermom2834]

My 3 boys did Spanish in high school. They actually used dual enrollment so they didn't even start until 11th grade. This worked for them as they were not very interested and it was box checking for both high school and college. If they had a sincere desire to really learn the language it would have required more and deeper study. But this suited our purposes. Not saying foreign language isn't important. It is just that we could not do everything to excellence.

My 7th grade dd has taken Latin and is beginning to dabble in French because she is interested. I can see her continuing on and doing more than the minimum because she enjoys it. 

 

[SDMomof3]

Both of my girls started Spanish in HS. Dd1 started Spanish at the CC in 10th grade. Dd2 started HS Spanish in 9th. 
My son is planning to start HS Spanish in 8th, but he has more interest in learning a foreign language. 

Edited April 1, 2021 by SDMomof3

[Arcadia]

My teens started dual enrollment Japanese in 10th grade. My current 11th grader has one more quarter of Japanese to complete two years of community college Japanese.

[mathnerd]

Not unusual. In my area, many kids finish level 3 of a language in middle school and then start a new foreign language in 9th grade. 

[stripe]

Around me, some of the public middle schools offer language, but  they give half credit for high school for 7th and 8th grade classes, which are slower paced, i.e. 2 years in middle school counts as 1 year of high school credit. Others don’t offer any. I started studying another language in 8th, and it counted for HS credit, but I don’t see any real problem in starting in 9th. I wouldn’t tend to believe most elementary school studies are equivalent to high school. I’d imagine they would mostly build familiarity and improve the kids’ accents, but not really a higher level class. I think if your kids are interested, then absolutely go for it, but it’s okay to wait too.

[Swimmer1112]

My kids started in 7th for a foreign language. They finished in 9th. We wanted them to finish before 10th grade. They were not strong in foreign language and it was better for them to finish in 9th, because the UC school only take 10and 11th grade into account for admissions.

[Lori D.]

Not only did we wait until high school, we waited until it was "do or die" in 12th grade 😬 -- both DSs did 2 credits as 2 semesters of dual enrollment at the local community college in their senior year of high school. One did Spanish, one did ASL.

While it worked for us (they both did very well with no prior exposure and jumping in as DE), I don't recommend this as standard practice. 😉

Edited April 14, 2021 by Lori D.

[crazyforlatin]

Dd will be enrolled in ASL 1 and 2 this summer (10th grade), back to back courses at a community college. Normally I think this would be too intense to basically finish the equivalent of 4 years of high school classes in one summer, but she seems to really want to study ASL. 

[sbgrace]

We waited until high school. Then we had a string of curriculum failures until we found our groove. So they really started Spanish in 10th grade. We're box checking, which is just the right thing for one but not for the other. 

If I could go back, I would start in middle school, even maybe elementary to build familiarity. Even for the foreign language box check suitable learner. 

[Arcadia]

39 minutes ago, sbgrace said:

If I could go back, I would start in middle school, even maybe elementary to build familiarity. Even for the foreign language box check suitable learner. 

This is so hard to predict. My box checkers started with german (Saturday class) and chinese (tutor) in elementary school. They didn’t want either language as high school credit classes so they are doing Japanese instead. 

[Arcadia]

3 hours ago, crazyforlatin said:

Dd will be enrolled in ASL 1 and 2 this summer (10th grade), back to back courses at a community college. Normally I think this would be too intense to basically finish the equivalent of 4 years of high school classes in one summer, but she seems to really want to study ASL. 

That is wonderful. Barnes & Noble used to have ASL story time when my kids were much younger. Next time your daughter would be able to understand the ASL interpreter for press conferences.