Foreign Language Study

[Vintage81]

DD is currently in 10th grade. She has become very interested in foreign languages, to the point that she thinks this may be what she goes on to study in college. I know it's a bit early to make that decision, but assuming she continues down this path, we've got some questions about preparing for college/college admissions. 

Currently, she's taking Spanish (year 2) and French (year 1), and she's also doing a Conversational French class that's offered through our library. 

She wants to learn more languages, but I'm not sure if that's the best path. So that's the first question...should she continue to learn/deep dive into the few she's learning now, or would it be better/okay to learn more languages, but maybe not as in-depth?

Next question - does it matter whether she self studies or takes classes? She's currently taking classes for Spanish (CLRC) and French (AIM), but I think she wants to self-study others on the side.

Lastly, what other activities or extracurriculars (related to language) can she do to help her study these languages beyond taking classes?

Hopefully all of that made sense. Thanks!

[ScoutTN]

My Dd has only done French and Latin, but is in love with French, majoring (freshman) in it, and hoping for a career using it. She had a 1x a week class for three years and took the CLEP and the uni’s in-house exam to test out of 4 semesters. 

In addition to class, she watched some French TV, read some children’s books, and took opportunities to interact with French speakers. She got to travel to Europe this summer and spent a week in France which of course fed the fire. 

I would let her self-study whatever, as long as she’s got the bandwidth to make good progress in her classes. My Dd dabbled in Welsh and Arabic, but nothing substantial enough to give credit for it. 

 

Edited October 25, 2023 by ScoutTN

[Bootsie]

DD was a German major and is now doing a masters program in a German-speaking country.  She has also studied Italian, French, Spanish, Russian, Korean (and I am sure more)--in varying degrees.  Some she has self-studied, others she has taken formal classes.  Depending upon your local area, there may be a local group of people from French heritage or Spanish heritage that have activities and language programs.  Or, there may be a church in your area that has a service in Spanish.  Are there local agencies that assist Spanish-speaking population?  One thing DD did was visited residents of a nursing home that had some native-foreign speakers.  There are a number of immersion experiences available--from taking classes abroad to living with a family abroad to vounteer programs--that are excellent for gaining exposure to languages and improving skills. 

[Miss Tick]

It can take up a lot of time to study a language well. That might be a reason to limit official study to two. If course she can do whatever she likes in her own. Since they are both romance languages, French and Spanish likely have a fair amount of overlap (I've never studied French). She may want to strategize, perhaps shift the more-phonetic Spanish to self-study, stick with French and add a non-romance language if she has one of interest.

 

A pricey option your family might want to look at is Concordia Language Camps. Over the years I've had a couple kids do their month long immersion programs. It really helps with comfort speaking the target language.

There are also a number of exchange programs out there. Some are a bit sketchy, so do investigate the options deeply. My dd just submitted an application to study in Germany next school year.

Edited November 1, 2023 by Miss Tick

[Porridge]

1 hour ago, Miss Tick said:

Confirmation Language Camps.

Do you mean Concordia Language Camp? 

[Miss Tick]

13 minutes ago, Porridge said:

Do you mean Concordia Language Camp? 

Yes, thanks, I'll go fix that!

[jplain]

I have an opinion, but it's just that, an opinion.  Not a rule. 😊

Personally I think two languages is enough to juggle until at least one (and ideally both) are at a solid pre-AP level.  In other words, if the student decided to take the corresponding AP world language classes next year, you know they'd rock them. The college equivalent would be placing easily into a 5th semester course.

At that point, adding a third language is definitely doable, but that's not to say it'll be easy.  

My senior started with Spanish, added French, and then added Russian.  (She also studies a bit of Kazakh and has briefly studied Norwegian and Portuguese.) Russian is her main focus right now, but she is attempting to maintain Spanish & French.  She has 2 tutoring sessions per week for Spanish (two different tutors) and one French tutoring session plus an Outschool advanced teen French conversation session.  She is easily maintaining the fluidity of her speech, but she is keenly aware that she is losing vocab.

To stop the vocab attrition, she'd need to put in a lot more time with podcasts, audiobooks, TV shows, news, etc.  But the reality is that there aren't enough hours in the day.  In college she'll try to limit herself to a max of 2-3 languages, and that will likely mean putting one of her current languages on pause.

On the topic of summer programs, my daughter recommends Université Sainte-Anne's summer French immersion program in Nova Scotia.  Note that they do teach French, not Québécois or Acadian French.  It is surprisingly affordable; the website lists prices in Canadian dollars.  I've posted about it here before, but I'm also happy to answer questions via private message.

[FreyaO]

I don't have a high-schooler, but I have some thoughts - please ignore what is irrelevant.

Learning a language is a time sink. Developing fluid comprehension and practicing pronunciation, and eventually shifting from translating to thinking in a new language takes practice. Many, many hours. Some people progress faster, but time investment is necessary. 

 

For this reason, one should look for opportunities to practice a language within other activities. Does your child play video games? Play them in Spanish. Do they like dancing? Join a class for Spanish speakers with a Spanish speaking instructor, etc. Favorite show? Netflix offers dubbing in numerous languages. There are many subtle issues, like changes in the tone of voice, accompanying facial expressions or body posture that are absorbed during exposure, rather than studied.

 

As for your first question: what is the language appeal for this child? The opportunity to communicate with others, people and/or civilizations? Or is it the linguistic aspect? Structure, relationships, history?  If the first, for someone who knows English, Spanish and French, adding Italian or Portuguese or even a Germanic language (German, Dutch, Scandinavian languages other than Finnish) should be rather straightforward. If the latter, maybe exploring an unrelated language will be more useful and interesting.

 

One should also be realistic. Depending on where you live, plan A may be far easier than B.

 

Finally, if the aim is to communicate with foreigners, I would recommend investing some time in getting familiar with their culture. Some knowledge of French history, literature, art, social hierarchy, politics, values, etc may matter more than a few more words.

[Loesje22000]

Living in Belgium, we homeschooled our dya through a Latin-Modern Languages track. They had to pass exams in Latin-French-English-German-Dutch (native language). (And other subjects like Math, the 3 sciences, history etc)

Of course this not in an 1 hour - per subject - per day system. (History is an 1 hour per week subject here).

To create depth in a language we added TV series (police / crime / detective series have been preferred here), a lot of reading both not only in children level but also for young adults and excerpts (or even full texts) of adult literature. Being able to understand a newspaper and being able to discuss it is a goal here. (Obviously for the modern languages 😉 ) 

 

With only 2 years left I don’t know if Latin will become usefull enough, but it might interesting to study a language with a different lettertype and to feel how that changes the learning curve.

Besides the official languages our dya dabbled in Greek, Hebrew, Spanish…

(DYA studies now General Biology with a major in Toxicology, and is very happy with the 6y of Latin under the belt)

[pehp]

On 11/4/2023 at 1:50 PM, jplain said:

I have an opinion, but it's just that, an opinion.  Not a rule. 😊

Personally I think two languages is enough to juggle until at least one (and ideally both) are at a solid pre-AP level.  In other words, if the student decided to take the corresponding AP world language classes next year, you know they'd rock them. The college equivalent would be placing easily into a 5th semester course.

At that point, adding a third language is definitely doable, but that's not to say it'll be easy.  

My senior started with Spanish, added French, and then added Russian.  (She also studies a bit of Kazakh and has briefly studied Norwegian and Portuguese.) Russian is her main focus right now, but she is attempting to maintain Spanish & French.  She has 2 tutoring sessions per week for Spanish (two different tutors) and one French tutoring session plus an Outschool advanced teen French conversation session.  She is easily maintaining the fluidity of her speech, but she is keenly aware that she is losing vocab.

To stop the vocab attrition, she'd need to put in a lot more time with podcasts, audiobooks, TV shows, news, etc.  But the reality is that there aren't enough hours in the day.  In college she'll try to limit herself to a max of 2-3 languages, and that will likely mean putting one of her current languages on pause.

On the topic of summer programs, my daughter recommends Université Sainte-Anne's summer French immersion program in Nova Scotia.  Note that they do teach French, not Québécois or Acadian French.  It is surprisingly affordable; the website lists prices in Canadian dollars.  I've posted about it here before, but I'm also happy to answer questions via private message.

I agree with this! (Also am going to contact you about Nova Scotia—!)

My son is in 10th grade. He’s in French 4 as well as advanced conversational Spanish (finished Spanish 3 and this is what was next through the place locally where he takes it). French is his first love. He has dabbled heavily in Mandarin, Russian, and other languages over the years and will likely be in a place next year to add another formal language *class* (he’ll be taking AP French and will likely just do more conversational Spanish to keep up skills/vocab—but it’s not his main focus).
 

We were pretty intentional about limiting him to two formal language learning situations at first. I’m glad we did and now he’s at a level in French where he’s able to carry on conversations in French with native speakers, read books in French, watch films and understand it all…you know! It’s neat. So we think he’s got the bandwidth to add another language as a junior. I recommend focusing on 2 at once, but it might be hard to do three really formal classes at once, especially during the first couple years. 

however—the autodidact approach can really work, so lots of that in another language on her own time can take her far.  Podcasts, films, books on tape, etc. My son did this when he was younger and placed into Honors French 2 without ever having actually taken French 1. 
 

See if there’s an alliance francaise near you (my son would be horrified that I’m not inserting accents; whatever). We don’t have one here but there’s one an hour away and we’ve been once or twice. Charleston SC (our home-away-from-home) has a super active chapter! Lots of speaking practice there! 🙂