Hello my child is a rising senior. He has studied French in hs for 3 years without taking AP. For Common Application, I was wondering if 3 years’ French (all As) could be counted as a language he is proficient in. Thank you
Probably not. After 3 years, he is unlikely to be able to carry on an extended conversation with a native French speaker on any subject, with a rich vocabulary without struggling to find a word, so I would say no.
Let’s look at it another way. In my country, which is not unique, students generally start learning English in the 3rd grade. So by the time they apply to college they will have had ~8 years of English courses. However, if they have not spent an extended period of time in an English-speaking country, if they live in a country where American movies and TV shows are dubbed, not subtitled, if the pop singers record in their native language instead of English, chances are they are not proficient in English. Have you ever had a conversation with a Japanese or Brazilian HS student? I have. Proficient is not the adjective that I would use to describe their English skills.
Understand, thank you!@skieurope
Yabbut, I wouldn’t want to learn English as a second language.
3 years is not enough to be proficient, unless the kid spend few months or so living in French speaking country. The 3rd year college class might put a kid at some level of proficiency. Anyway, it is not important, as college requires a foreign language placement test before they can register for the first semester along with math placement test.
" I wouldn’t want to learn English as a second language. " - what is wrong with learning English as a second language?
It looks really hard.
There’s no standard definition of “proficiency.” For example, the U.S. State Department distinguishes 5 levels of proficiency above the level of “no practical proficiency.” The lowest level, “elementary proficiency,” requires the ability to speak the language well enough to “satisfy basic travel needs and minimum courtesy requirements” and to read “some personal and place names, street signs, office and shop designations, numbers and isolated words and phrases.” That’s pretty basic stuff. The most advanced level, “native or bilingual proficiency,” requires speaking and reading ability “equivalent to that of an educated native speaker.” Obviously there are intermediate levels of proficiency between those extremes.
https://careers.state.gov/gateway/lang_prof_def.html
Others use different definitions. For example, one of the requirements for a bachelor’s degree in the University of Michigan’s College of Literature, Science and the Arts is “fourth semester proficiency in a foreign language,” which means either that you successfully complete a language course through the fourth semester, or that you test out of the requirement through a listening and reading test with a score within the range that would be expected for someone who had successfully completed four semesters of language study at Michigan. A rough rule of thumb is that each year of HS language study is equivalent to one semester of college language study, though this will vary somewhat depending on the rigor of both the HS and college language course. A year of non-AP language at a HS that offers AP in that language might be a little lighter than one semester at a school like Michigan, which has very strong and quite rigorous language programs. If your son were to matriculate there, they would test him and likely place him in a third semester language course, or possibly fourth semester if he tested really well for someone with his background in the language; possibly even second semester if he didn’t test well. But it seems highly unlikely he’d test out as “proficient” according to their standard.
" It looks really hard. "
English is one of the easiest languages to learn. Broken English is the most popular second language in the world.
Well, that makes me feel better, but it doesn’t say much for some of the posts you see on here.
My D took four years of HS French, spent 6 weeks in France, and still only tested into French 3 in college, far from proficient.
Yes, high school French and college French are two different beasts. And for most people (except those unusually gifted in languages and who understand how they work) three years of college French would barely make you ‘proficient.’
Common App help states:
Answer found here: https://appsupport.commonapp.org/ics/support/KBAnswer.asp?questionID=968&hitOffset=48+39+36+35+14+5+2+1&docID=5277
I doubt 3 high school years of a language would achieve this.
Basically, while you won’t necessarily be speaking perfectly grammatically, you need to be able to carry on a conversation without a dictionary. Can you order a meal? As for a hotel room? Read the newspaper headlines and get a general idea of what is going on in the world? My son described being proficient in Arabic (but not fluent) as when I was talking about nuclear disarmament he had to say “You know the special bomb they dropped at Hiroshima” at which point his Arab friend was able to supply the correct word. In my experience once you reach a decent level of proficiency in a language you can start learning new vocabulary through osmosis instead of translations.
To the OP’s question: almost certainly not, no, unless it was an extremely intensive program or he studied abroad for a decent period of time.
Re: learning English. I worked with ELL students for several years. English was often their 3rd, 4th, or 5th language and no- not all of those languages were ones learned in chilldhood. English was generally considered the most difficult to learn because the rules are so haphazard and there’s not a lot of routine pronunciation of letters.
English is my third language. It is relatively easy to learn at the basic level and writing is easy as grammar is simple. Yes, pronunciation is a b!tch but it is precise and has short words so it lends itself to studying using immersion techniques. You just memorize the whole words and sentences.
I work with people from all over the world daily. We mostly do not talk - we text, share screens and exchange emails. Many voice meetings are not productive but chat meetings are. Our accents are atrocious but we all survive.
Difficulty of studying English depends on which languages you already know. If you coming from an European or Indo-European language background - learning English is not that bad.
I’m trying to teach myself French and in doing so have come to appreciate some of the subtleties of spoken English. For example we can say “I do not know”, “I don’t know”, “I dunno”, or just a grunt in the general direction of “IooOoo” and still clearly mean the same thing. How is someone from outside supposed to learn a language than can be conveyed in grunts?
I think one of the biggest challenges for people learning English as a foreign language is that unlike many other languages, a given combination of letters in English isn’t always pronounced consistently. A classic example is “ough” which could make an “oo” or long “u” sound as in “through,” or a long “o” sound as in “though,” or an “uff” sound as in “tough,” or an “off” sound as in “cough,” or an “ock” sound as in “lough” (the Anglo-Irish spelling of “loch”), or a short “o” sound as in “bought.” The only way to overcome this is memorization, but since there are many such irregularities, it requires a great deal of memorization.
Reminds me of my Hebrew-speaking friend, wanting to ask if I had photographed the lizard, could not find the word and came up with “the small one like a dinosaur”.
English is easy to learn naturally (movies, active classroom); if you try to learn it by rules, it may be tough.
I am always so impressed with my international clients who conduct business in English. It seems that my Japanese clients have the most trouble with English (esp compared to the Chinese clients). Is there a linguistics reason for that?