Hello Everybody
“What would you do” category…
My son will be a junior in public high school (Dallas, TX area) and was born and raised in Mexico City. He speaks Spanish, and English, fluently. He has straight A’s, in all courses, since freshman year.
He took “regular” Spanish in freshman year (his school has no Honors Spanish for freshman), then “honors” Spanish as a Sophomore. Both courses he scored 98+ for S-1 and S-2 averages.
The school has reached out and told us he should take AP Spanish exam, and by doing that he can (my understanding) possibly “skip” any more Spanish classes in high school. However the Honors and AP Spanish classes provide a “GPA boost” and he is scoring easy A’s (for him) in those classes. So part of me is inclined to encourage him to just continue taking Spanish classes at high school.
He will also be able to obtain college credit depending on how he scores on the AP test.
His dream, however hard to achieve, is attend to Stanford and study computer science or business/economics.
Any ideas on this? Maybe some students who have faced this dilemma can reply back.
Thank you
College may not be too impressed at taking extra lower level courses in a foreign language that one is a heritage speaker of, as opposed to starting in the appropriate higher level (as determined by the school’s foreign language teachers) or taking heritage speaker courses if offered.
Finishing the highest level of foreign language early does open an elective space in the schedule for something else. Is there anything else he would choose to take with an extra elective space?
But note that, in Texas, class rank is a huge factor in getting into Texas public universities. If competition for the top ranking spots (top 10% for most Texas public universities, top 6% for UT Austin, and higher ranks for competitive majors like CS at UT Austin) is heavy, then you may not be able to ignore how different course options will affect his class rank.
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My first question is whether he feels like he’d learn anything in the AP Spanish class. Many people who learn languages as children and who are effectively “native speakers” benefit from instruction on grammar as well as from reading literature, etc. Think of it as English class except in Spanish. Taking the class and then the exam could be worthwhile from a learning, GPA, and college placement POV. He could do that as a junior then open up a space in his schedule senior year. As long as there’s educational benefit, I don’t think having an “easy” class, especially junior year, is a problem.
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It seems that AP Spanish Language would be the proper placement for him junior year.
To show rigor he could then take 200 or 300 level college Spanish, if there’s a local 4 year college or Community College where he could dual enroll senior year.
If he started at a Spanish speaking school (ie., could write as well as speak Spanish) and took Spanish 1 in HS, make sure the guidance counselor specifies on the school profile or in their gc rec there’s no other language choice and level available to freshmen at the school. Otherwise highly selective colleges will frown on not learning an actual foreign language.
On the other hand, if he only had “Spoken Spanish”, ie., heard it, could respond in Spanish, but never saw it written, didn’t know its spelling,no formal grammar study… then the GC would simply specify theresmo Spanish for Heritage Speakers at the school and he took the normal path foe heritage Speakers without formal knowledge.
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