<p>My fellow int'l student told me that he's going to take several classes about the language or culture of his native country in a college in order to get an easy A and to easily get the credits in the division of humanities for distribution requirement. Is this even a legitimate strategy? Even if this is allowed in college, will job recruiters or adcoms in grad school not frown upon this action? </p>
<p>(e.g. Given he is from France, he's going to take French I and French Literature in his college.) </p>
<p>Yes, usually you can, since colleges don’t keep track of which language(s) you already speak. The only limiting factor would be high school transfer credits - if you got credit for your high school leaving exams (e.g. British A-levels) and one of those was in your native language, you may forfeit those credits by taking an introductory language class. </p>
<p>I agree with you that it would be silly for a native speaker to take an introductory class in his own language. But to be honest, I don’t see a reason why native speakers should be excluded from upper-level courses. Sure, a French literature class would be a lot easier for a native speaker of French than for someone just learning the language, but the native speaker can still learn something from the class <em>and</em> the students in the class will have another native speaker to practice with. </p>
<p>I grew up in Germany and I have taken a German culture/history class in college myself. I actually learned a lot of interesting post WW II history that isn’t taught in German high schools. </p>
<p>You seem unsure about the concept of an “easy A.” Many college students aim to take a mix of easy and challenging classes each term in order to balance their coursework and to save time to focus on the things they really care about. (This could be a particular class or hobby or job or…) Some college courses assign a LOT of work, others assign very little. Some professors are harsh graders, others give everyone an A. Taking a class in your native language would be one way to find an easy class, but there are actually many easy classes out there!</p>
<p>I once had a class where the professor announced in the first meeting that we should expect to spend 20 hours on homework each week. (And I really did turn in 10 pages of writing each week that often took me more than 20 hours to complete.) Would you want to take 5 of those classes at once? Of course not! It would be literally impossible to keep up with the work and get much out of any of them. When you take a hard class like this, you balance it out with easy classes so that your workload remains manageable.</p>
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I doubt they care. Most job recruiters don’t even ask for a transcript.</p>
<p>As a current high school student who has been forced to take as many tough AP courses as possible for admission, I failed to recognize that the rigor of coursework is hard to measure from outsider and that the rigor is not the everything you need in job market or grad school admission. I will ask upperclassmen to tell me which classes are particularly hard or easy, in order to manage my coursework. I also don’t want to be overwhelmed by hardcore classes as many other students think. So, I may take some classes about Japanese culture or literature, utilizing my status of an int’l student from Japan just like him. </p>
<p>But adcoms of graduate school will certainly check my transcript, so I will avoid taking classes of Japanese language. </p>
<p>culture usually you can but language is tricky. At the UCs, if you took any HS in that language then they won’t allow you to enroll in language courses. </p>
Are you saying that you wouldn’t be allowed to enroll in a language course if you took that language in high school? That would be blatently false.</p>
<p>For example, here are Berkeley’s French placement recommendations. </p>
<p>(continuted from previous post; missed the editing deadline)</p>
<p>But maybe I misunderstood. Were you trying to say that the UCs don’t allow students to take courses in the teaching language of their high schools? That would seem unlikely too. Just because I attended a French-speaking school for a while does not mean that I am fluent in French. Just think of high school exchange students who go abroad for 4-9 months. </p>
<p>Can you clarify what you meant, and maybe provide a reference as well?</p>
<p>Typically, a native speaker is asked to take a 5th semester or literature/history class, and wouldn’t be allowed to take French 1 or French 2 if they’re a native speaker of French. It wouldn’t make any sense for them and it’d be very boring because they’d HAVE to turn in lots of homework and spend the hours in the lab regardless.
If you’re a native speaker of Japanese, you could take literature/culture classes and still find them easy, but you wouldn’t be allowed to enroll in Japanese1. Administratively you would likely be allowed to, but your adviser would frown on it and the instructor would most likely ask you to transfer to a level where your presence will be useful to your classmates rather than intimidate them, and where you will actually learn something too (some cultural discussions or literature choices can be very interesting.)
However, you’re allowed and even encouraged to take classes in a language studied in high school.</p>
<p>If my counselor will frown on taking a Japanese culture/literature course, I will instead take Chinese 1, which is generally easy for Japanese people to learn due to the similarity of characters. </p>
<p>No, your counselor wouldn’t frown on your taking a Japanese culture/literature course, but they most definitely would if you wanted to take Japanese 1 or Japanese 2! It may actually be to your benefit to “push your advantage” with some East Asian Major classes, since it’d be easy to “sell”.</p>
<p>Oh, I got it. I hope I will make some profit for the Japanese culture/ literature course by my presence and also benefit from the comfortableness of the class. </p>
<p>Note that many colleges have a specific foreign language requirement that is not part of the general humanities and social studies requirements that they otherwise have. Such colleges often allow native or heritage speakers to fulfill the requirement simply by showing proficiency in a placement test given by the college’s language department. In these cases, there is no point for a native speaker to take the beginning language courses, which would be frowned on or not allowed anyway (although the advanced culture and literature courses may be of interest).</p>
<p>Some college language departments do offer special heritage speaker versions of language courses for students who learned the language at home but not at school (often resulting in good speaking and listening skills but poor reading and writing skills).</p>
It may actually be to your benefit to “push your advantage” with some East Asian Major classes, since it’d be easy to “sell”.</p>