My daughter is failing French 2 in 9th grade with only 9 weeks left till the end of the year. (60% in first semester and 60 % again in the first nine weeks of second semester)
All other subjects that she has are all Honors and one AP where she has Either a B pluses or an A. What is the best option that won’t affect her admission to a top college for IT.
I have exhausted all resources e.g tutoring, meeting with counselors and teachers etc.
Start a new language in 10th grade.
Take courses in summer and try to pass French 2 in summer. (I don’t know if that’s an option in Plano ISD)
Keep taking French 2 in 10th grade. (which may potentially look very bad in transcripts showing that she actually failed a core subject.
An idea: if you can afford it, try Concordia Language Villages. It’s a two week or one month summer camp. The one month summer camp gives HS credit, so she could get credit for French 2 without retaking it in HS. And it’s totally unlike a French class: It’s “learn by doing”. Everything’s labelled in French, your breakfast menu, the directions in the camp… And your lesson will be to invent a game (or a recipe or…) It does wonders for self confidence and kids even use it to skip ahead. In her case, it’d set her up to succeed in French 3 without having to repeat French.
It’s kind of unusual to score the exact same grade in two consecutive marking periods, particularly for a kid who is struggling. So contact guidance and ask. MANY schools have a “bottom out” grade in the ballpark of 60. It means that a kid with a 23 average still gets that 60 on the report card. (The reasoning is that a kid who gets a 23 is pretty much out of the running for a passing grade for the year. There’s absolutely no incentive to try-- or to attend class or to care at all. Giving the bottom out grade still indicates a failure, but keeps the kid in the running.)
Contact guidance and ask. That way, you may have a better idea of her actual ability in French.
OK, next question: What does she say? Why does she think she’s struggling? Is it just all the verb conjugations? The vocab? Does she just hate it so much, or is so demoralized, that she really doesn’t want to continue?
What are the repercussions for dropping it next year? Can she graduate without a second year in a foreign language?
Does your school offer sign language? Many colleges will take it as a foreign language, and many kids find it much easier to pick up.
Finally, realize that, no matter how bright a kid is, most kids will find their academic Achilles Heal at some point. Apparently your daughter has found hers. Don’t allow her to let this make her feel badly about herself. No one can be good at everything (in spite of what you read here on CC.) So let her be bad at French. Let it be a family punch line-- no French Fries or French Toast for her.
Speak to her guidance counselor in the morning. She’s not the first or the last to struggle in one subject.
I would not send a kid who is failing French 2 to a month-long credit session at Concordia. If you really want to try Concordia, they have a relatively new option where you enroll in two back to back non-credit sessions. They run concurrently with the month-long credit session, you are housed with the credit kids and can take classes with the credit kids - but you don’t get a grade, which means you don’t have to do the homework.
My kid did a credit session at Concordia two summers ago, after completing French 1 in high school and after a two-week non-credit session at Concordia. She had a great time. She also did homework pretty much every free minute of the day, including during meals. She said other kids would sneak homework to the bathroom after lights-out. Her grade (because Concordia runs an accredited high school, you have a transcript with a grade, and it’s just like your regular high school transcript and goes on college apps) was shown as XX.XX% - down to the hundredth of a percent- a big change from her regular high school, where they only report whole letter grades on the transcript. Not everyone got an A, even though pretty much everyone was smart, motivated, and liked French.
Concordia is a great program for some kids. I think the non-credit program could be a great choice for OP’s kid. But I don’t think the credit program would set her up for success.
Many universities consider that you can study 2 years/one language and 2 years/another one and it typically “counts” as 3 years in one.
However you need to know what went wrong, because French is considered a pretty easy foreign language for English speakers. So depending on where the problem is (spelling, structure, conjugation…) there may be other languages you can use.
Beware of sign language, before you switch to that check with colleges she’s considering to see whether it would be acceptable.
It would be unusual imo to be really bad at one foreign language but find others easy. ASL might be an option but otherwise, I’d be hesitant of trying to remedy this by just signing up for another language. Agree you need to get to the root cause of exactly what she is struggling with.
Because what matters is level reached: each level increases in difficulty, so that reaching level 4 shows something totally different from reaching level 2 twice.
Agree that when colleges say they want to see 4 years of a foreign language they want to see students complete level 4 of one language for the reasons stated above. In an extreme case, I think anyone here would admit that taking four years of introductory level of four different languages will be much easier than taking 4 years of one language and getting to a more advanced level of fluency/reading/writing.
To the OP – have you spoken to the teacher and guidance counselor to 1) try to understand the problems and 2) seek out options to go from here? How was French 1 for your D? Might there be any type of learning disability causing the problems with French? Agree that ASL might be an option for a student struggling with foreign languages.
What area did the teacher think was causing the most issues? How did she do in French 1? Any chance the 8th grade French 1 didn’t match well with the French 2 prerequisites in terms of assumed knowledge? If that is the case perhaps starting in a new language next year could help.
Our problem is that we are building a new house in another ISD and they dont have french so he is bound to take another language. we are just planning on explaining it on the application that he switched because new school district did not offer same language. She did very well in french 1. Met with teacher and counselors multiple times and unfortunately she is scared of the teacher for whatever reasons. I never want to blame the teacher so did not mention that earlier.
We are not applying to college and filling out applications; your daughter is. So we explain nothing - she does.
That said, she should not explain curriculum choices due to school change - that’s for her GC to do.While reaching level 4 is better than 2+2, an AO is not going to fault her for things out of her control, like moving to a district where the language is not offered.
Regardless, the root of the problem needs to be found before moving to a new school. Unless the difficulties with French can be pinpointed, she’ll likely have the same challenges with the new language.
Seriously look into Concordia Language Villages. The approach may help get her self confidence back, especially if she did well in French 1.
However it’s quite possible the middle school teacher didn’t cover all the material the high school teacher assumes to be known.
If you change school districts, that’s another problem.
I would definitely have her tested for LDs. If she’s trying her level best and still failing, that needs to be addressed. I’m not naturally good at languages at all, but managed to eke out B’s all through a very demanding high school. I spent a gap year in France being totally immersed for 9 months and it made a huge difference. Interestingly not only did I become close to fluent in French, but when I went on to study German in college I was one of the better students. (Though I still had to spend much more time in the language lab than everyone else!)
My younger son sadly took after me and struggled with Latin every year. He got by on knowing mythology and not having to speak it, but I can’t recommend Latin as an option. He want to a college that required fluency or four years of a foreign language for anyone majoring in International Relations and decided to try Arabic one of the most difficult languages out there. He struggled for a C his freshman year, spent part of the summer in Jordan after freshman year, and got a B in Arabic the next year, then he spent his entire junior year in Jordan and came back and got A’s in Arabic as a senior. He’s convinced that for him, at least, the only way to learn a foreign language decently is with immersion. For what it’s worth he was tested for LD’s in 4th grade. His scores were all over the map - tops in some areas, below average in others, but he seemed to have deficits in short term memory and a couple of other things that I think contributed to his difficulties with foreign languages.
Is there a problem with the teacher/class?
Does she have a learning disability?
Can she take regular instead of honors?
What does she think the issue is?
Sorry for the long post but had to explain a few things.
Like I had mentioned previously, I would hate to blame any teacher for my child's failure.
Teachers generally are overworked and underpaid however for whatever reasons she is terrified of her French teacher.
Plus we did move states when she started 9th grade. She has a private french tutor who also teaches same language in another school district and has assured me that my D is doing very well at home and would have passed this course comfortably if someone else was grading her.
Of course school does not let us see the actual tests and neither do I understand french to know where and what her mistakes are.
Someone mentioned that my D might have LD. With all due respect, as I had previously mentioned she had an A in French 1 in middle school and was already on a fast track. She had all A's in 8th grade and had finished Algebra 2 H in 8th grade. I don't think LD would or can develop suddenly and I am sure there is more to it.
3.Someone asked if you can switch from honors to On-level during a school year and yes that is possible.
4.Right now, here on this forum I am just trying to find the best available option. I am done talking to the teacher, school counselors and that did not help at all.
I guess all I want her to do is to somehow pass french 2 this year and would just take another language next year in the new school district for the next 3 years citing that french 3 was not offered.
Questions is how to pass french 2 this year? Go to concordia for credit so that the failing grade does not appear on her transcript?
How bad would it really be if she actually fails French 2 in 9th grade?
Would that mean she won’t be able to get into any respectable college?
The problem with a failing grade is that you have to “replace” it. You can ask the new district if they’d be able to accept a summer French grade as a replacement for the 9th grade French grade (from Concordia or elsewhere, but not a class taken with this teacher).
I would immediately switch her from honors to regular French if for no other reason to get away from that teacher. FWIW my D dropped down a level in Spanish for basically the same reason – best decision we made – the rest of her year was much happier and less stressful.
It does wonders for self confidence and kids even use it to skip ahead. In her case, it’d set her up to succeed in French 3 without having to repeat French.