<p>I definitely want to take a language at Harvard rather than exempt myself through an exam. I took Spanish in high school and while I certainly wouldn't mind continuing with it and becoming a better speaker, the availability of so many other options at Harvard is fascinating and exciting. </p>
<p>My questions: In your or your friends' experiences, was it worth taking a new language? How difficult is starting fresh? Does it put a time constraint on your other classes/ECs?</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>Dwight - Though my daughter is unlikely to have the option of exempting out of foreigh language, she is facing a similar decision between continuing with Spanish or beginning a new language. Have you tried looking at the Q Guide? In it are ratings on workload and difficulty for the the various classes. This might help you assess. I looked up a few just now for shakes and it appears to me that the workload could vary widely depending on the language and level.</p>
<p>PS You doing dorm crew right now? How’s campus?</p>
<p>Yeah I’m doing dorm crew. I got to hunt cockroaches in Quincy House today.</p>
<p>PS: Prospective Harvard students–you get to hunt cockroaches at Harvard. Apply!</p>
<p>D has been hearing that from a number of her Dorm Crew friends.</p>
<p>My son’s roommate switched from HS Spanish to German at Harvard. He found it too difficult and time-consuming and switched back to Spanish to fill out his language requirement. However, language is not his forte.</p>
<p>My son is a linguistics concentrator and loves to learn languages. He did the Italian summer school program this past summer and found it fun and interesting and it was language intensive. Next year he is planning on taking Russian. He says that languages at Harvard are generally time-consuming with practice and language labs. He seems to think that he will be able to handle the time issues even though he has a full load of ECs (four choirs and one martial arts club).</p>
<p>He just added that you should anticipate that you will learn four years of HS language in two years at Harvard. He suggests that you learn another language if it is something that you think you would enjoy.</p>
<p>I graduated a long time ago, but this is my experience. I took four years of French in high school culminating in AP French. I was a dunce in languages (and didn’t take the AP). I could read okay, but anything I wrote was full of grammatical mistakes. I took a year off before I attended Harvard and spent it living in France, living with a French family and learned to speak French fluently in that year. I came back and got an 800 on the French placement test. It was as though some foreign language learning gene got turned on in my brain. I took 1st year German at Harvard and found it relatively easy, but warning, we covered about the equivalent of three years of high school French in a year. By the end of the year we were reading a real mystery novel and had covered all of basic German grammar. I spent a month the following summer in Germany and solidified my German. Took another course the next year, then never found room in my schedule for more German, but did my senior thesis on low cost housing in London, Paris and Berlin which required doing original research in those three cities. Later I spent five years in Germany working in an architectural office.</p>
<p>From my experience the best way to speak a language fluently is to spend time in the country, but you will learn a lot in a first year course at Harvard. However, it is a lot of work and you will have to be diligent about doing it. You cannot get behind. </p>
<p>I don’t think it was so time-consuming that I couldn’t do other ECs. I just had to be good about going to the language lab for example if I had an hour between two other classes. That sort of thing.</p>
<p>A lot of students who decide to go into concentrations that require knowing a language (eg. East Asian studies or anthropology) pick up the language at Harvard. You can take an intensive course or a regular course. The intensive course is the equivalent of two years of the language. Language courses meet five days a week (instead of 2 or 3) and you get constant quizzes, so you can’t slack off. Students who study a foreign language often have the opportunity to spend a summer or semester abroad. If you took the intensive course in your freshman year, then went into third year in your sophomore year, you should have a pretty decent level of proficiency. But it is very time-consuming, so you need to plan accordingly.</p>
<p>Depends on the language. Spanish does not seem too difficult. My roommate gets wasted all the time (and sometimes the night before tests) yet still pulls in A’s. All my friends who take Spanish don’t seem to spend much time studying for exams either… </p>
<p>My other roommate took Italian and found it pretty easy too.</p>
<p>Well, it is official that miracles can happen. D just got an e-mail stating that she tested out of spanish pending her confirming her skills on Friday. I would be thrilled if the Friday test “tests her out” and therefore allows her to determine the what, where and when of foreign language study.</p>