Is it bad to take your own language? Let’s say I am a Chinese American and my native language is English. My mandarin is really bad and I wish to be fluent. If my high school offered mandarin as a foreign language class and I decided to take it for all four years of high school, would it look like I am slacking off to college admission officers?
No.
What would be bad is starting in Chinese 1, unless that’s what the placement test results indicated was most appropriate. It is not uncommon for heritage speakers to have speaking knowledge (although often with grammatical mistakes), but no clue how to read or write, particularly in languages that do not have the Lain alphabet.
So when I apply to colleges and college admission officers see that a Chinese American is taking mandarin, it will not affect my chances of getting in my desired schools?
Nope. My kid (biracial but with an obviously Chinese legal name) would have taken Mandarin had her high school offered it. She’s actually taking a summer course in it at the moment, because being the only person in the house who doesn’t understand / can’t participate is really annoying.
Not at all.