<p>My 10th grade daughter has slight learning difficulties. Her gpa is 3.8 but she is spending twice as much time on homework as her classmates (due to LD). I am considering dropping her 3rd year language class to give her a study hall & reduce h/w (& stress). Will this hurt her on her college apps? Realistically, I expect that she will have average (not above avg.) SAT scores so the top schools are probably out of reach for her. Any advice is welcome.</p>
<p>Personal Opinion: For the student that isn’t extremely enthusiastic about the language, high school language is a bit of a waste. In this situation I would suggest dropping the language if your daughter doesn’t really enjoy it.</p>
<p>Opinion w/ Regards to Colleges: Many colleges like to see three years language but I don’t know of too many in the mid-tier range that downright require it. Your daughter is doing very well (I applaud her for working hard!), especially for her situation, and I think she will have an advantage anyway because of her GPA. If your hunch is right and she does averagely on the SATs, then with the fact that her GPA is above average (assuming it is for your school), by applying to colleges in her SAT range and not her GPA range she should be equally competitive with all of the other applicants even without the third year of language.</p>
<p>Every college is different, though. I’d start looking around at some of the colleges that you predict will be in her range and see what their admissions requirements are.</p>
<p>Have her take a mock ACT exam. Many students do better on the ACT than the SAT and many do better on the SAT than the ACT. Since every single college/university in the US that requires an exam accepts both exams, your daughter can use the one that suits her mindset better. Also, take a look at the list of exam optional institutions at [The</a> National Center for Fair & Open Testing | FairTest](<a href=“http://www.fairtest.org%5DThe”>http://www.fairtest.org) you may find some good ones there.</p>
<p>I’m with gutter on dropping the foreign language as soon as she’s met the requirement for graduation from her HS. When she really wants to or needs to learn a specific language in her real life, she can hunt around for a course that meets her individual needs.</p>
<p>Honestly, you should allow her to sign up for those classes she can handle and not worry so much about colleges. You are not trying to get her into the highest ranked college possible, but the one she’ll get the most out of and can support her.</p>
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<p>I read this as, “I am considering dropping her from 3rd grade language class.” Because I this is CC, I was only surprised for a few seconds…</p>
<p>I would just look at what your state schools that may be her fallback require/want.</p>
<p>hmom5 - I took a year of French, and one of Japanese. There is no foreign lang. req to graduate, and my safety/state schools excuse one deficiency [that would be the lang.] in their requirements. </p>
<p>I’m currently making myself miserable in an online spanish class [through the local cc] I may end up dropping because the tech stuff doesn’t work with my computer. </p>
<p>If I do have to drop, should I just take French II online through my HS and just refresh myself with an old text book, or will not having two years of one FL really not hurt me all that much? [I don’t think I’ll apply to the Ivies at all. I’m not up to the paper level others are, and I’m quite weary of seeming emails from any Ivies telling me what a great propsie I am. :/]</p>
<p>Take the classes that you truly want to take, and that are meaningful for your possible future career and/or college major. If you don’t want to deal with foreign languages right now, don’t. Wait until you are in college and then study the language(s) needed for you major and/or your career plans. If you don’t need one for either of those reasons, and you don’t need one just to graduate from college it is OK to not take one even in college.</p>
<p>If someday you really need a second language because of your work or your personal goals, that will be the right time for you to study it. And at that point, you will be able to look for a course that focuses on what you actually need to use the language for.</p>
<p>I teach adult ESL at Berlitz, and I favor the communicative methodology our company uses. I cannot for the life of me understand how an online foreign language class could work at the beginning level. True language acquisition is based in human-to-human interaction. I just don’t see how you can do that online.</p>
<p>Oooh, I´ve bought some Berlitz stuff. </p>
<p>My thing is, for the most part, I love languages, just not spanish right now. And I´ve considered either english or poli-sci as a major (where that language would be more useful) so I don’t <em>know</em> if I’ll need that language now. I may have to take the french- I won’t have the human to human contact as much, but I’m already quite familiar with how the language sounds, and I feel comfortable speaking it, unlike spanish (which has a lot of familial pressure attached to it.).</p>