I have taken Spanish as a foreign language in school since 6th grade, but I did not enjoy it. I self-taught Korean and as of now I can read it and have a basic conversation and I know some vocabulary. I am learning how to write it and I was wondering if it seems I would do well in college taking Korean as a foreign language. I do not want my grades to drop (I am a pre-med and I am trying for solid A’s). But I really enjoy this language and will put a lot of effort into understanding it. May I please get a second opinion?
If you have some knowledge of a foreign language, most colleges’ foreign language departments have placement testing to help you choose the correct starting level.
Obviously, as you are noticing now, being a pre-med deters you from being academically adventurous in cases where there may be more risk of not earning an A grade.
You’ll take the Korean placement test and they’ll tell you if you’re better off taking Korean 1 (a super intense review of everything students would cover over two high school years) or Korean 2 (the type of class you’d take if you can handle basic tasks.)
If there’s no placement test, you’ll talk to the professor.
If the college teaches the language, there’s a placement test. For the less commonly taught language, the placement test may consist of a conversation with the instructor.
As for the validity of taking it in college,like many things, the answer is: it depends:
• If the college has a foreign language requirement to graduate, you may be better of trying to see if you can get an exemption with Spanish while concurrently trying to decide if you want to study Korean in college.
• Many colleges have official guides, or student-run guides which may include grade distribution or mean grade per course
• An option, if the college allows, would be to take Korean P/F
As you correctly point out, you don’t want to risk tanking your GPA by taking a course for personal interest. File that bit under “sad, but true.”
Also you could look for colleges that don’thave a foreign lang requirement
My daughter took three years of Spanish in high school (actually only two, she tested out of Spanish 1). She was able to test out of Spanish for her language requirement for college, and test into second semester German (self taught, she never took a class). So she has been in German 2 for the last few weeks. She decided to take the class as pass/fail just to make sure it didn’t impact her GPA as an elective (she is a physics major). She wants to live in the German themed dorm next year as a sophomore. I think she is taking some course relating to Munich but not another German language course next semester. Her college is supposed to have one of the best German programs in the country, I think. She can take regular classes where the instructor only speaks German, kind of cool! So anyway, I think there are probably a lot of different ways for you to approach your interest in studying Korean.