<p>For some students with LD learning another language at least how it is taught in HS is painful. My youngest has struggled with Spanish for 3 yrs. It is the equivalent of two years of HS Spanish. It is not that she is against taking the next level but she says she will in no way pass the class. She got through the 2nd yr by doing her HW and projects. She failed or got a D on almost every exam. All her other subjects were A’s and B+'s. I had no idea that for a UC to graduate she needed 3 yrs of HS language. She was not planning on taking another year. She is not a candidate for the higher UC’s but had considered Davis, SB and Santa Cruz as options.
My LD son got lucky that his major is the one of the few at his school that does not require two years of college foreign language. He did 3 yrs of HS Spanish but only passed with a C using a great tutor several days of the week.</p>
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<p>I think the AP tests for languages are skewed because so many native speakers take the tests. I wouldnt be surprised if a school accepted a 3 in a language but 4s or 5s in other subjects.</p>
<p>Amen to everything JHS has posted in this thread.
2 years of a foreign language in US high schools is nothing, mostly repetition of very basic vocabulary. After two years of a foreign language most kids can’t form a complete sentence. Whom are we kidding???</p>
<p>OP–can your son take a class at a CC? He can get the same credit and get it done in a quarter instead of a year. My son was in a similar situation, hated foreign language and quit after freshman year (also had middle school fl credit). When he later decided he wanted UCLA or CAL he started over in a CC in the summer after junior year (had to start over-forgot everything). He did three quarters (2 summer, 1 fall senior year) and was accepted to both universities. The best part? Since he took the classes at CC he was given credit at UC and it satisfied his college 3 quarter language requirement as well.</p>
<p>Thanks mtnmomma for your suggestion. I hadn’t thought of that-- maybe S could take Spanish 3 in the summer at our local CC. That would free him up to take an elective as a sophomore next fall.</p>
<p>On the philosophical side, I do agree that Americans as a whole are woefully disadvantaged when it comes to speaking other languages. In our school district, the earliest any student can start taking another language is grade 7. And in the district where I grew up (long, long ago and 3000 miles from when I live now), only honors students could start taking a language in grade 7; everyone else had to wait til grade 9, not to mention that the only languages offered back then were French and Spanish. IMHO, middle school is far too late to start studying another language. My guess is that if kids started much earlier, and in a manner similar to how we all learned Eng, there wouldn’t be all this fussing (by me and others) about satisfying the language requirements.</p>
<p>^ Agreed! Every day I have five year olds translating for their parents. Unfortunately, few of them will be worrying about satisfying language requirements.</p>
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<p>Uhh, not quite.<br>
Besides specialized programs (and language majors!) UCLA is the only UC requiring more than three years of high school language. And at UCLA, it is only required in Arts & Sciences; not engineering, for example.</p>
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<p>How is that statistically possible? </p>
<p>I just don’t see why language should be dismissed. It would be like saying “well my kid isn’t good with math so we dropped math so their GPA could be 4.0” or “my kid can’t write his way out of a paperbag so we dropped English so his GPA is now 4.0”. I really don’t get it (and this is coming from someone who has always sucked at languages as do all her children). Even if you never approximate fluency or the ability to use the language in a functional way, learning a language is hugely important in unique ways. Just having to struggle to learn the grammar of any foreign language is extremely developmental to a wide range of other subjects.</p>
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<p>This is why language immersion schools are so great. Here you can educate your kids entirely in french and it works. Those kids come out fluent in two languages, and are at a loss for nothing (they end up excelling in most subjects, including math and english even though they lag in the early years in english).</p>
<p>"How is that statistically possible? "</p>
<p>I meant his semester GPA, not his overall GPA. </p>
<p>"It would be like saying “well my kid isn’t good with math so we dropped math so their GPA could be 4.0” "</p>
<p>WE didn’t drop math, HE dropped math…I suppose I could have MADE him take it whether he wanted to or not, but at that point, I was just hoping he would last through high school. Secretly though, I WAS still holding onto the idea he could get a 3.0, and be elgible to apply for a UC, but it really was going to be a reach. Low and behold, he now has a 3.09! And he feels SO much better about himself as a student. Is that okay? Just this once? I’m sure it won’t last. He has not felt that way since he was 5 years old, and living in “the special” seat.</p>
<p>"I really don’t get it "</p>
<p>That’s okay. And really, if your concern is that I am misleading the OP, I am sorry. I will shut up now. She will have many opinions. But she and I have shared threads before ( mostly the 3.0 parents thread) , so I think we know where each other is coming from.</p>
<p>“WE didn’t drop math, HE dropped math…”</p>
<p>^ Oops! not math, spanish.</p>
<p>And Bflo, this must be son 2, not son 1?</p>
<p>I’m all for learning another language, even if it’s Swahili. What I object to is forcing kids to study another language when it’s not taught in the same way we all learn English. No one stuck an English grammar book in our faces in preschool! I don’t know what the answer is, but kids who grow up in a bilingual home, or attend an immersion school, certainly have an advantage over the rest of us.</p>
<p>@shrinkrap, yep, this is S2 (freshman).</p>
<p>I’m a little surprised that your son is a math whiz and is having trouble with Spanish grammar. My son is a math whiz (in my opinion, but not his own) because he loves the logic of it and he loves the logic of grammar. It is usually one of the first things that he will master in a language, his problem is usually learning the vocabulary. This may be his own version of logic, but he has been able to use it for Spanish, Latin, Italian and Russian. Maybe if your son approaches Spanish like he approaches math, he will have better results.</p>
<p>I had to LOL when you said:</p>
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<p>After all, you live in a bilingual state.</p>
<p>My son excelled in Math but was absolutely lost in Spanish despite effort and great tutoring. Also Learning Disabled so his grasp of grammar in English is poor.
Bflogal- my D dropped Spanish but wants to learn Swahili!</p>
<p>^Hat - my S actually has the same struggle as yours-- no problem with grammar, but lots of trouble with vocab. (I was venting when I used the example of a grammar book in preschool-- not meaning to be literal.) S’s tutor says he is the opposite of most of her other students, because they get the vocab but struggle with conjugation.</p>
<p>Yes, I do live in a bilingual state, but here one can be quite insulated from people who speak other languages, depending on the neighborhood, schools, job, etc. Unless you deliberately immerse yourself in the other cultures/languages, you won’t get it by simply living here.</p>
<p>mom60 - LOL Swahili! Good for him!</p>
<p>My S has straight A’s except for Spanish, where he has a C-. He says he just isn’t “good” at languages. I personally think he focuses on what he likes and, well, unfortunately Spanish is not high on the list. So we will spend part of his college money on tutors for the next 2 years, since he also has to make it through Spanish 3…</p>
<p>^I would recommend that you have your tutor work on your son’s vocabulary - specifically including his English vocabulary. I know that my son’s English vocabulary in nowhere near what it should be, IMHO. Because his English vocabulary is relatively poor, he fails to recognize words in other languages which are related to English words. He elected to take Latin on his own, but I hoped that it would improve his general vocabulary. I don’t think that it did (although it did help him substantially in learning Italian). For example, he did not realize that the word “august” meant anything other than a month in the summer. I think that he would have done better on the CR section of the SATs if his vocabulary had been better. If you are already thinking about a tutor, it would probably be money well spent.</p>
<p>Hat, that is an excellent point. Now that I give it some thought, S’s Eng vocab isn’t the best either. In fact, I frequently tell him “use your words” when he’s describing something to me. This is a curious discrepancy, since he’s a good reader (blew through several Harry Potter books in 7th grade, and also blew through the entire Anthony Horowitz series). Puzzling. Good idea about an Eng tutor.</p>