<p>Which looks more impressive to adcoms: an A/A+ in an AP Language class taken by a native speaker, or a B in another language class?</p>
<p>a B in another class. colleges don’t really like it when native speakers take languages they already know. the whole point is to become fluent in another language.
also, you can take the AP exam or just write that you know that language on your app.</p>
<p>It depends on the school. At big universities where they don’t review applications holistically, the A/A+ will look better. They don’t always have the chance to look beyond the numbers.</p>
<p>At our high school there are separate sections of AP Spanish language for native/heritage speakers and for Spanish language learners. Many heritage speakers need to learn to read and write the language formally, as do native speakers who haven’t been in schools where Spanish is the medium of instruction for a number of years. The AP Spanish literature course is a combined class. The instructor teaches it much the same way that the AP English lit course is taught which means that those students are expected to read, analyze, and write at a very high level. Our high school doesn’t have enough native/heritage French speakers to offer a double program, but others in our school district do.</p>
<p>A lot will depend on the language instruction available in your area. Chances are that if you haven’t been in schools where all of the instruction was in your first language, you still need to master higher level skills. An AP Lang and/or AP Lit course could really give you that boost. Also, there are very few ways for native/heritage speakers of other languages to demonstrate that they do indeed have advanced reading and writing skills in those languages. A good score on the AP exam in your other language is evidence of your level of fluency.</p>
<p>Happykid would have placed into AP Spanish Lang in 9th grade because she had been attending a Saturday school for native/heritage speakers since elementary school. However, the instructor advised me that sometimes 9th graders don’t fit in well socially with a class comprised of 11th and 12th graders, and Happykid wanted to take Latin instead. I kept her in the weekend program through 9th and 10th grade, and was never able to convince her that AP Spanish Lit would be worth taking. Now that she is in college and needs a foreign language credit, she’s getting ready to take the CLEP Spanish exam which will almost certainly place her out of two years of college-level courses.</p>
<p>Which language is more helpful and would look better? Chinese or Japanese?</p>
<p>Chinese is more useful. Japan has been on a decline since the 1990s so you probably won’t want to work there in the future. China is doing the exact opposite.</p>