<p>I'm already fluent in English and Hebrew (lived in Israel for 8 years, I can read, write, speak at a very high level with complex vocabulary.)</p>
<p>I'm a junior and I'm in the Honors Spanish track with a very good and well-known program in my state (we're one of the best schools for spanish in the State.) I feel as if I could very well get around in Spain.. Just last week we wrote an impromptu essay about a play we're reading, and some of the stories we read (when I looked up some plot twists I didn't understand) I saw they were AP Spanish Material. And I still have a year to go (Spanish 4 Honors next year.)</p>
<p>However, I don't like Spanish. I really don't. Recently I've started to LOVE French. Really, I started listening to French music, have my friends teach me basic and funny French phrases, and I've even started using UT-Austin's interactive online textbook just to learn basic phrases for fun...</p>
<p>So how do I go about learning French in college? Do I major in it (which usually expects you to have SOME knowledge of French)? Do I minor in it? Do I simply take all the French classes as electives and skip all of the literary/cultural analysis classes? Should I do something like Rosetta Stone over the summer of senior year to gain a leg up?</p>
<p>My son, a junior, studied Spanish for 5-6 years in a very unschoolish way (that’s homeschooling talk for rather unstructured learning). He got very turned off to it after a year of high school Spanish in 8th grade. He took ASL in 9th but then I reminded him that he needed a minimum of 3 years of a foreign language to apply where he wanted to apply. I thought German would be perfect but he chose…Arabic! He took a college course in the fall that was worth 2 years of high school credit and he’ll take 2 more semesters of college Arabic in high school. He wants to become fluent in college but will most likely major in math or physics. He also studied Islam independently so he could know more about the culture since most of the students in the Arabic class were Muslims.</p>
<p>Certainly, Rosetta Stone or a community college or university class (audit or if you’re rich, pay for it) would be a great way to get a leg up. I don’t think you have to minor in it to become fluent. Some colleges actually require all majors to take at least 3 semesters and you could choose to go abroad to France at your college.</p>
<p>To just learn the language, you can take French courses at your university or at a community college, or self study. There is no need to major or minor in French unless you really want to study a lot of French literature and such.</p>
<p>I took four years of Spanish in high school, then started at square one with Russian in college. Loved it enough to take five semesters, but not a major or a minor. Take a class or two, and decide from there.</p>
<p>Take French 101 and if you like it, take some more classes.</p>
<p>I had 3 years of German in HS. For graduate school (vocal accompanying) I also needed a year of French and a year of Italian. </p>
<p>Italian was so-so due to an outdated, boring textbook and a bored professor who didn’t bother to tell us there was a LANGUAGE LAB until midway through the year. But French was a heck of a lot of fun. The textbook, Mise en Train, was co-authored by avant garde playwright Eugene Ionesco, so the “dialogues” were highly entertaining. :)</p>
<p>You’ll find a year of college study equal to two years in HS, possibly. So you’ll work hard but also learn a lot more in a shorter time.</p>
<p>PS. I happen to think everyone should have at least a little French because the pronunciation so little matches the spelling. We still laugh about a family friend who asked if they were having “ordevors” (hors d’oeuvres)!</p>
<p>My DD is opposite from you! Took 5 years of French in HS and just started Hebrew in college! To be fair, she has some Hebrew background from religious school so has basic knowledge but not what she’s learning now. </p>
<p>From what I know, each college has its own “rules” re: language requirement. For DD, she has to take 3 semesters of Hebrew (but not all of that will count towards her Jewish studies minor). When I went to college (many moons ago), there was a certainly proficiency level - I took an entrance exam Spanish, which I had studied in HS, and only had to take one more quarter of it in college (quarter system in my school).</p>
<p>College is a time for expanding your horizons so definitely take a language you are interested in!</p>
<p>I think it’s a great time to add another language. My D studied Spanish in grade/middle school, French in high school and she is now studying Italian in college. She loves it, and while languages come easily to her, she thinks that her prior languages were very helpful. My D is not majoring in Italian - just takes the class as an elective. Her professors mix in quite a bit of culture, so another class in culture is not necessary.</p>
<p>If you have the time and money, the sumer immersion program at Middlebury will do the trick. DD had a lot of trouble learning languages and in the immersion program was able to conquer them. [Middlebury</a> Language Schools | Middlebury](<a href=“Middlebury Language Schools”>Middlebury Language Schools)</p>
<p>You can easily start French in college just by taking whatever the first level course is. Since you are already fluent in Hebrew and have a good grasp of Spanish (which shares lots of cognates with French) I don’t think you’ll find it difficult. Nevertheless college language classes move very, very fast, typically covering about what takes three years in high school. By the end of German 1 we were reading a novel. You can get a jump on thing by taking a course the summer before, but it certainly isn’t required. There’s no requirement to major or minor in a language. My first college boyfriend took 1st or 2nd year courses in Hebrew, Greek, German, Spanish and Russian. He was a chemistry major and just liked learning languages.</p>
<p>I added Russian in college (same story as spdf). If you like the language enough to learn it, it could turn into a minor for you without additional effort. Enjoy!</p>
<p>You can start a language absolutely from scratch in college and still major in it. One of my friends did this with French; she got into an excellent PhD program in the US, and is now a French professor at Carnegie Mellon. At some point you will want to do a study-abroad semester or year in France or a French-speaking country.</p>
<p>Mommusic, I remember “Mise en Train”! My wonderful hs French teacher used it in her beginning classes. The absurd conversations still stick in my head decades later.</p>
<p>I do hope that if I do end up liking French as much as I think I like it that I will study abroad there for a semester, ideally a year but, that’s years ahead.
I’m planning on majoring in International Relations or Economics and I was just wondering if I should add a French major because I really want to speak it… In fact, from the time posting this to now I’ve already started using basic french phrases around the house :)</p>
<p>My D started her 4th signficant foreign language in college as an undergrad (freshman or soph, I don’t remember). She’ll probably do a 5th in graduate school (which she’ll start in fall).</p>
<p>Just to clarify, OP: The point is that you already have some languages down. It gets easier – the learning of it – despite the fact that it occurs at a faster pace on the college level. The more languages you study, the more nimble you become. I think that if one really struggles with learning a new language (and often that’s because of poor previous teaching of it), then it can become difficult to “really” learn it, or another one, in college, but you don’t seem to fit that profile.
:)</p>
<p>If you want to get a head start on French, see if your public library has “French in Action.” It’s a series of videos with conversations that slowly get more complicated–similar to “Destinos,” which is the same idea in Spanish. You can pick up a lot quickly and painlessly.</p>
<p>Haha… I already found UT-Austin’s interactive online textbook and I loved it (Spent a good hour on it) so I might just do that over the summer if I’m bored… thanks to everyone</p>
<p>My D struggled with Mandarin in HS. She started listening to European music & just LOVED it, especially German. She especially loves Pia Dawes, who sings in manyt languages & started teaching herself German so that she can understand the messages posted about Pia & her career. She was inspired to take two 6-week summer courses in German at our flagship U & then take 3rd semester German at her U, satisfying the 3 semester language requirement at said U. We were pleasantly surprised at how quickly she was able to pick up German and other romance languages and how much she enjoys them!</p>
<p>I agree with the other posters, just take things as they come. You can easily start a new language in college if you like, enjoy listening to music in different languages, read blogs/messages in different languages (& respond as you prefer). D has never tried immersion, but we believe she’d really enjoy it and hope she does go to Germany/Austria in the near future.</p>
