<p>Hi do you have any experience of having your kid studying foreign languages at a community college? Currently my child is studying French1 in hs, he is thinking about taking French 2 in the community college in the summer, and then take French 3 next school year. I was wondering: are foreign language courses, say French or Spanish, provided by a community college , usually more rigorious than those in high school? Thank you</p>
<p>My S took Spanish 3 last summer after having taken 2 years in HS. He found it to be an easier course, although maybe it was just because he only had one course to concentrate on at a time. It certainly wasn’t harder and he took it at the highest rated CC in our state. </p>
<p>I took second semester German for a review at the Pasadena Community College way back when several years after I’d had college German right before I was about to go to German and look for a job. It covered the equivalent of at least two years of high school German, but was somewhat easier than my first year German class at Harvard. (It covered all the same grammar, but we did not read a novel in addition to the grammar, and the vocabulary was slightly more aimed at travel and tourism, which I actually liked better.)</p>
<p>Thank you JCCsMom and mathmom! we will try this summer! </p>
<p>One thing to be aware is that sometimes the numbers dont line up. My S took spanish 4 at his high school. It was co-cirricular and given for college credit, but we found out that the college credit was for Spanish 3. </p>
<p>So I would be worried about the transition from french 1 to french 2 at the CC. You might want to talk to the instructor at the CC and see if others have done that. </p>
<p>^^^ Absolutely! You son should ask about placement. The department should have an exam that he can take to determine the correct class to enroll in.</p>
<p>Typically, 1 semester of college language = 2 years of high school language. It’s a bit slower at the community college level, with more focus on grammar/vocabulary drills and less analytical/intercultural questioning&reading, but to enter community college level 2 it may be useful to have high school 1+2; however, after CC level 2, your child may be able to enter level 4 in HS.
As others have said above, ask if there is a placement test and talk with the instructors to see if your child would pass the tests from College Level 1 before s/he enrolls in level 2, and see with the HS how this will be seen as accelerated - you may have to bring the College2 syllabus to see whether it correlates with Spanish 2, spanish 3, Spanish 4…</p>
<p>This could vary depending on institution. </p>
<p>One college classmate found he wouldn’t get credit for taking summer language classes at his home state’s directional 4-year university because the pacing of their language courses was only half that of our LAC so he wouldn’t receive enough preparation to pass our LAC’s language placement exams to go on to the next level. </p>
<p>Also, the level of academic rigor of community colleges nearby was such that no one I knew at my HS were approved to take courses at them. The tendency was to go directly to the 4-year public private colleges as they were in much better position to offer courses of equivalent/greater rigor than ones offered at our HS. </p>
<p>College language classes also can have a lot of sandbaggers. My wife was the only one in her French 1 class who could not already speak some French - one woman grew up in France. The class quickly got away from its course outline. It really depends on your area and the instructor.</p>
<p>My sophomore year college roommate, who grew up bilingual in English and Spanish, bombed the Spanish placement test on purpose so he ended up in Spanish 2.</p>
<p>Both high schools and colleges vary in how quickly they cover foreign languages.</p>
<p>For example, one high school may have Spanish/French 4 be the AP level, while another may have Spanish/French 6 be the AP level. Colleges can have even more variation (even within a college; in some cases, there may be a “fast” sequence and a “slow” sequence for beginner/intermediate language courses, with the “fast” sequence being a greater number of credits per course). Colleges and high schools may also have “heritage speaker” versions of the language courses for those whose speaking and listening is stronger than their reading and writing.</p>
<p>So when going from one school to another (high schools and/or colleges), one needs to check the new school’s placement guidelines to go into the appropriate level of the language.</p>
<p>Here one qtr of a community college course is equivalent to one year of a high school language.
They move fairly quickly.
Summer qtr may be even more intensive.
One way to get an idea, is to look at the required texts at the school bookstore</p>
<p>My daughter has found community college languages a great deal more challenging than her high school classes were. For starters, at the CC (she’s duel enrollment,) her Spanish classes have been taught full immersion as opposed to at high school where the teacher still instructed in English. There has been a lot more full length essay writing and more complicated oral presentations though perhaps that’s just because she started at the college level 2 (equivalent to HS 3.) They haven’t been difficult in that she is struggling… just a good deal more difficult than what she took at the traditional high school. She’s certainly learned more and has appreciated the pacing.</p>
<p>In your case, doing French this summer might not line up. Check into what the pre-req for 2nd level French is at the CC… at ours, the pre-req is 2 years of high school. </p>
<p>My S’s summer quarter CC Spanish class was equivalent to 3rd year HS all squeezed into an 8 week quarter! However, since it was the only class he was taking, he did fine in it and got an A. It was all immersion - no English speaking. </p>
<p>I think this would depend on the rigor of the high school and the rigor of the community college, as well as the student’s facility with languages. The rule of thumb seems to be that a year of instruction at a four year college is roughly equivalent to two or three years of instruction at a high school level, but my experience taking language classes, including immersion classes, at a handful of schools has been that effectiveness of instruction can vary immensely among programs and cannot always be predicted by program selectivity. (I would expect however that a cc immersion program would provide fewer hours and cover less material than a residential immersion program.) </p>
<p>I would ask at the cc if your student will need to take a placement test to enroll in the summer class (I was once placed below my level in a summer immersion program), and ask at your high school if they have had any experience with students continuing from programs run by the community college.</p>
<p>I wanted to add that it’ll also depend on how well your child does at self-study. Like Frazzled mentioned, there is less class time and so less that the instructor will cover “in-class.” However, at least for D, they were still responsible and tested on all the material in the book. There was an online portal attached to the book that would take a lot of outside class hours to complete. For young high schoolers that are already independent learners it’s not such a big deal. For those that are still relying on instructors to “teach” the majority of the information, it can be tricky.</p>
<p>Thank you all for all the inputs!</p>
<p>short answer: depends on the competitiveness of the HS.</p>
<p>But longer response to your plan: our HS does not recommend switching back and forth since the curriculums do not align, which will create gaps in knowledge when returning.</p>