<p>My son is a hs sophomore and doesn't enjoy or do well in his language class. It's time to choose his classes for junior year. Do we make him suffer thru a 3rd year, knowing it'll hurt his gpa, or do we let him stop? He is interested in computers. He won't be pursing ultra competitive colleges.</p>
<p>Depends on what the requirements are for the schools he might be interested in. Do they require more than 2 years of the same foreign language? Also, realize that he may need to fulfill a foreign language requirement in college depending on what he majors in.</p>
<p>My son did well in foreign language in high school but hated it; all that was available were the romance languages which was of no interest to him. We let him quit after 2 years so that he could take more art classes, which was something he really wanted to do. He ended up getting a full ride at our flagship university. He’s in his 2nd semester of college now taking Ancient Greek, which is really hard and which he really loves! I’m so glad we decided to let him follow his interests and his heart.</p>
<p>If he’s not pursuing super competitive schools, 2 years is probably enough, though for schools he thinks he may be interested in he should check the requirements just in case. Better that he keep his morale and GPA high than suffer through something he really hates unnecessarily.</p>
<p>Let him drop it…I dropped my language after 2 years and have seen no major reprecussions</p>
<p>Thanks all. That’s what my husband and I were thinking. I’ll spend the weekend investigating more potential colleges, but so far the ones son would be interested in don’t require more than 2. Thanks again.</p>
<p>Good idea to check on HS foreign language credits required for colleges he is interested in. To widen his college possibilities consider having him take a different foreign language the next two years in case most admitted students have 4 years of foreign language- this can be the case at flagship state U’s. The beginning stages of learning a language may be easier for him to handle than continuing in one he doesn’t enjoy.</p>
<p>My S wanted to drop his third year of foreign language after the first semester of junior year. I called the college he was interested in attending and they asked me his probable major. Once I said he wasn’t a math and science bound-major, they said to stick with the third year which he did. He wasn’t happy but he understood it would help him have more options.</p>
<p>And if your S does stick with the third year, I’d recommend it be in the same language, not switching to a new one. I think the two years of foreign language required and three years recommended by many colleges means three years in the same language.</p>
<p>If you end up thinking that he needs the third year of the language, you might see if one of Concordia’s 2 week language village camps might be a help. D struggled in the first year (in middle school) of her language, went to camp and came home with a much higher comfort level, and suddenly was doing a whole lot better in class the next years. Went one more time for another two week session the next summer, and then went on to score very well on the AP exam in high school, and picked up two other languages along the way. Now she knows that she’s more of an experiential and auditory learner when it comes to languges, better able to learn rules once she sees how the real usage works.</p>