I’ve had pretty bad experiences with foreign languages. I was terrible at Spanish in high school, and I understand that I large part of that is my fault. I should’ve gotten more help and whatnot.
Anyway, I attended a CC in order to get my AA and avoided language courses there because I was still afraid of messing up my transcript. Now, I’m at a four year school in the fall and I’m signed up for Italian.
Does anyone have any advice? I’m terrified of messing up again, but I’ve definitely matured as a student and I want to challenge myself.
I had to fulfill a language requirement and was fairly nervous as well. I decided to take Hebrew just on a whim; I had no past experience with the language whatsoever. It turned out to be my favorite class and I’m signed up to take my third semester of it in the fall. My Hebrew class meets 5 days a week for 50 minutes every morning, which seemed overwhelming at first, but it actually really aided in my learning of the language. Just practice the language a little bit every day, even if it’s just for 10 minutes. Writing/speaking it daily will help get it into your brain. And don’t lose hope if you don’t immediately become fluent! It takes a long time to be able to form sentences past “My name is…I’m studying…I’m from…” etc.
First I would have suggested choosing a college without a language requirements.
But now that you are there, you have to figure out what language to take.
Something with the Latin Alphabet may be the easiest…
But if there is a language in your heritage (hebrew, russian, arabic?) that might be of interest, consider that.
Or if there is a language that would help you with your career?
Or there is second language predominately spoken in your area?
So if you think Italian is the way to go, take it seriously. If there is a language lab, take advantage of it. If there is a table at the cafeteria, sit at it and listen. Go to office hours. Get a tutor if necessary. Use an app like Duolingo to practice. See if you can get kids books in Italian. Rent DVDs that you have already seen and turn on the Italian subtitles.
Thanks for all of the advice, everyone. I had thought of looking for a college without language requirements, but most of the colleges that I wanted to attend had that requirement so I figured it’s time to suck it up. I just downloaded Duolingo, and I think I’ll start using it before the school year starts so that I can get comfortable with the basics.
Is there a reason you don’t want to continue with Spanish? I understand you did poorly in it in high school, but it may be easier for you since you have some familiarity with it (unless you also have familiarity with Italian). If you start back in the beginning in college, you may find it easier because you’ve seen a lot of it before.
Regardless of what language though, I think you already know what you have to do. Stay on top of the work. Practice daily. Ask your professor and TA what you can do for extra help. Get to know what resources are available at your school for foreign languages. Don’t wait until you’re falling behind or do poorly on a test or it’s too late to do anything about it. Get help early and often so that you stay on top of things.
I think that’s what I’m going to do. Since I’ve already some background, it makes sense to stick with it. I was looking at Duolingo, and I actually was doing solid with the basics so I think that’s the best choice.