<p>Are the first level foreign language courses much difficulty than the high school ones? S is planning to take Latin in his freshman year. He does not have any knowledge of Latin. Is Latin a difficult course?</p>
<p>My understanding is that college language courses are at least double fast compared to high school; that is, the material covered in first year Latin in high school would be covered in first semester Latin in college.</p>
<p>If he has learned a different language, was that difficult for him? If he picked up French or German easily, Latin shouldn't be much harder. I think some kids are "good at languages."</p>
<p>If he has never taken a foreign language before, I suggest he look at a textbook (or is there something like "Latin for Dummies"?) or online resources to see if it looks interesting to him. IMHO, if he looks at it and thinks it looks interesting, it will not be too difficult. If he looks at it and his horrified, hmmm... Spanish might be a little bit easier. And in Spanish, there may be more spoken language in class, which may be easier for some kids.</p>
<p>A lot of students from our public high school love taking Latin and win contests, score well on national tests, etc.</p>
<p>It would be good to hear from a parent who had one kid take Latin and another take, say, French, and see what their opinion is with respect to hard Latin class is.</p>
<p>For entirely mysterious reasons, my daughter decided to take a year of Latin in her freshman year of college, with four years of high school German and no Latin behind her. Her new roommate appeared to be a possible source of help, since she's taken four years of hgh school Latin.</p>
<p>Well, the college class turned out to move <em>very</em> quickly. The roommate said they had overtaken her four years of high school in the first six weeks. It was a lot of work, but in the end D got through it.</p>
<p>First year foreign language courses do move at least twice if not three times as fast as high school ones. It varies a bit from college to college (I took German at Harvard and then many years later brushed up at a CC in California with another first year course). The CC course covered the same grammar, but we didn't read a detective novel on the side. If he's already had a romance language like Spanish or French he'll have a bit of a leg up learning vocabulary. The main thing about languages is to be vigilant about attending classes, doing homework, going to language labs (probably not an issue for Latin) and getting help immediately if you don't understand something.</p>
<p>Personally the difficulty of a language can depend on personal taste - for me German was easier than French because although it had more grammar, it seemed to have fewer exceptions to the rules, and I definitely found the pronunciation easier. I've got one kid who thinks Latin is easy the other who finds it very hard.</p>
<p>A lot depends on previous experience and interest. A student who has previously studied a language (any language) will have an easier time that someone who has never studied another language. College courses generally move 2-3 times faster than HS classes.</p>
<p>With many years experiene as a college language professor, I give my students the following advice:
1) Do not let yourself get behind. It is very hard to catch up if you do.
2) Since most of the work of first-year language courses is memorization, it is more effective to spend a few minutes several times a day studying than to try to do it in one large chunk.
3) Go over material from class as soon as possible after the class. If you wait to long, you will not remember details.
4) Do some work every day, preferably several times a day.<br>
5) Keep your language materials handy to look at whenever you have a few minutes--ie. getting early to another class, while waiting for mealtime, before you go to sleep, as a break from courses that have heavy reading assignments.
6) Practice, practice, practice.</p>
<p>Tango, any suggestion on which language to take for a person with little inclination for languages? I have a son who has struggled trying to study French in high school, and really did not care for it (putting this politely). Which language is generally the easiest to study in American colleges and high schools? Unfortunately for students who struggle, most LACs do require 2semesters (some require more) of a foreign language.</p>
<p>At my college, normally four years of high school study without the AP level is about equal to one full year of study at the college level. That's often how it works out after students take the placement test. Latin is a bit different because some high schools cover Latin especially slowly.</p>
<p>Northeastmom, he might try Italian. Not terribly useful, but spelling and pronunciation are a snap and many, many similarities with French. You can practice by watching Fellini movies. More useful would be Spanish, many of the same parallels with French and plenty of places to practice in the US.</p>
<p>mathmom, LOL, perhaps the language should have little in common with French. He really doesn't know much French despite 3 years of it (sigh). His knowledge of French will not be of use. I don't care if it is useful, I just want him to take a language where he can plow through it, and be done with the requirement. Do you really think that he should try Italian if offered, or go with something like Arabic, or Japanese? I really do not know what to suggest to him.</p>
<p>There is no doubt in my mind: Spanish. A few years ago, I went to a Latin American country for 3 weeks, and took "Spanish boot camp" for the first week: a 4 hour, one-on-one class for 5 days. This was the first time I had studied a language in 30 years, and my first exposure to Spanish. I was able to learn an amazing amount in that time, and easily able to reinforce it using Pimsleur after I got home. Spanish is by far the easiest language I've ever studied. It is considered much easier to go from French to Spanish than the other way round. (Note: South/Latin American Spanish is much easier to understand and to learn than Castillian, because almost everything is pronounced exactly as spelled.)</p>
<p>How difficult would it be to take German in university if you have no experience in it?</p>
<p>He probably knows more French than you think. I was terrible at French, but I knew there were three groups of irregular verbs and I was used to the definitions for conditional, past perfect and imperfect. The verbs are in approximately the same groups of irregularity. The words which are masculine vs. feminine are nearly all the same. If you move to German the categories are different, though similar. If you take a language like Arabic or Japanese, not only is everything new, you have to learn a new alaphabet to boot. </p>
<p>I was terrible at French in high school. My parents sent me off to spend a year living in France with a French family, I learned to speak French fluently - and that's really what it took for me. I took German in college and it was much easier for me than French had ever been. It felt like I had something switched on in my brain from learning French. But I also had to work very diligently in that class. I think it came easier to others. I knew enough French and German to write my senior thesis about public housing in Paris and Berlin, spending the summer before my senior year in Europe. I tried to teach myself Spanish one summer, but never got too far, though I didn't work too hard at it. I also tried to teach myself Swahili every summer I visited my parents in Tanzania (three summers) I can't say I worked too hard at it either. After I got married I spent some time in Germany - while there I took Italian which seemed incredibly easy to me. I also took a class in Chinese - which was completely beyond me. I couldn't deal with the tones at all. That class didn't even try to teach us the writing system, though I taught myself to read a couple hundred characters on my own. I lived in Japan as a kid and visited a few years ago. I don't think learning Japanese is easy either.</p>
<p>If he truly just wants to get rid of the language requirement ASAP, he should take French. He must know something. If he's interested in taking a semester abroad, he might consider combining that with language study. It's so much easier to learn a language when you are surrounded by it.</p>
<p>mathmom, he really knows nothing. Really. He would much rather try a new language. I wonder if Spanish is much easier, or if an immersion program with native speakers is really the key. My son would not mind learning the new alphabet. I think that he would prefer remaining in the elementary stages of learning the language for as long as possible.</p>
<p>So would posters suggest Spanish, Italian, German, in that order for the language challenged (and I mean challenged)?</p>
<p>I would recommend Spanish, both for being notoriously easy, and for being potentially useful to him someday. You never know when having at least some Spanish will be useful in this day and age in the U.S.</p>
<p>And I would recommend against anything with a new alphabet (Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese). Unless you have some experience with having heard or used these languages, they will be extremely hard to pick up starting from ground zero.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Are the first level foreign language courses much difficulty than the high school ones? S is planning to take Latin in his freshman year. He does not have any knowledge of Latin. Is Latin a difficult course?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Yes, college-level language courses generally move more quickly and expect greater proficiency/mastery than high school ones. They are challenging. </p>
<p>Latin is quite difficult, all the declensions and conjugations require a lot of rote memorization, and reading Latin is more like decoding a puzzle than anything. It is easier in some ways, though, you aren't expected to learn how to speak it, you don't have to worry about pronounciation, and the spelling is straightforward. These are big problems with learning some other languages...</p>
<p>I have noticed that teenagers (generally boys) who don't like to speak anyway, and esp. don't want to practice saying a foreign language ALOUD and run the risk of embarrassing themselves...are much happier in Latin, where they can rely on their brainpower & memorization skills.</p>
<p>Having done 3 languages in my undergrad and briefly attended French and German courses (for different reasons), I will say that your S better be prepared to move FAST in college. I was shocked how much Russian I covered in a single year in my first year- I knew 95% of all the grammar rules by the end. Spanish also moved quickly and it's so easy to fall behind if you're not up to speed. I saw my instructor almost every week to go over Spanish pronounciation and more difficult aspects of grammar. And this was an Intermdiate course.</p>
<p>I also studied Hebrew and it's my current language of study. Now, Hebrew (and Russian) just MIGHT be the trick because at some schools, it can go very slowly because it's a difficult language. So your S needs to look at the course schedule and see how often Hebrew and Russian meet. If they meet 3 times a week, all the better for him- take either. </p>
<p>Any course that meets a total of 200 minutes of class time per week is bound to move quite quickly (though that's actually a good standard). Any less than that, he'll be fine with whatever language he chooses.</p>
<p>I personally found German and French much easier to learn after suffering through Russian's infamous cases, Hebrew's difficult pronounciation, and the horrors of more advanced Spanish grammar (Spanish actually gets more difficult as time goes on whereas French is totally opposite).</p>
<p>I, however, DO NOT suggest any of the Asian languages and Arabic. I have different friends who studied Japanese, Chinese, and Arabic (though they studied Hebrew first before taking Arabic). They are very time-consuming, much more so than Russian and German because of the characters and dialects.</p>
<p>I am a Spanish teacher and know 4 languages. German is very hard in terms of the grammar with all its cases. Very unlike English, although some of the vocabulary is pretty similar as English is partially a Germanic language. (ie. haus and house) My friend who has a Masters in Spanish dropped German in college because she said it was too hard. German is one of my languages, and it is harder than Spanish. However, my 2 choices would be Spanish or Latin. The Spanish grammar is the easiest. However, in Latin, you don't have the additional pressure of speaking, and many of the word parts are similar to what we use in English. Be prepared. D took AP Spanish and was able to bypass a year of Spanish, and the whole course, grammar and all, was taught in Spanish. So was her German course. Not a word of English was used or allowed, even in the first semester of first year course. If your S has has difficulty in these, check and see if American Sign Language is taught and if it counts as a foreign language. Many of the HS's in our area are using this to fulfill the requirement and kids who have a heard time with grammar and sentence structure find this works easier for them.</p>
<p>ejr, is Italian as easy as Spanish? What about Hebrew or Arabic? Russian? </p>
<p>Thank you all for your opinions!</p>
<p>Here is a breakdown of language difficulties:
Language</a> Learning Difficulty for English Speakers</p>