<p>northeastmom, I think your son needs to consider what, in particular, it is he finds difficult about learning French. For example, does he have problems remembering vocabulary, does he find grammar hard, does he hate speaking it, etc. When he knows this, he can look for a language that requires less of the aspect he struggles with, e.g. he might prefer a phonetic language, or one with the simplest grammar, and those would not necessarily be the same language.</p>
<p>I think most English speakers say Spanish and Italian are the easiest languages. Although I don't speak it, it has always struck me that Dutch has a lot of similarities with English and might therefore be relatively easy to learn the basics of as well.</p>
<p>My DS is taking Japanese as a college sophomore. He was never interested in languages in high school (took Spanish because he had to take a FL) and due to the core requirements at his college he couldn't take a FL his freshman year. He was not able to squeeze the first term of Japanese into his schedule this year so he self studied over the summer. It seemed to work well for him as he's done well in Japanese in the 2nd and 3rd terms at his school and he's planning on taking Japanese next year as well. (his school has summer internships in Japan that he's very interested in but you need two years Japanese in order to apply). He emailed the Japanese professor before last summer and found out what books were used the first term. So for any students interested in starting a language in college, self studying over the summer might be one way to make the first few terms of a FL at college a bit easier. It certainly worked for my son. And I understand he's planning on continuing his self study this summer just to lighten his workload in the fall.</p>
<p>Many have said that in Latin classes, the students are not expected to speak. That is NOT universal. In fact, Latin courses are moving towards expecting speaking more and more. The reason behind this is that the speaking helps solidify the learning. So don't go into Latin if you're assuming you won't have to speak!</p>
<p>I have studied, in the classroom, Latin, Spanish, Hebrew, Catalan, and French, and systematically self-studied Russian and Italian. For me -- and I think for many others -- there's no question that Latin was the easiest of these. In part, that's because it is traditionally taught with a high degree of emphasis on system and logic, and a very low degree of emphasis on conversational fluency. I watched my children have the excitement of learning a foreign language ground out of them by being mired in the inanity of conversational this or that. (My daughter, who was reading Baudelaire, Camus, and Cocteau in French, would get mediocre French grades because she didn't give a hoot about the vocabulary clusters around ski trips.) That doesn't happen in Latin -- it's all substance, and it's pretty satisfying if one has a rule-based way of thinking.</p>
<p>For that reason, however, I think college Latin moves at lightning speed. You have to consider the tradeoffs.</p>
<p>In my experience, most high school language instruction is nearly useless. I think one year of college probably equals four years of high school in the language realm.</p>
<p>Our daughter took 2 ASL classes for fun freshman year of college and loved it. Had a great instructor and thought it very easy to learn, just required a lot of practice. She keeps at it on her own and hopes to volunteer as a translator. She has to take 2 semesters of a FL and will take them at comm college over the summer. She took 3 years of Spanish in high school and got As but still could not test out of Spanish I for college, though I do not think she even thought about opening an old book and prepping for the test. For those of you with children in high school, some colleges do waive the FL requirement if the student took 4 years of the same language in high school.</p>
<p>Northeastmom,
he just bought the books and started with Chapter 1 and worked his way through both the textbook & the workbook that were required for the class. I believe he did have an email exchange with the professor so he knew how far the 1st term class went in the book and set a summer goal of getting as far in the first term class as the actually class did. Note: he also did sit in on the 1st term class as often as he could - I believe it conflicted with another required course just 1 day a week so he probably was in class 3 out of 4 days the first term (but he didn't get any credit for the class but he did take the exams so he had a sense of how he was doing).</p>
<p>Is your son musical at all? He might find a lot of familiarity in Italian from all the musical terms he might know.</p>
<p>I think the most important thing is to find out what specifically he had trouble with in learning French. Maybe his hs teacher would be a help with that. If it is something specific, many of the previous posters have pointed out the various features of one language or another. If it is simply a problem that he has decided he doesn't like/doesn't want to learn another language, that will be difficult to address. If he has a learning disability affecting his language learning, there are ways to address that. Although some places will not accept that as an exemption from a language requirement, there may be other help available--extra time, tutoring, etc. </p>
<p>Also many schools now post course syllabi on line. If so, you can investigate these to see what the grading policy is--how much emphasis on speaking, what kind of testing (many quizzes are more helpful in the beginning than 2 or 3 large tests--the amount of material is just much more manageable).</p>
<p>Also many students are sorely disappointed when they sign up for Spanish thinking it's easier and are rapidly disabused of that notion. In the beginning, Spanish/Italian/German may seem easier because the pronunciation is much more intuitive for English speakers, although French has very regular prounciation once you learn the rules--there are just all those silent endings that affect spelling. Spanish has genders, too, and multiple verb endings.</p>
<p>Also there are software and websites available for reviewing languages. Although it is often frowned upon in classes with a communicative focus (speaking, role play), for students who are having trouble mastering genders, verb forms, agreements, drill and repetition while perhaps not very exciting are invaluable.</p>
<p>English is pretty quirky, too. Ask those learning about English as a second language about English prepositions, homonyms (there, their, they're) and spelling vs. pronunciation like although/rough/through.</p>
<p>Oaklandmom, so then he sort of audited the class, self studied, and then took it for credit? It sounds like he went in with a foundation. Good for him.</p>
<p>He basically audited the first term of the class. He then took the second term and third term for credit. I'm so happy to see him so motivated in one of his classes. I wish he was as motivated in his major!</p>
<p>It also is really important to find out whether a foreign language is required at all by the college/university in question.</p>
<p>Some require no foreign languages for any of their degree programs. Some require foreign languages for some of their degree programs. Some require SPECIFIC foreign languages for some of their degree programs. Some require foreign languages for all of their degree programs.</p>
<p>A student who doesn't want to study a foreign language, or has huge difficulties with learning foreign languages in a classroom situation, still has plenty of "language-free" options.</p>
<p>I am prompted to ask why on earth colleges require a foreign language. Oh, I know about the global economy, etc, but the couple of semesters of study will leave students far from proficiency anyway. Is the point to have enough students to support various foreign language departments? If the point is cultural understanding and appreciation, maybe the students should have a cultural learning requirement instead.</p>
<p>I have a kid who is very fluent in German and appreciate the availability of upper level foreign language courses; however, the class sizes were always very small with many classes not offered every semester. Why make everyone take languages whether they are interested or not, when they could make better use of their time studying something they are actually interested in? Then professors could shift their attention from hoards of uninterested kids forced to study entry level courses to more advanced and interested students.</p>
<p>All I can say is blessings on our high school's Latin teacher. She is phenomenal! Neither of my boys was really gifted in foreign language, but both of them tested out of two semesters of Latin at two different schools. My oldest son was so terrible at Latin in high school that after he took the language placement test for college and tested out of foreign language, he went back and spoke to someone just to make sure that he hadn't misunderstood his results!</p>
<p>I agree with CinciMom...a gifted teacher is a blessing! Just about every single German student at our hs scores a 4 or 5 on the AP exam and S got to exempt all of the language acquisition courses in college (4 semesters?) I really am sorry that D feels inadequate (even with A/B grades) and doesn't want to continue in German or any other foreign language.</p>
<p>Colleges require a foreign language for the same reason they require math, science, social science, fine arts, etc. For the majority of students, it is not to attain any sort of fluency because that can't be accomplished in a 2 year required course sequence. The pursuit of fluency would require a minor or major in the language. But studying a foreign language does introduce students to a new way of thinking and a different way of observing the world, just as a science course or a fine arts course does. </p>
<p>As one poster said, you can just look at another language as a one-for-one word-for-word equivalency.</p>
<p>
[quote]
As one poster said, you can just look at another language as a one-for-one word-for-word equivalency.
[/quote]
Would that it were so easy, that's exactly what you can't do. Sometimes because the word simply doesn't exist in English (think "doch" in German or "si" in French - it's the word you use when some phrases a question in the negative and you are replying in the positive, such as "You're not going to the store are you?" In English you say "Yes, I am", but in many languages there is a different word for that particular yes.) Languages are also structurally different, requiring one to pay attention to how definite an action is (and therefore requiring subjunctive verbs) or the word order may be different, in German in subordinate clauses the verb gets thrown to the end of the sentence.</p>