<p>I'm starting at a state university in the fall and I had planned on majoring in history and Spanish but a new major is being offered that really interests me. Its called World Languages and Cultures. You learn Spanish and French and take a bunch of electives that go along with it ex: French Cinema, Spanish for business. My question is would it be possible to learn two languages in four years of college? I have taken five years of Spanish in high school but never French.</p>
<p>It’s going to be a lot harder to start a language in college than it was to start one in (presumably) eighth grade. Trust me. I tried. And it took a lot of effort, even though I already knew English and had studied four foreign languages.</p>
<p>With that being said, if you’re a Spanish major, then you probably have an ear for languages, which will make it that much easier. Spanish and French are also very similar.</p>
<p>I started with Spanish. Took it for six years. Switched schools, so I had to switch from Spanish to French. The first day I was in the French class, the teacher gave a quiz on classroom vocabulary. She told me just to take it to see how I could do, but she wouldn’t count it (figuring I’d fail). Everyone in the class was in their third year of French. I was in my first day. I ended up making a 95% on the quiz because the vocabulary was so similar and I knew how to learn a foreign language.</p>
<p>To me, that sounds like an amazing major! I wanted to take Spanish again, but just couldn’t get it into my schedule, so I ended up taking German in college. (I’m a French major.)</p>
<p>That’s inspiring. I took a year off from Spanish because my school didn’t offer another level up. But if I switch to this major I want to act quickly and begin learning French freshman year.</p>
<p>I think it’s completely possible, especially since you already have 5 years of Spanish! You might be a bit rusty after a year off, but I’m sure your school offers some sort of placement test that’ll put you at the appropriate level.</p>
<p>As for learning French and Spanish at the same time: I took four years of Spanish in HS and started French last semester. I took an 8 credit intensive French course that covered 2 years of HS French, and I still found it to be very easy. And my Spanish helped A LOT.</p>
<p>In summary…if you want to do it, I think you should go for it :-)</p>
<p>Thanks. This seems to be a strange major.</p>
<p>I’ll agree with the poster who said learning a new language is difficult in college, but it certainly isn’t possible. I studied Spanish in High School and decided I wanted to study French in college. My introductory French class (101) was taught totally in French - no English was allowed in the classroom except on the first day and for students asking questions (the answer was in French; you went to office hours or after class if you needed English help!) It was difficult, but I feel like I learned way more than I would have if I had been in an English-speaking class.</p>
<p>Of course, I don’t know if this is the norm.</p>
<p>If your high school taught Spanish to you well, you would likely place into a relatively advanced Spanish course in college, so you would not need to use up that much schedule space for Spanish in college (leaving more schedule space for French and other subjects).</p>
<p>I think it’s perfectly possible, but I really love languages and will be pursuing a similar programme (French and German). You’ve already done some Spanish, so you’ll likely place higher, plus both are Romance languages so there is overlap in vocabulary and grammar. In high school I did French and German at the same time, at the same level. Obviously college is different, but it still isn’t impossible.
If it helps I’ll share something one of the Spanish teachers at my high school told me when I was considering adding Spanish as a senior (yes,I was considering taking three languages, I was even signed up for three, then decided not to do Spanish because of the teacher I got): “You’ve done a language before, that means you know how to learn one. In fact, since you’ve done French, I know you can do Spanish. I’ve taught both and I’ve had students who have done both. If you have enough experience in one, beginning the other will be easy”</p>