Two foreign languages in high school

[Anonymous]

Is it possible to take two foreign languages in high school? Say, for example, Spanish and French. They are similar in some ways. Would it be too confusing? Would it be detrimental to take a second foreign language instead of another elective?

[Anonymous]

As far as it being confusing - it’s normal in Europe to have two foreign languages.
I learned French and Spanish at the same time here in the US and it’s not confusing.

[Anonymous]

I took Finnish, German, English, and Latin in high school in Europe. I dropped Russian after 9th grade and I'm glad I did. Others also took French. It's normal for us to take so many languages even though we only have one official language, and if you live in small town, you hardly ever even hear the 2nd one - Russian.
We have great language teachers though. My mother tongue is so difficult and once I started speaking it, most others seemed easy.
French and Spanish would be perfect. DC can compare similarities and differences.

[Anonymous]

my DC is taking two in MS and is planning to do same in HS. going to do PEs in summer and whatever else to accommodate. planning on doing AP for both. it's their thing so we will do what we need!

[Anonymous]

It's not more detrimental than another elective for sure; as for whether it's too much work, that depends entirely on the student. My DD is taking 2 languages and adding a third (at NVCC) this spring, but languages are her favorite subject. For a kid who doesn't love learning languages, I think it might start to feel like a bit of a grind to do all that memorization.

[Anonymous]

To get the advanced studies HS diploma you have to do either 3 years of one language or 2 years of two separate ones. So if they do take more than one at a time, make sure they can handle it for at least that long or they are wasting limited schedule slots if it doesn't work out.

[Anonymous]

My DD did this in MOCO. Chinese & Spanish. Languages come easy to her. She loved every minute of each course. It can be done.

One of her siblings on the other hand could barely pass Spanish 1 and almost did not complete college because he hated studying any language.

[Anonymous]

Mine did AP Lain, 3 years of a Romance language and a year of a 3rd non-Romance language. Made As across the board. She’s now an International Relations major at one of the top tier VA colleges and minoring in a 4th language (“critical language”) in her regional area of interest.

Languages come easy to her and she says French was very easy after Latin. She did have to do some summer school to fit it in, since she did 4 years of music. And se stopped science after HN physics junior year (only took HN Bio, Chem and Physics)

Applied to colleges as a “pointy” kid with 11 humanities APs and no STEM APs (standard Calc). But she had great college admissions results.

[Anonymous]

I'm French and learned German and Spanish in my international school that had a dual British-French curriculum.

French and Spanish are very distinct, OP. This would be like me telling you that German and English can be confused, because they're both Saxon based languages!

That being said, your child should only take two languages if she wants to. Some people are good at it, some aren't.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm French and learned German and Spanish in my international school that had a dual British-French curriculum.

French and Spanish are very distinct, OP. This would be like me telling you that German and English can be confused, because they're both Saxon based languages!

That being said, your child should only take two languages if she wants to. Some people are good at it, some aren't.

Spanish and French have many similar words, plus verb conjugations are similar. Much more so than German and English.

[Anonymous]

I took three (one of them was Latin, though, not very useful ). In retrospect I would go for depth over breadth, though, and stick with one.

[Anonymous]

My kid is taking hiis mother's native Spanish in intensive Saturday school, and is moving through French in FCPS. Plans to take AP exams in both languages. No problems at all, in fact, learning a third language is usually far easier than learning the second. The only concern I would have would be on the opportunity costs of dedicating nearly all the electives to languages.

[Anonymous]

Yeah, I took three when I was I a regular public high schools in France (though I guess French literature also counts?) Anyway, I took English, Spanish and Latin. Other languages available were German and Japanese.

[Anonymous]

I know kids who do two. The second language started after Freshman year and was an open/ elective spot. There are a bunch of kids who take a language in MS and have 1 credit by HS. In our HS Latin seems to be a popular second language starting Sophmore year as it helps with the SATs and the class is just known to be good.

[Anonymous]

I took two languages concurrently, and I don't remember ever being confused by it.