foreign language importance in HS

[Anonymous]

"Let’s say you move to the US as 9th grader from the Philippines. Tagalog is your native language and of course you are fluent. Your family encouraged learning English from elementary school and you are fluent in that as well. Have you meant the foreign language requirement since you are bilingual or must you spend 3-4 yrs learning French, Spanish, etc?"

I once knew a women who followed exactly this path. While I don't know if she took foreign language (French/Spanish...) in HS in the US, I do know that she was NOT fluent in Tagalog. Yes, she could converse in it as though she had lived there her whole life but she claimed she would sound immature like a middle schooler. She insisted that she could NOT go back to the Philippines and get a job because no one would hire her with her 8th grade Tagalog writing skills. I convinced her that since she could write in English well enough for graduate school that she probably had better than 8th grade skills as techniques would transfer. She reluctantly agreed she had more like 11th or 12th grade Tagalog writing skills. So while she probably could have passed and college language test in Tagalog, true fluency might be a fairly high bar to get over.