Reply to What's covered/what proficiency is reached at each level of Spanish (or other languages)?

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Reply to "What's covered/what proficiency is reached at each level of Spanish (or other languages)?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Classroom foreign language skills have little to do with real world foreign language skills. My teen DD just started Spanish 5. She cannot follow rapid-fire Spanish news on TV or hold a conversation with a native speaker. She doesn't have enough vocabulary and fluency.

But she can read some texts, while more or less correctly guessing at the words she doesn't actually know, and write grammatically correct sentences within the narrow limits of what she does know.

She's always had straight As in all her Spanish classes and she is bilingual in French, which I think helps her Spanish a little bit. [/quote]

This sounds right for an American high school student who has gotten good grades but has had no experience with non-academic language use (e.g., no significant travel or study abroad).

I was about at this level in French after 5 years of study (non-AP).  I minored in French in college.  By the end of that, my accent was improved, I understood more sophisticated and literary grammar structures but did not independently use them on the fly, I could watch movies with subtitling and listen some while also reading, and I could write longer paragraphs on short-answer essay questions.

Due to lack of overseas experience, I could only hold simple conversations but people liked hearing my accent.  There was always a lot of vocabulary that would leave me stumped.  For example, I couldn't figure out what menu expression meant "Happy Meal" in Francophone Canada.  But I could slowly read a 19th century novel.

My kid in non-DMV school took 4 years of high-school Spanish ending in DP Spanish SL.  He also had about 1 year of it in middle school and scattered "specials" work in elementary school.  He struggled in Spanish 4 in his first semester at his selective flagship, receiving a C+ that is his worst grade to date.  His classes in high school were conversation-oriented and did not focus carefully on grammar and correct spelling.  But he still got As for being towards the top of his classes.[/quote]

You don't need to travel to a foreign country to practice Spanish if you live in MoCo. [/quote]

This may be sarcasm, but it's also a beautiful truth: there are plenty of opportunities to practice Spanish here, including ordering and enjoying some great food![/quote]

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