Reply to Are foreign languages the hardest classes in MS?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP here - thanks all! I guess for us, we kind of assume that MCPS is BSing when they say that something is hard, because... it usually isn't. So this was a bit shocking from that POV. Especially since our kid is doing so well in all his other classes (including advanced math). As for the PP who said that Spanish 1 and 2 were so easy but their tutor helped prepare them for the AP, my point was that you don't know they would have been easy if you hadn't gotten your child a tutor, so it's kind of rich to say "Well duh, what did you expect, how else was my kid gonna get a 5 on the AP?" when that wasn't even the question and they actually provided no evidence that Spanish 1/2 are easy (the teachers not covering the entire material doesn't mean it's easy, also the content may be easy, but the grading rubrics may be kind of ridiculous, as other PPs noted.) Of course different kids have different strengths, so maybe their kid is also naturally good at FLs. (But immersion and one-on-one tutoring always help a ton, obviously.)

I guess my current plan is to see if kid improves by the end of the quarter and if not, consider a tutor. We're talking to him about language study skills but we're not actually in class with him, nor can we micromanage his Spanish - husband took Spanish in school, but doesn't remember most of it. We could get him workbooks or a textbook, but since they don't use them in class, I'm not sure how much it would help? (I mean, it would help more than 0, but there are many ways to teach a foreign language, so it may not be the best investment of our and his time.) I can also ask the counselor if he can still drop to Spanish 1A, I'm not sure we were ever told about that being an option. He does like the teacher though. I was hoping that he could improve a bit after the initial shock, but the rubric for that quiz on which he got a C kind of left me shaken lol.

The only reason why I'm not jumping on getting a tutor ASAP is because I don't want to stress him out excessively and he already told me he feels pressure about his Spanish grades from me. Parenting- it's hard, y'all!

I'm also going to ask him to talk to the teacher. I may also talk to her, haven't decided yet...[/quote]

It's nice at least that they're challenging kids for a change right?  At our MS the Spanish 2 teacher has high expectations. Spanish 1 was hard, but Spanish 2 is considerably harder. For example, the first test covered 600 words they were supposed to have learned in Spanish 1.  The nice thing is the teacher will give a retake. No idea if this will go on forever but at least it allowed DC to get a feel for the class and actually learn the material. After a few retakes, they seemed to get the hang of things and are getting A's now on the first try so at least for them it is no longer needed.

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