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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]This comes up every year and I get needlessly aggravated.  I was a triple major in college with two languages and my oldest child took 7 years of Spanish in MS and HS, so I’m not any language.  [b]But some kids just do not like it, and the truth is almost no one can speak Spanish decently just from taking HS Spanish in most public schools.  It is just a waste of time for most kids.[/b]
My younger kid really wants to quit after Spanish 4 in 10th grade so they can double up on AP science and math classes (AP phy, AP chem, AP calc, AP stats).  [b]It seems dumb to make them instead take Spanish 5, when in reality I know [/b]they will get very little from it.  [/quote]

The main focus of WL classes are biliteracy which is reading and writing in the language.  It takes much longer for conversational proficiency in the language.[/quote]

What the PP is missing is that the goal of the elite schools who look for four years of high school WL is that, like UVA, they consider WL a "core" area of study, one worthy of demonstrating the diligence and practice to try to master. Why? Because the top institutions of higher learning in America believe they are educating future citizens of the world, who will be leaders in a more cosmopolitan business, political, and economic environment and to that end should be as fluent as possible in multiple languages. This should be applauded. It's an answer to the oft-repeaded accusation that Americans are too insular and content with one languages This is also why the top universities in America (or slacs like mine) have their own foreign language requirement on top of the high school requirements. It's all about exposure to a world beyond the US. My humanities kid at UVA (high school spanish four years) was not happy about the UVA language requirement but picked German out of the 64 languages offered and ended up going to Munich and Berlin with his prof and class during the winter J term. That led to an interest in studying abroad, which led to a UVA summer term at Oxford, then an application to Oxford for an MPhil, then a full scholarship offer from Oxford for a DPhil, which is where he is now. This would not have happened but for the UVA foreign language requirement.[/quote]

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