4 yrs of same or different foreign languages?

[dis-happy]

Can I ask if you have any knowledge of schools that specifically don't take ASL as a Foreign Language? My DD is in 8th grade and works as a peer with a deaf student and she will be taking ASL next year at the HS. I have called a few Colleges that she might consider and all have said they accept ASL.

I can answer that at my dd's university (a high ranking private liberal arts school) ASL is not considered a foreign language that can go toward college graduation. Her school requires a minimum 3 class series in a foreign language. My dd studied French in high school and took the mandatory placement exam...she scored high enough to be exempt from the 3 class series, although she has gone ahead and taken 2 add'l upper level French classes to round out her credits.

ASL on high school transcripts may qualify for admission, but if the university requires foreign language to graduate, she may want to have a backround in another language (easier to learn some of the basics at the slower pace in high school). OTOH, there may some larger universities out there that have ASL, so check the graduation requirements of the schools she is interested in.

 

[bballmom56]

DS's university just added ASL to their FL curriculum a couple of years ago. Taking those courses can fulfill the FL requirement of the core curriculum. So I would assume they would accept ASL as a FL if it was taken in HS.

 

[The Mystery Machine]

Oh man, my dd is in 9th grade and I can already tell the whole college thing is going to be CRAZY, lol. I have so much to learn. She is in Spanish 3-our school district starts Spanish in Kindergarten. She wants to take another language at some point during high school, maybe Mandarin Chinese or ASL. Should she just stick to Spanish?? I guess this is a question for her advisor when she is picking classes for next year. I always thought PAYING for college would be the hard part

Oh it is, no worries there.

The bottom line here is gaining admission vs gaining credit. (To the OP, if your dd is planning on applying to competitive universites, then your best interest is to go 4yr. with a language and then take more lang. in college.)

Currently at my dd's university, you can only take the placement test for Spanish, German, and French.

Is your dd in an AP Spanish class, did she take the AP test? That will tell you how much she really knows. You can go and buy a book to find that out.

There was a girl that came up the stairs after the exam who was similiar to your dd. She placed into Spanish 1. She was not happy and her parents were fuming.

When my dd came up the stairs, she placed into Span 3. Basically, it is about grammar, tenses, etc. It is all dependent on the classes, teachers, etc...

The bummer here with my dd and her desire to take more languages is that she has so many other classes she has to take that it will be very difficult to fit them it.

 

[Longsx3]

I can answer that at my dd's university (a high ranking private liberal arts school) ASL is not considered a foreign language that can go toward college graduation. Her school requires a minimum 3 class series in a foreign language. My dd studied French in high school and took the mandatory placement exam...she scored high enough to be exempt from the 3 class series, although she has gone ahead and taken 2 add'l upper level French classes to round out her credits.

ASL on high school transcripts may qualify for admission, but if the university requires foreign language to graduate, she may want to have a background in another language (easier to learn some of the basics at the slower pace in high school). OTOH, there may some larger universities out there that have ASL, so check the graduation requirements of the schools she is interested in.

Thanks, my concern now is for admissions more than anything. I will however share with DD that once in college she may have to take an additional language, which I think she will be okay with.

 

[Took]

Looking further ahead than college, in the international job market a language is only worth listing if she is fluent at a business level (i.e. can carry out her day to day job in it), otherwise it comes under hobbies rather than skills.

As a consideration, she is extremely unlikely to achieve that in Mandarin without going to live in China for a while. If she's aiming for working level in more than one language, she will need to study something in addition to Mandarin. Hate to put someone off studying Mandarin altogether though, a little will still go some way in giving her "face" if she's ever dealing with a chinese businessperson.

Overall, I'd recommend not picking up a third language at this time, stick with aiming for full business fluency in Spanish and supplementing it with some Mandarin. Plus German is relatively easy, so she could always pick it up at another time, and in the end it's only useful in a small geographical area.

I agree with the above poster. Unless one has had 4 years or so of a language, one is not fluent. Even afterward, practicing on a regular basis is important. I took 4 years of Spanish (from challenging, native-speaking teachers). I still practice as often as possible to maintain even some real fluency. Reading is fairly easy for me now, but speaking is still somewhat difficult.

If I were your dd, I would take 4 years at the high school level in one language. Then, in college, your dd might take other languages. Chinese or Japanese would be best, but Spanish is useful, too.

took