Thread: Learning 3rd language Spanish to French? Thoughts Please.

Hi Everyone!

As you all know, I am language challenged; however, my two daughters thankfully are not. They are fluent in both English and Spanish. They learned Spanish as a result of attending a Spanish Immersion school for grades Kindergarten through Fifth. Additionally, their dad (Hubby) is a native Spanish speaker. Both girls have continued their Spanish studies in Middle School (6-8 grades) at an advanced level.

Next year, their school is going to offer for the first time French as an elective subject (sorry no Russian – just Spanish and French). While they will not need this class for graduation requirements (because they have High School credits from Spanish) Hubby and I are considering having them take the class.

I am interested in knowing your thoughts as to how easy and/or difficult it might be for them to learn French as they have the background in Spanish (remember, I am language challenged, so be kind with your comments ). Additionally, no one in our family speaks or knows French.

Their ages and grades for next year will be; 12 and 7th grade; 13 and 8th grade. Both girls take a total of eight classes (four per day). As part of those eight classes, the older daughter will be taking High School level academic classes including Honors Geometry (usually not taken until 10th grade), English Acceleration and AP Preparatory United States History.

Thanks for your help,
RockzMom!

Ahhhh... all this time has gone by and I have an update for you.

My older daughter has signed up for FRENCH for next year, 10th grade!!! She is currently completing her 4th year of high school level Spanish and was debating about taking another year of Spanish, quiting foreign language all together, staring French at her current school OR taking Italian at a high school near our home. Students are allowed to take a class not offered at their high school that is offered at another high school but they need to provide their own transportation and they will miss one class per day for the time used to get back and forth to the class. So if she took Italian, she would only be taking 6 classes per day instead of 7. We had been told that the Italian teacher is really fantastic as she is a native speaker and the school is very close to our home so she was really debating taking Italian. In the end, she went with French and has left Italian as an option for maybe 12th grade.

I personally was surprised by her decision as she gave up Photography to take French. I thought she would go the other way around and give up the language elective as she has her 2 years language requirement for graduation and the 4 years colleges are now looking for so why not take a different elective like photography? Why go to yet another language? So I am very proud of my girl as you all know, I have trouble with my native English forget about me speaking another language, let alone two other ones!

So, Zubr... get ready for some questions from her starting next school year!!

School started here this week and so that meant the first few days of French class for my daughter. She was so afraid of it and then she came home yesterday all excited and said a sentence in French to me and then went on to tell me that the teacher gave them a paper with a list of words in French and asked them if they could figure out what they were or something like that and she said that all the newbie students got this panicked looked on their faces and she looked at the list and just smiled... the words were almost exactly the same as they are in Spanish!

So thank you again to all of you out there who said encouraging things to me here an in PMs. It looks like my daughter is on her way to her third language.

That's great rockzmom!

I think it's really great that the girls are already bilingual. Well done fore making sure that happened.

It's only marginally harder to learn a language from your second language and not your first.
I am doing it with Russian (mostly from English) and it has not been a massively big obstacle.

The only problem is that your daughter probably has better grasp on formal grammar and grammatical terms in English, since that's what they'll have learnt in school. When studying languages it's important to have a very confident basic grip on grammar in the language that you are using as the "base" for your studies.

Personally I like Spanish better than French, but French has a certain "je ne sais pas"

Perhaps you can inspire your daughter with some French films or music?

I'll post the old classic "Victime de la mode" by Mc Solaar, since your girl is a model!


Clap, prise 1, vision panoramique
[Clic, take one, panoramic vision]
Une camera avance gros plan sur Dominique
[A camera advances close-up on Dominique]
Seule devant la glace elle osculte son corps
[Alone in front of the mirror, she explores her body]
puis crie machinalement encore quelques efforts
[Then whispers to herself: a little more effort]
Tous les regimes sur elle furent teste
[All the diets were tested on her]
Toutes les tentatives ont ete des echecs complets
[All the time it was a complete failure]
Mais elle perd ses vers et pour plaire a son homme
[But she loses worms to please her man]
Dominique a decide de suivre la norme
[Dominique has decided to follow the norms]
Elle emmagazine, des magazines
[She collects magazines]
Dans lesquels elle pensent trouver le repos ultime
[In which she hopes to find the ultimate rest]
Maso, a l'assaut de ses formes rondelettes
[Maso(chistic), to the assault of the round forms of her body]

Chorus:
Elle etait occupee a couper du pecu
[She was busy, cutting ...]
Car on lui piquait les fesses, une victime de la mode
[Cause they were stingin her ass, Fashion victim]
Tel est son nom de code
[Was her code name]
Victime de la mode, tel est son nom de code
[Fashion victim, was her code name]

Lumiere, scene 2, l'as de trefle lui propose
[Lights, scene two, the ace of spades suggests her]
Une toute nouvelle donnee en voici la cause
[A brand new data, here is the cause]
Tellement d'efforts mais pour quel resultats
[So much effort, but for what results]
Elle perd de l'oseille au lieu de perdre du poids
[She loses money instead of losing weight]

Dominique, replique, et tres vite m'explique
[Dominique responds, and quickly explains]
Qu'elle veut etre la replique d'une creature de clip
[That she wants to be the replica of a (music)video creature]
Ainsi font font font les petites filles coquettes
[That's how it goes with pretty girls]
Elle suivent un modele qui leur fait perdre la tete
[They follow a model that makes them lose their mind]
Comme London, Washington, Kingston, Sharengton ou Carcasonne
[Like London, Washington, Kingston, Sharengton, or Carcasonne]
Quand le Telephone sonne elle nous reponds sans cesse
[When the phone rings, she constantly tells us that]

Chorus

Donc en guise de conclusion
[So, in concluding]
A l'analyse logique de cette situation
[The logic analysis of this situation]
Le regime, le jogging, la liposuccion
[Dieting, Jogging, and liposuccion]
Sont a tester mais il faut faire attention
[Are to be tried but with care]
Esperont que vous aurez compris
[Let's hope you'll understand]
Les bases tres claires de ce code de deontologie
[The clear basis of this code of ethic theories]
Prendre ou perdre quelques kilos
[Gaining or losing some pounds]
L'essentiel est d'etre vraiment bien dans sa peau
[The important thing is to feel good in your body]
Ma tacte au tic attaque toute ethique
[My tactic attacks every ethic]
Avec tact Dominique pas de panique
[With tact, Dominique, don't panic]
Ecoute bien ce funky beat

[Listen carefully to this funky beat]
La quete de l'image la laisse dans le stress
[The quest for image leave her in stress]

It's only marginally harder to learn a language from your second language and not your first.

It's true only if your second is at the same (or close) level to your first. Otherwise it is inefficient. It is all an offtop because they already know Spanish.

The fact that they already know spanish and english, they will do good with French! =)

I'm brazilian, and besides Portuguese I know also English, Spanish and Italian (among the latin root) and me and my wife are currently learning french. It's coming fairly naturally =)

A quick update for you all... the first quarter of school just ended and my daughter got an A in French.

We have started looking at colleges and learned from one college representative that even though in our county the foreign language courses offered in middle school/junior high are more difficult than high school as the students must pass two semester exams instead of just one year end final and "In order for students to earn high school credit in middle school, the school must provide the same course as in high school, including the use of the same curriculum and high school instructional resources, and use the same high school exam." the college would NOT accept ANY high school credit classes taken in middle school. They stated that she would need to take 4 years of the language IN high school in order for it to count on her application!!

Originally Posted by rockzmom

even though in our county the foreign language courses offered in middle school/junior high are more difficult than high school as the students must pass two semester exams instead of just one year end final and "In order for students to earn high school credit in middle school, the school must provide the same course as in high school, including the use of the same curriculum and high school instructional resources, and use the same high school exam." the college would NOT accept ANY high school credit classes taken in middle school.

May be there is a possibility for her to pass French exam upon entering (or during the first year of) high school to prove her knowledge of French is enough to fulfill the requirements and get the credit without further attending the French classes?

oh, jeez, is that yucky! Well, fwiw, I had one year of Russian in h.s. Went to college, not sure what level to take, so I had an interview with the dept. chairman and he said ok to enroll in 2nd year college Russian. I would really push any college to let me pro out of at least the elementary course. I mean, they will be bored out of their minds if they have to take Spanish.

OTOH, in order to get into grad school (in Russian linguistics) I had to pass reading exams in German and French. Four years of h.s. Spanish gave me the edge to skim through a small French for Reading Knowledge and pass the exam on the first try. If they already have taken a French class, that will be a piece of cake for them. (My use of French in grad school was miniscule.)

To answer CoffeeCup's question.... IF my daughter had stayed in Spanish, she would be at level 5 for 10th grade, level 6 for 11th grade and then, take AP (Advanced Placement) for 12th grade. IF she took AP Spanish and then passed the AP exam with a score of 4 or 5 (5 is the highest) she "might" be able to get college credit for it. It used to be if you got a 3 you could get some college credit, now some colleges are only allowing a score of 5 and the limit the number of AP credits that you can have as well.

Chaika, that is very good to know. As I stated in an earlier post.... the state only requires 2 credits of a foreign language to graduate high school and we learned that colleges want to see 4 years of a language in high school. As she had completed 4 years of high school level Spanish , I let my daughter have the choice of continuing or taking another elective. When she said she wanted to start French, I was VERY surprised and pleased. Now that we heard about the colleges wanting the 4 years to be completed IN high school and not taking into consideration high school classes taken in middle school, we thought we might have done the wrong thing by her.

I'm glad to know that besides her desire just to learn a third language, she might need it for other things in college and she made the correct choice.

I wish my parents had payed another language course for me when I was younger (other than English).

Be proud! =)