High School Language

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sarah

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5-Year Member
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My younger son is entering hs next year and is deciding on a language. Chinese is offered and he is leaning toward taking that. I assume this is a plus to the service academies?
 
Well you obviousley have to take a foreign language in high school. Atleast my high school it was required. But if you look on academyadmissions.com a foreign language is a good class to take.
 
I would expect languages are all weighted the same . . . But I do know that taking an AP language is viewed more highly than other APs, so encourage him to stick with it
 
Chinese

I take Chinese (In Honors Chinese II now), and It seems like a good language to learn. Even if the academy doesn't work out, there are still other occupations that could probably use someone who can speak the language. Oh, and tell him to REMEMBER THE CHARACTERS! Even if he doesn't have to now, he will eventually, and it'll save him a lot of the trouble I have to go through now.....:biggrin:
 
Chinese is a strategic language here, which means they want more people to take it. If your son becomes proficient in the language, or even just gets a solid base before coming here, it would be easy to get a minor in Chinese. Not to mention the extra pay each month after graduation.
 
A bit of advice to your son...tell him to work hard and get everything down the first time. I didn't care much for my 10+ years of Chinese school and so now (when I'm actually committed to learning it), I have to do so from the beginning again.
 
IF you are good at it, you can get extra pay after graduation.
You have to take a test on fluency for that. I'm not sure what the requirements are.

I study German, but the requirements for extra pay are basically fluency in writing and speech. (I'm not that good.)
 
Thanks to all for the advice. To those who are currently taking Chinese--is it radically more difficult than say, French, and would you take it again knowing what you know now?
 
I took Spanish through middle school.
I have taken Chinese all four years of high school.
I have taken German junior and senior year.

I would definitely take Chinese again. Do NOT let people scare you about the language. Yes, the characters are significantly harder than 26-35 letters. But, there is little grammar and 0 conjugation; 2 things that are very difficult in German for me that Chinese has made easy. Zhongwen is a long term goal. To even become conversational takes a few years. Keep that in mind, but I'd say definitely try it out.
 
Chinese is more difficult than French for several reasons:

character recognition/memorization (you already know all the letters the French employ)
Intonation/inflection: not always "natural" to western & romance language native speakers.

Good luck!
 
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