11 Plus Exams Forum

Hi,
My daughter is at Tiffin Girls and is hoping to do French and Spanish for GCSE. I feel that doing two languages is going to be a bit too much to cope with i.e a lot of
vocab tests etc. Any comments please.
Thanks

bubbles123 wrote:Hi,
My daughter is at Tiffin Girls and is hoping to do French and Spanish for GCSE. I feel that doing two languages is going to be a bit too much to cope with i.e a lot of
vocab tests etc. Any comments please.
Thanks

If she is good at both languages and feels happy with both (DS2 is fairly good at French, as he is at most of his subjects, but has only done ot for GCSE because he had to do at least one language and he preferred it less less, so to speak, than Spanish and he didn't fancy German ab initio), then it's unlikely to be a problem. Surely most of her subjects will involve pretty regular tests - and even if not, she will still have to keep up with the content.

I did French, Latin and German in the same O level series then Spanish O level in a year in Lower 6th, along with the first year of my German A level course.

I’d have faith in the school on this.
If they think she is capable of two languages I reckon they are likely to be right.

One of the dds in my dd's year did three languages at GCSE and is now at Cambridge studying a fourth language.

She clearly showed great ability in learning languages.

Students choosing to learn languages are on the decline so it is a great thing to be good at. DG

Thank you.

I agree with all the comments above, but am curious what her next favourite alternative would have been? Obviously she has triple science, double English, Maths and at least one language on the list already.

I think for good linguists it's probably fine. At my children's school they were expected to do two languages (for dd that would have been French and Spanish) - dd is not a natural linguist and she felt she'd really struggle. But many of her friends have done it without any problem.

Just an anecdote - we have a friend who spoke 5 languages from school/university days (fluent in all five!) He then met and married a woman (in his 40s) whose first language was none of those five. He said that he could learn her language easily but he had to let one of the other five go because the similarities tripped him up. So he just "forgot" one language and is now fluent in the other as well. Some people have amazing brains!

The year before we had DS1, we went on a coach holiday to Hungary, giving me the opportunity to use Dutch, French and German (and a very small amount of Hungarian, mainly related to the realm of ordering alcoholic beverages ).

As an aside, this was prior to Hungary joining the EU and when DH and I went off on a self guided trip one day to a neighbouring town, the owner of the bar we went into for a coffee was so excited at the arrival of foreign tourists that we were treated to a free liqueur to go with it .

We had also recently had a holiday in Italy (the Hungary trip was already booked and taken, then I found out that a) I had actually won a competition I'd gone in for and b) the date of departure was pretty darn soon; fortunately, we both had spare A/L and both our employers were accommodating), but fortunately somewhere which was already used to tourists, as we only had time for a very short course on 'holiday Italian' before we went. I rather wished that I had made more use of the Parliamo Italiano language course books and LPs that my mum had treated herself to when I was a child.

On a slightly different note, can anyone recommend any books/sites/apps to learn a new language easily?

DD wants to specialize in French and Spanish and I would love to learn as well

Hi hemamalav,

You could dip your toe in the water with Duolingo. I prefer it to memrise personally but I know others who find the latter useful. Both are free apps with a range of languages available. http://www.freerice.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; has an option for practising vocabulary under its languages subheading. There’s a new version of this website in beta with the old one shutting down in July. It’s a nice way to learn and help others at the same time.

HTH
PS