Anyone do a language as one of their subjects at school ?

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I do German as one of my subjects.

I have been doing German since year 8 semester 2.

Does anyone find doing a language hard ?

I find it hard because when i have my listening exams i find it hard to keep up with the person speaking German on the tape.

The person on the tape is talking very fast and that's what i find very hard; to try and keep up.

I took three years of College French to keep from having to do the math classes. I ended up going for a major that required the math. I was doing good in Statistics before I realized they just assumed I knew algebra.

I liked French. I was always irritated that I would be reading and they would toss out a French phrase and I would have no clue (now we have altavista translator, no problem) but that was before the internet.

I don't use it, I live on the west coast where Spanish is the other language.

Merle

When I start school in the fall I'm going into International Baccalaureate and there I am required to take a language. I've chosen Spanish because I took it for eight years in primary school. I'm not eager because I hated my teacher so much during those many years I never knew if I actually cared for the language or not. I'm leaning toward not liking it currently, though.

Nope because my timetable clashed. I'm learning French by myself over the summer.

Required for me.

Took French from 6th Grade to 11th Grade and some in college.

French was required at my school. Joined it in year 5, took French until Year 7.

Took German till end of year 7.

I think Latin would have been better, considering it's the root tongue for nearly every single european language.

I took French in middle and high school. In high school I was considered a "top student", which isn't saying much considering that I was in the "slow class" that thought that they were supposed to pronounce the h in "heurs" despite the fact that its English equivilent starts with a silent h! In college I was required to learn a language for the B.A. program. I chose ASL.

In Primary School (for all 7 years), I learn't Italian, then in High School, I chose Indonesian. it's a huge change in langauge, but I was willing to take a step further.

The other option was French.

Nope, My old high school didint offer em.They had junior high french but that stopped due to lack of interest.Senior High French??Forget it!!In a small hick town like vegreville in rural alberta, not too many folks are keen on French due to many being unhappy with Quebec.We had Religion Class tho
They did have french and other classes offerred through distance learning, but not too many people are keen on distance learnin.

My old hs ....

http://stmarys.eics.ab.ca/

I do German as well, I live in the Netherlands and it's very similar to my own language, the only thing I hate is the German grammar, die, der, das, dem, den, etc... ugh...

I had to do French because my school specialises in languages. I also did spanish in year 8-9, some people in my year did chinese and I really wanted to do that instead.

I done Spainsh from Years 7-11 and I got a Grade "B" in my GCSE overall. I have not taken it as an AS/A2 Level since though.

I also done done French from Year 8 Term 2, until the end of Year 9, I chose not to take it as a GCSE though.

I took 6 years of French in middle and high school, and 2 years of Mandarin Chinese in college.

Listening was definitely my biggest issue with French. They talk too fast and slur everything together. I still can't understand a native French speaker after taking the language for 6 years . I don't have the same issue with Chinese though. I think that's because it's tonal, so it's easier to tell when one word ends and another starts. However, that's the same reason the pronunciation is so difficult. My voice is so monotone it's hard to change the tone of my voice to any noticeable extent.

In high school, I took 3 years of Japanese and 1 year of German.

In the beginning, I did like the language and had a lot of interest in it. In middle school, I was even given Japanese language books to help me out even before taking the classes. The first year, I had a big advantage over everyone because of that, but my grades werent the best. They never were. I had an actual native Japanese person as a teacher, but her teaching skills werent the best in the world. I learned extremely little those 3 years. I just couldnt concentrate on learning that language for some reason. It would anger me too when every single person in the class had really bad pronounciation would get the same grade as me on the speaking parts of tests, while I had a pronounciation on par of that of a native Japanese. The teacher herself even said my pronounciation was really good. But apparently not good enough to get any extra points over the other kids.

My senior year I took German. I was with a bunch of immature kids that ticked me off most of the time with their constant random noises, chatting, and overall...well, immaturity. The teacher would have to have a stern talking to the whole class for several minutes practically every other day. It never worked. I liked my teacher and even got along with him. If I were in a higher level class, I probably even would have had fun. There was a German club boat trip I went on that had traditional Bulgarian dancing as the show. The side of my teacher I saw on that boat trip I seriously wish everyone else in my class could have seen. They didnt like him, but thats their own dumb fault. He is a very lighthearted and fun guy, but sadly couldnt show that in a class full of immature f@%ktards. Im still interested and am trying to learn the language, just not actively. I actually can translate more German than Japanese, even though I have 2 more years experience in Japanese. Odd, huh?

I mentioned it before, but my pronounciation of foreign languages is really good. Im not trying to toot my own horn here, by the way . Its really weird though, because all I need to do is listen to it a few times, and I can duplicate their sounds almost exactly, even Chinese languages. It seems like very few people that I grew up with had the ability I have. I cant always remember grammer or individual words, but I can pronounce them really well. If language classes in school actually payed attention to how the students were pronouncing words, I might have done a little better. I can remember sitting in Japanese or German class and when I student would pronounce a word wrong, I would cringe because it wasnt just amatuer mispronounciation. It was just...horrible. I was surpised how rare a teacher would correct them.

I find learning languages very difficult. I've spent years of study in several languages, but in the end I'm not fluent in any one of them. The hardest thing for me is conversation. I can never progress in oral fluency because I'm so bad at generating responses and moving conversations along in general, so I'm never able to practice with native speakers the way one needs to in order to build up proficiency. Most language classes that I've taken in college focus only on writing and memorizing presentations, so I don't feel they've been useful to me in the areas where I need the most practicing. This problem is really frustrating for me, because I've perseverated on languages ever since childhood, but I just can't develop a useful ability in any of them. Employers don't care if someone can sort of read (with a dictionary), or sort of comprehend overheard conversations but not really be able to join in, because their first question is, "Are you fluent?" I haven't found any solution to this so far.