which languages are your dc learning?

[ZZZenAgain]

Just that really, which languages are your dc learning in secondary school and do you think they are being well taught?

DS1 "high performing academy" but significant dyslexia does not do any MFL. DS2 top boys boarding school does two MFL French is compulsory and Latin also compulsory all taught in classes with no more than 12 in one case only 7 the teaching is excellent..

"My dcs are amazed that I went into my oral exams not knowing the themes or questions in advance."

Do they really know what questions they are going to get?!!!
It's no wonder we see so many A and A* grades then. I did O levels way back in 1975 and we didn't have a clue what we would be asked. We just did a 2 year syllabus and could have been asked about anything we had learned during that time. The same applied to the A levels as well.

dd learned french, latin, spanish, italian, german, japanese and mandarin at various stages at school. She learned very little of most of them though so they are of no use at all except to superficially impress the occasional asian friend she meets. Even french which she took to gcse and got an A* she can barely speak as it does seem to be more a question of ability to memorise passages than actually being able to speak the language these days.

"My dcs are amazed that I went into my oral exams not knowing the themes or questions in advance.
Do they really know what questions they are going to get?!!!"
My DS2's school does the iGCSE I believe they dont know what they are going to get asked in the oral!

Not sure about all exam boards, but my DC have to prepare a presentation for their orals so whilst they don't know the exact questions they can predict what might come up fairly acuurately.

(accurately obviously)

I think dd knew 6 questions in advance which all but one of the questions she would be asked in the exam would be selected from. The remaining exam question would be similar or related - on one occasion she accurately guessed exactly what it would be.

My DSSs (French lycée) are learning English and Spanish. They are quite well taught - they have mostly native-speaker teachers (always for Spanish) and get good marks. We supplement their English very significantly, but tbh most children at their school have English tutors and/or extensive travel to Anglophone countries.

Ds, yr 7, non-selective independent, is doing French and Spanish through til end KS3 with choice of one of those or Italian from scratch at GCSE (one at least is compulsory).

I think the teaching so far is very good (Spanish is native speakers; French not so).

The textbooks seem to be very similar to when I was at school and they are learning verb conjugation straight away (a teacher friend from a local comp - language specialist school no less - was horrified and said they don't do verbs til yr 8 or 9...???)

I think learning French and Spanish together is harder than French and German which we did at school; he does get some vocab muddled up between the two.

DD is in Year 7 at a local comp.

All Y7 do two languages. Either French/Spanish or French/German. DD is doing German. This was allocated randomly.

I think there is an option to take Latin from Y9.

Year 8 DS does French, Spanish and Latin.

He's been doing French since Y3, Spanish & Latin since the start of Y7. He's a 6a in French and loving the Spanish and Latin, hoping to keep them up when he goes to Senior school at Y9 (3 tier system here).

dd is in Y8 at high achieving comprehensive. She learns French (started from the beginning) and has 3 hrs worth of lessons a week.

DD learns French for two hours a week, no other languages are offered.

My daughter is in Year 7 and is presently doing French. Already she knows more than I did after five years of french. She is in the top set so maybe has a natural ability. She had the choice of Mandarin and Spanish and has chosen Spanish which should start this week.

DD1 yr9 - French, Spanish, Germna and Latin

DD2 yr7 - French, Spanish, Greek and Latin

oops posted too soon - meant to say DD2 has very limited Spanish lessons it is very much a second language choice which I think is a shame because she is good at it but French gets a higher priority on the timetable.
Greek is also limited but for some reason DD2 is just flying with Greek - says she finds is simple - which I find odd because it very literally is all greek to me - pardon the pun.

ds1 - french, latin, italian, greek. he could have chosen german instead of italian, and also in year 10 had the chance at that point to start russian or spanish from scratch for an accelerated additional gcse. independent school.

DS has to choose an extra MFL for year 9, he is currently studying French and Latin. He has the choice of Spanish, German or Mandarin. Spanish would obviously be the best fit/easiest option, but DH speaks it well we have family living in Spain and he could easily study it outside of school. It seems a shame to pass up an opportunity to study Mandarin.

How difficult is Mandarin, anyone any experience?

DD in y7 does German, Spanish, French and Latin. The idea is to try out different languages and then choose 3 of them in y8.

Dd is doing accelerated french in S1 (Year7 I think) and has the option of spanish or italian for S2.

In Primary they did Italian and French.

DD (year 10) is doing French and Russian

DD1 has been learning French in an international school in France for coming up for three years. No real French before. She is now in the advanced/francophone class. I am very proud of her and the effort she has put in to get there.

Her sister, in contrast...

"How difficult is Mandarin, anyone any experience"
I was talking to a teacher of Mandarin who is Chinese. I was absolutely fascinated. Apparently in the beginning its very difficult and may take over a week to learn 1 character and many despair but if you persevere by the end of a year you can learn a character in 5 mins. Apparently a child learning Mandarin to GCSE level or IGCE in this case will not be fluent by any stretch of the imagination by the end even if they get an A* but will have the building blocks in place to go on to learn more in the future.