Food tech or German?

[Jynxed]

Sorry, another GCSE options thread.

DD has compulsory 3 x sciences, 2 x English, maths , French & RE. She has chosen history & economics but is completely stuck on the last option.

Until recently it would have been food tech all the way - she has always enjoyed cooking and the nutrition side interests her also. However for the last year she has had a very shouty teacher, much given to emails home and punishments for minor misdemeanours. This has completely ruined the subject for her.

Meanwhile she has won prizes for German and they have written asking her specifically to continue with German. But she will have one language already, my gut feeling says that she will enjoy food tech, it's good to have a tech subject in the mix of GCSEs, and she should not be put off by one teacher. But on the other hand, if she doesn't take German she will be dropping her best subject.

Help! Views please! We just can't seem to reach a conclusion and the deadline is fast approaching.

I heard that Food Tech is mostly about marketing, business models & packaging choices. Catering would be better if she actually wants to cook. But check on that.

Thanks Iijkk. That's an important tip, as it is cooking that she likes and has no interest in marketing / promotion. I will check about that.

Food Tech syllabus.

Thank you! I see your point - quite a lot about product development and packaging. What happened to plain old cooking, and how to feed a family for a fiver!

German will be far more useful I reckon especially if she's good at it.

Cooking she can practice at home, if she wants to do a proper course in catering or cookery later then there will be far more options to do so. I agree, food tech is more about the tech and less about the food, which is a shame.

But, on the other hand subjects aren't a massive deal at this stage, so she should do something she enjoys if she can afford to lose the grades - if her grades overall are good then it probably won't matter so much. If she's more borderline then the subject with better grades might be better.

It's a bit rubbish that French is compulsory yet German is an option. In her shoes I'd want to drop French and do both German and food tech!

I am a bit biased as I am a language teacher, but I tend to think that languages at her age are something you tend to pick up easily as long as you keep practising at them. She'll find it harder to pick up German again later on, and probably forget most of what she's learned unless she has regular opportunities to practise using it. Yet cookery is a life skill and one she can easily practise and develop at home, and/or teach herself from books. You can judge the results of cooking yourself as well whereas if you're trying to teach yourself a language you can't always know if you're pronouncing something correctly or using it in the right context.

However if she's likely to drop German completely after GCSE then it may be less reason to carry on. But most of my friends from school who did GCSE and then A level languages are at least moderately fluent as adults, whereas most people I know who dropped the language before or just after GCSE can't remember any of it - myself included!

IMO she should do whichever she wants. There are pros & cons for both.

Food Tech would give her a more practical subject, compared to the rest of her choices, but Bertie is right, if she enjoys cooking, she can do that out of school. It is not a requirement to have Food Tech GCSE to go on to a Catering Diploma course at college.

On the other hand, MFLs are quite a rarity these days, and being proficient in one or two foreign languages is a great asset. If she is so good at German, by dropping it now she will also be dropping the opportunity to take it as one of her A levels, and possibly as a degree subject...Bear in mind that languages can be combined with many other degree subjects, and those graduates are much in demand and can be used in almost any career www.prospects.ac.uk/options_modern_languages.htm

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German. Keeps so many more options open. Two MFLs are so much better than one! It opens up French/German degree and so many other combinations which will probably have a lower offer if an MFL is included. It will probably mean lots of offers too! Keep going with the language. Do not drop her best subject. That makes no sense.