Do I die on the French hill or walk away?

[Lonecatwithkitten]

GCSE mock results coming in and apart from French DD has done well from working hard. She has also won a place at a professional musical theatre college, is studying for grade 7 acting and MT and grade 5 ballet (she only started in May). Has starring roles in two musicals. She works hard, but has a visual processing disorder that she gets extra time and use of a lap top for.
She tells me that over Christmas she did an hour of French every day, but she is really struggling with volume of vocab. In the summer mock she got a four, but they only had to prepare two topics. This full mock she has got a 3.
I have been called into school to discuss this and DD tells me the teacher thinks she has done know work and will be asking me to crack down on her.
She works really hard ( the other mocks are 6-8) both at school and in the activities that support her future career.
She has a boyfriend who I know she is having sex with because we talk, she tells me if she has a drink at the occasional party she goes to. So I feel we have a good open relationship.
Just to add context I work full time running my own 24/7 business and my partner is currently receiving chemo and will shortly undergo two major high risk surgeries.
So if you have got this far I feel that given the good relationship, the general hard work and our family situation French is a hill I am not prepared to die on. Would I be wrong to say to school I think we just need to walk away from French.

I apologise my dyslexia took over and there is some bad spelling/grammar.

If she can get good grades in her other subjects & learn parts I don’t understand why she can’t learn French. French GCSE requires learning vocabulary which is the same as a part. Does she know you are on board with her giving up French?

So French isn't something she wants to do more with in the future? (Aside of languages being a good thing in general). I think school work is important but you can't be expected to be great at everything.

Sorry, having read above posts just checking - do you mean give up French entirely or just accept her result won't be fantastic?

I guess you also have to consider how many GCSEs that will leave her with and if that will compromise future university plans? If school want to discuss is it because they want her to drop it or because they feel she should be achieving higher?

I think walking away is melodramatic. Just meet the teacher explain that dd is struggling and why and that you don't intend to put pressure on her over it as she will get what she gets it's just a GCSE. If she is borderline 3/4 she may pull it out of the bag in the proper one, or she might not. But either way she will learn stuff over the next few months, which is what school is for not to just achieve high grades in everything.

If school want to discuss is it because they want her to drop it or because they feel she should be achieving higher?

It will be because she has a higher target grade so the teacher has to be seen to be taking action for performance management purposes. No more or less to it I suspect.

I would just tell them that you see her working really hard at home on her French and it just isn't clicking for her. Would glasses help? Irlens lenses were a game changer for my dc. I think my doc's school started to take it more seriously when we showed them some you tube mock ups of the visual effects they see when they look at words. It is really hard to understand if you don't see words like that so maybe approach it from that angle and see what the school suggests. If the teacher can understand it might make it easier. Did she have difficulty learning to read English initially? Discuss that with the teacher too.

Honestly, how often in her life is she likely to need to speak French? If she is doing well in other subjects then I'd just say: you know what? Shes shit at french, has no interest in it, will probably flunk it, never mind. As long as her grades in the important subjects are good, don't worry about it. She wont keep the knowledge anyway. I used to watch a show when I was young where Latin was occasionally used. I was fascinated and started trying to learn it. For about a year I could read Latin. Not fluently but I could guess words I didn't know from context and could get the gist of a text. 20 years later I have retained very little of it, probably because I dont use it. If she wont need it and has no interest in it just don't worry about it.

@Butterymuffin giving it up completely is what I am thinking.
@WisestIsShe she would like to the professionals are telling me has the talent and drive to pursue a career in Musical Theatre. So French is not necessary MT, acting and ballet are.
For context she has won one of only 8 places at one of if not the top MT colleges for sixth form.
Lines she doesn't learn as such, but they come by using them. I think the vocab is the sheer volume.
Grounding her and insisting on volumes of French would I feel have a really detrimental effect on our relationship which is good. I have always been a 'I am not your friend I am your parent' person.

If she drops French she will be doing 8 GCSEs, but as far as UCAS points goes she already has the equivalent of two A star GCSEs and one A star A- level from MT and acting qualifications.

DS2 has a severe visual processing disorder and also gets extra time and use of a laptop and potentially a reader. He is year 8 at the moment but I am going to be pushing very hard for him not to do the standard 10 GSCEs plus HPQ that the school advocates. He only needs 8. He will be doing 8 and spending the extra time focussing on English and Maths (which will in turn help him in his other subjects). I'm fortunate in that he's at a selective independent and so I have a reasonable amount of parent power (although I might be being overly optimistic since I've not yet raised it with school).

If they won't let her drop it have you tried duolingo. Its really helped Ds2 with his languages.

@TW2013 we have done glasses and behavioural optometry everything is as good as it gets as far as help goes.
Her phonics is good, but Ed psych says she had no connection between phonics and phonemes - I also have this failure in connection, but my phonics knowledge is poor too.
I would rather her have no French grade than a poor one.

Does the school still put emphasis on EBacc? In which case they will push for her to achieve in a language.

It does sound like she could drop French and have extra study time for other subjects, would school support that?

I would rather her have no French grade than a poor one

^^I think that is a very sad mindset. Sometimes we struggle sometimes we fail, that is okay and is actually a lesson in resilience and that it is okay not to achieve all the time/ be perfect.

Is there a reason you'd rather have no French grade than a poor one?
If she's found well in everything else, school might not see the need for her to drop French and focus somewhere else. That would certainly be the case at my school....
It'll also depend what other subjects she's doing for p8 data etc, if school are bothered by that, which I suspect they will be....

It is an independent school mildly selective they do not emphasis Ebacc. It is a school that is excellent for SEN, but also has good academic reputation. There are others who are not doing a language. But she is bright and has good coping mechanisms and they teachers often forget she has the processing disorder -she got a 6 in the listening/speaking papers higher papers, but the written papers were so bad that she got a U in higher. But foundation combined to give a 3. Over the last 5 years there have been several times when I have had to step in and remind them.
She is used to failure in MT you have to be and she is very resilient about not being successful in auditions so I have no concerns about that.

I feel that she would better served having extra time for her other subjects and for her extra curricular activities that further her future career.

I think she'll benefit massively from having a language, and I'd be sitting down with her to come up with a plan so that she feels she has more of a handle on things. I wouldn't necessarily be grounding here and damning her to work five hours a night on trench vocabulary if you think she is trying, but I'd be looking for ways to boost that grade.

A language is hugely beneficial in life, whether she does MT for her whole career or goes corporate or self employed, or even just for travel purposes.

I think that is a very sad mindset. Sometimes we struggle sometimes we fail, that is okay and is actually a lesson in resilience and that it is okay not to achieve all the time/ be perfect This. Let her have a go, but don’t stress about not getting an A* Well done to your daughter for getting into the MT school - there may well be stuff on the curriculum there that she’s not great at, but she still has to do.

Don't give up on the French yet. The vocab thing is just time using it tbh. There will be a big difference in the amount of vocab she knows by the time her actual exams come along.

If she has a method of learning lines (ie just saying them) can she apply that to French. Ie each week / fortnight pick a section of vocab and she can practice using it, even if it's just substituting the English word for French in an otherwise English sentence. That will work if her problem is recall of nouns quickly enough. You can then work up to stringing sentences together

Most of languages is confidence. You need to build it, not tell her you accept she's just crap at it. Good linguists have the confidence to change how they say things to match the words they know rather than getting stuck on the bits they don't. That mental dexterity is what languages are really good at teaching

A language is hugely beneficial in life,

Well yes, sort of, if she's lost in Paris and needs to ask for directions to the train station, but she has already studied it for years and so sitting the exam is not going to make one bit of difference to any such "benefit".

I would agree with the OP that I'd rather 8 really good grades (using the extra time to boost her other subjects) than 8 good and one poor.

Personally I would recommend that she takes the exam as she's come this far, but doesn't stress about it too much. If she fails it doesn't matter, but she may manage a pass. As soon as I went on to the next level of education no one gave a shit about previous results. I don't think anyone has ever asked me or cared what my GCSE grades were.

Similar position here - daughter struggling with mental health at the moment and the French was the straw that was breaking her. Went into school (also independent - very pastoral with reasonable academic levels with no compulsorary language at GCSE) and spoke with them. In our case we agreed to drop French altogether and to have extra maths support in some of the gaps left.
Do what is right for your daughter - not what the World thinks is the right thing. NOt having French GCSE won't hider her in life

I would watch this m.youtube.com/watch?v=FARizLljRkc with your dd, note which disturbances she has and then get the teacher to watch it and then let them make suggestions as to how she can more effectively support your dd. I imagine that s/he has no idea of what the notes on your dd's file mean in reality for your dd.

Do also discuss how tiring she finds just getting through the day. My dd finds even being a passenger in a car tiring at this time of year with headlights. Presumably she is already in a good point of the classroom and lights are adjusted for her.