GCSE Options - French, German or Latin??

[Midnight001]

Hi All, my DD is really stuck about which languages to choose for GCSE. She has to choose 1 MFL so she’s going to choose German, but would really like to continue with either French or Latin too. Is it tricky studying 2 languages?

Difficulty is she enjoys Latin, but gets higher marks in French. Later on she hopes to study medicine if that helps. Any thoughts or comments would be really helpful!

My DD1 took both French and German, she did very well in both. Quite a few took two languages.

If one of my children was in the same position as your DD I would encourage them to take the language they enjoy most.

I found French and German fine together but found German and Russian too similar.

I did all 3 for GCSE, Latin can useful for medical terminology, mostly anatomy making the "anterior/posterior, cranial/caudal" more logical.

I did two modern languages plus Latin at school (years ago though..........!) then one of the modern languages at A level.

There are far too few people taking languages in my biased opinion so if she wants to take a second language, that's great. If there's a huge discrepancy in the marks she's getting, I'd choose the better one but if there's little difference then I'd leave the choice to her.

My DD did French & Spanish (so not much help to you I guess). Although she did sometimes get confused (not helped by having the same teacher) she found the benefits outweighed the negatives.

Benefits were - she could guess words more easily if she knew them in the other language, & she only had to learn one set of 'exam technique' for the 2 subjects.

I did all three but wouldn't recommend it nowadays. Latin is lovely though. I did French A level and being able to speak a bit of French has been very useful

Mine did French and Latin, but had to give up her 3rd language (Spanish) as she couldn't fit them all in to her timetable. It was fine

My other daughter struggled with languages because (at least partially) because of dyslexia. She often confused French and Spanish and hated Latin, so was very relieved just to do one for GCSE.

Many years ago I did French and German O levels. I'm not naturally good at languages but don't think they are similar enough to confuse. I'd have thought German would go quite well with Latin though, especially for someone who is good at learning rules - they are both nice and logical.

mine did french and latin
if your child is at a state school then latin can make them stand out a bit more when they do their ucas form as not many state schools offer it

I did French and Latin to A-level. I chose Latin over German, as I reckoned (rightly) that it would be far easier to learn German outside of school than it would Latin, and I have since done German to AS-level.

I found German easier than others, because I had already met the concept of cases in Latin, so that was useful, and French and Latin work well together for vocab. Now I'm in my 40s, I get more interference between vocab in other languages but I didn't have a problem with it at school.

I suspect French may be rather easier to pick up again later. I also agree with the person who said that Latin can be helpful with learning medical terminology.
Ask the school about the marks difference; it's difficult to know from raw marks - you really need to know what sort of grade they see her getting.
No speaking & listening with Latin, but set texts instead.

DD did French and Latin. She found Latin useful for her English degree with Early English translations.

DD is in Year 9 and will also study Latin as that is his strongest language. He will also study either French or German, depending how he gets on this term and after discussions with his teachers. We will recommend that DS studies the language he most enjoys and which he will get the highest grade for.

Thank you all so much for your comments. It’s such a tough decision! Sounds like French and German combination should be quite manageable though.

From talking to DD again she seems to only be considering Latin as she thinks it may be regarded more highly than French (even though she finds it harder!). Not sure I agree with her though on this...

German and Latin are working well together from a Grammar point of view.

But I would normally say that a living language is easier to identify with compared to one you use for textbooks in history or RS.

I found Latin helpful in understanding other languages, it helped with learning other languages.
Regardless what she chooses, she won't really become fluent. Having said this I agree with poster above
"There are far too few people taking languages in my biased opinion so if she wants to take a second language, that's great"

I'm an MFL specialist and it's great that she has the chance to take two languages and also wants to! yay!

I did O levels in French, German and Latin (plus Greek as an extra) then did Spanish O level in sixth form alongside my language A levels.

I would say Latin helps support French, but yr dd is not thinking of Latin and French so that's a bit irrelevant.

German and French are very different languages, but a massive GCSE advantage will be that the specs are the same (assuming both are AQA) so she will only need to learn for one what is needed (eg key elements of your long written piece or what you need to do for the speaking exam). Also there is a massive correlation in terms of grammatical terms like past participle and auxiliary verb which non linguists don't know or use.

I cannot imagine that studying Latin GCSE will win kudos points that would outweigh what sounds like a probably higher grade in French tbh.

I would also check the content of the Latin GCSE (I am not familiar with it) as it clearly must be very different from a modern language.

Another one here who did all three. I think any two of them work well together - French and German because they're not confusingly similar, Latin and French because of vocab support, and German and Latin because of grammatical similarities. Personally I would pick Latin plus an MFL, as long as she's reasonably happy with Latin. There's more of a spread of skills (elements of history in Latin), plus the logical side of Latin means it goes surprisingly well with sciences and maths (I know lots of 'maths classicists' as well as 'linguist classicists'). Plus the medical terminology aspect is handy too.

@Midnight001 no one cares what your GCSEs are in for medicine. They count maths, English and sciences and then just give points for the rest (if that's part of their selection criteria). Textiles will have the same points as Latin as Food as history. Choose the one she'll get best marks in.

I did Latin and French for O level nearly 40 years ago.
I can't say that Latin has ever been of use to me, so hopefully the syllabus is better than it used to be.

I did French and Latin GCSE (a long time ago).

An obvious big difference is that a modern languages GCSE has speaking and listening and writing components. Reading written French is just 1/4 of it (or however the exams are weighted).

Whereas Latin, that's basically all there is, reading and translating written Latin

• you don't need to be able to speak it, you don't listen to people having conversations in Latin. We had to learn a small section of verse to be able to translate it in the exam - not sure if that is the same now.

Arguably your grammar needs to be better for Latin, so you can unpick the sentences and translate them properly.

But French, you need to do an oral exam, that can be really nerve wracking. And listening, you need a good ear. But you can have fun improving by watching tv or films.

They are quite different skills, anyway. I'd have a think carefully about which ones she feels are her strengths.

My DD (Yr12) did French, Latin and Classical Greek at GCSE.
@Midnight001 if your DD enjoys Latin, look at the ‘new’ Latin GCSE spec.
You will find 50% is the language and the other 50% is verse and prose which is akin to the skills needed for English Lit but in the original language.

Agree read the GCSE specification. DS did it last year and really enjoyed it, alongside Spanish. His was half Latin translation etc and half Roman civilisation. I think WJEC board. As well as useful for medicine we thought it would be potentially useful for biology higher education which is DS's ambition.

@EwwSprouts DDs board was OCR.

The element to this I would consider is keeping at least one going at A level if she’s a linguist. If she wants medicine (does she?) then MFL A level is out.

At least keeping going with one spoken language means she could do a degree with a year abroad. That would really make her stand out. Linguists are shrinking in number. Anyone wanting a degree plus a year abroad or plus an MFL is going to have a serious application and will stand out. Latin gcse won’t get her abroad for a year. So if she’s better at other MFLs, do them. Far more use.

My DD1 did MFL. Doesn’t use them in her job. She did Latin club at school and it was fun but the MFLs were more important and lead to greater opportunities. MFL degrees are easier to get into as well.

Can do MFL A level for medicine. As long as have biology and/or chemistry (more options if have both) the 3rd really doesn't matter.

I did French and German. I was very good at both.

Thanks everyone for your comments. After lots of dithering she’s finally decided to go with French and German (where she’d get the higher marks).
Thanks @PresentingPercy and @mumsneedwine, she quite liked the idea of some time abroad so think that’s swayed her!