humanrefutation wrote:JayMKE wrote:These foreign language classes really are an undue burden, its already pretty much too late once you get to high school or especially college to expect any fluency at all from most people imo. I took plenty of Spanish classes and I pretty much only know my numbers and colors, perhaps if I took these classes starting back in kindergarten or 1st grade it would of had more effect.
I disagree that it's too late to learn a foreign language once you get to high school. Rather, learning any foreign language comes down to the frequency in which you use it.
Think of our native languages - we learned them by being forced to - our families spoke the language, our friends spoke the language, our communities spoke the language, etc. We had to learn in order to communicate with those closest to us.
It's a similar concept with foreign languages. If you only speak Spanish in class, you're not going to take much with you going forward. But if you immerse yourself in the language, you can learn it fairly well. But you have to keep up practice.
Two of my best friends learned Spanish in high school and are fluent today - but what boosted their fluency was taking classes in college, traveling abroad to Spanish-speaking countries for semester-long exchange programs, and practicing with their spanish-speaking friends constantly. Now, they can move fairly easily between English and Spanish.
So, it can be done. I think it's a useful skill. But it requires a lot of practice, IMO.
My brother who is a Captain in the Army took German in high school and after a tour in Iraq the unit he controlled got stationed in Germany. He spent about two years in Germany and he said that simply by living there and being around German speaking people every day, much of what he learned in high school gradually came back.
Kinda like that great bar scene in Inglorious Bastards though, he did say German was a very tricky language because how you enunciated certain words could mean different things depending where in Germany you are.
That said, i question why knowing a foreign language should impact admittance into a college, much less for an athlete? To me at least, knowing a second language should be an elective choice unlike other core science, math, history, etc courses which should be required.