Is it worthy at all?

[HSKLNG]

Hello, maybe you can give some wise words about this situation.

We been doing Latin, Greek and Spanish for several years now and she likes them very much and refuse to stop working on them, but when quiz or test time comes along she dives nose first into the ground (crashed and burned). Her daily work is fine, though.

I have been thinking if this is a futile undergoing...after all, aren't the grades what are required for the transcript? If the grades are not good, have we wasted all this time doing these subjects? or Is there another way to grade this subjects other than quizzes and tests?:001_huh:

My purpose for these subjects:
Greek - Understanding of the NT:)
Latin - English language and Ancient readings:)
Spanish - Is the second language of the nation:glare:

Hope this is not as clear as mud, I am looking forward for some wise words.

Thanks in advance.

PS: We will start her 11th grade next August.

[Jenn in CA]

I think your goals are great, and you should keep the languages going as long as you can. However, grading is something that people have strong opinions about, and others may not agree with me, but we are pretty relaxed about grading. It's up to you to decide what kind of effort or scores or whatever gets what grade.

One suggestion is to make the quizzes/tests open book. Another is to make the grade based on her comprehension of material on a daily basis. Another way you could give a grade is to say, "Completing 100% of the book gets an A, 80% gets a B," etc. Some other ways to show comprehension could be coming up w/a final project, such as a large-ish translation project, a short composition in the language, creating her own noun/verb charts & power point presentation... you and she could get creative.

Our language experience: Our kids study Latin and Greek. They will study these until they graduate from our homeschool. They don't take any closed-book tests (this year they took the level 2 National Latin Exam but that was a first). Their grades are based on their performance on their daily lessons.

If she needs to go slower, you could do less and call the language study part of an English or humanities credit. This was suggested to me once by a charter school counselor and I think it's a great idea.

I would love to hear other ideas.

[Laurie4b]

Does she have test anxiety in general?
Are you the one designing the tests? Could you be too stringent a grader? Do all the tests use one format (that she perhaps is not good at?)
There are other ways to measure language competence besides tests. Can she converse with Spanish speakers? Can she read and understand Spanish? Can she write basic things in Spanish?
Can she translate Greek and Latin? Does she recognize roots?
It's possible that you're testing in a way that isn't showing her ability.
Ds just took a community college course in which everything was graded on a flat level: class participation per day counted as much as an essay which counted as much as a pop quiz which counted as much as a research paper. Now, I would not grade that way, but it shows that you can grade however you want. THis is homeschool. Use a system to evaluate dd that doesn't put her at a disadvantage.

[Luann in ID]

I have been thinking if this is a futile undergoing...after all, aren't the grades what are required for the transcript? If the grades are not good, have we wasted all this time doing these subjects? or Is there another way to grade this subjects other than quizzes and tests?:001_huh:


Wonderful answers here from Laurie and Jenn. I agree with them entirely, especially the suggestions that you do the tests open book and let the daily work determine the grade. Most (maybe all?) of my son's online Latin class exams are open book. ETA: After talking to ds I found that only some of his tests were open book. Also wanted to mention that retaking a particularly bad test is a good learning experience. Dh was even allowed to do this once in medical school.

I see language study sort of like exercise for the brain. I get on the treadmill every day, but never really see visible results. (If I want to lose weight, I have to cut calories; exercise doesn't do it for me.) I trust my heart is benefiting and that keeps me getting on the treadmill. Language study is like that, I think. You don't necessarily see all the benefits, but the brain is getting exercised.

I know you know that the transcript isn't the goal. It's necessary, yes, but not the goal. You have great reasons for studying language. Let those be your focus.

[Nan in Mass]

I wrote out a big long answer, but the computer ate it. Sigh. It boiled down to this...

I think it is important not to let the transcript get in the way of the education. You have good solid educational reasons for studying languages. They have nothing to do with being able to pass a test in the language. You are doing it successfully: your student is advancing and is self-driven and is continuing. She'll learn much more doing it your way for years than by doing it with grades and tests for a short while, then quitting because she feels she is failing.

Schools are not necessarily doing things the way they are because that is the best way. Their goals are often the same as ours, but they have to work with the handicap of teaching large amounts of strangers. They test to check that everyone has learned what was taught, to discourage cheating, and to ensure that everyone is reviewing and memorizing. With homeschooling, those goals can often be met some other way. It can even be a non-academic way, although I think that if you are working with a less than academically gifted child, it can take a considerable amount of practice with academics to learn the academic skills that will let the child successfully learn in an academic way at a traditional college. The school way is often rather efficient, also. (I aim to have a nice mix of traditional and non-traditional, academic and non-academic, so those academic skills get learned.)

Maybe it would help if you thought of the transcript as a just a translation? A translation of your child's education into traditional academic form? Like all translations, it won't translate exactly. There will be important things that you leave out because they don't translate. And things that go on at a lower level. And there will be things that go on the transcript but with a creative label, in an effort to be truthful. And things that go on with a regular label but the knowledge that your child studied an entirely different aspect of the subject than the traditional one.

I have a son who studied some Japanese with books and tapes, then traveled in Japan for 3 months, and now, years later, is renewing his Japanese with the Pimsleur tapes. I called this Japan Studies on his transcript and added an astrix with a note saying that if involved some study of spoken Japanese and designated it honours with another footnote explaining that it was honours because it involved being in Japan for 3 months. I hate the title; it sounds ungrammatical and kludgy. But at least it is fairly accurate. He definately can't pass any Japanese tests. He applied and was accepted to a state school with an ungraded, undated transcript. We did give some thought to how to show colleges that he could do college level work. We chose community college classes. Those appear on his transcript with grades.

I have another son who can function comfortably in French. He can understand it so well that he says it sounds like English, and he can speak it well enough to tell stories and live amongst French speakers comfortably. He can read books in French. But he is ungrammatical and he can't write it. In other words, he would flunk most French 1 tests LOL. I'm not sure how I am going to translate that to his transcript, but I know that most high school French teachers would gladly give up grammar and spelling if they could give their students his practical ability to use the language. I just left him in the French speaking part of Switzerland and I am much less worried about him than I would be if he could write French and do tests, but not understand well and make himself understood.

Anyway, it sounds like you are doing fine. It sounds like you just are having one of those moments of panic that are normal (and even a healthy reality check) when you choose to do something in an unusual way. We all have them. : )

-Nan

[Kathy in MD]

.......I have another son who can function comfortably in French. He can understand it so well that he says it sounds like English, and he can speak it well enough to tell stories and live amongst French speakers comfortably. He can read books in French. But he is ungrammatical and he can't write it. In other words, he would flunk most French 1 tests LOL. I'm not sure how I am going to translate that to his transcript, but I know that most high school French teachers would gladly give up grammar and spelling if they could give their students his practical ability to use the language. ......
-Nan

Call it Conversational French. Our local colleges use that term a lot to show what the emphasis was in a beginning class.

[Nan in Mass]

That is a good idea. But what level? He's way beyond Conversational French 1. Or maybe I just say Conversational French and leave off a number? I'd like to put on a number because it is something he will keep working at (since we'll be trying to speak it periodically and he just spent a month with French speakers) and it would cover his 2 year foreign language requirement for our school system (nice to get that out of the way so we can go back to the real business of education GRIN).

[Laurie4b]

I
Maybe it would help if you thought of the transcript as a just a translation? A translation of your child's education into traditional academic form? Like all translations, it won't translate exactly. There will be important things that you leave out because they don't translate. And things that go on at a lower level. And there will be things that go on the transcript but with a creative label, in an effort to be truthful. And things that go on with a regular label but the knowledge that your child studied an entirely different aspect of the subject than the traditional one.

-Nan

One thing I've decided is that I'm not going to use traditional grading on our transcripts. If they took a class with an outside teacher and a grade was given, I will use that grade. But most colleges don't really look at grades given by homeschool parents as valid anyway. In our homeschool, I teach to "Mastery." That means an A, maybe a high B level--but if they do less than that on a test, they keep retesting on that material until they show mastery. I toyed for a while with using Pass/Fail grades, but when I took subjects pass/fail in college, I did the minimum. I didn't want to convey that possibility on a transcript, so I'm going to use M for mastery. That says what we do, they are not going to care if I give a grade of A in any case, and it frees me from worrying about whether I'm grading in the same way a school would (for instance with tests, etc.) The validation of their learning will come from being successful in community college courses, SATII's and AP tests.