What do I call this sort of foreign language study?...

[Nan in Mass]

What Laurie and Jean said about the 4th year of a foreign language made me begin to wonder about my youngest, who is 13. He speaks and reads some French. I was going to just have him read the occasional French book in high school, discuss it with me, and write a short essay about it (since he is only barely, barely is able to write in French), and then look at how many books he's read at the end and call it however many years of French literature it would add up to, depending on the number of books read. Would it be better to call it French 4 and 5 (or however many we get to)? I'm not sure I want to do that because it implies that he knows French grammar. He knows no French grammar (which is why his spelling is so bad). With any luck, I'll be able to find the occasional student with whom to practise conversation. French Lit as a title wouldn't really convey that, would it? Or would it? And how many books do people read in that 4th year? I can only remember reading 2 and some poetry in my 1 semester long French class in college, but that can't be right, can it? We discussed the books in English, I remember, and wrote aobut them in French. He can discuss them in French (after we both learn some vocab LOL), I think. I thought about signing him up for a French class, but he was missing almost all the normal vocab one learns in French 1 - the alphabet, weather, introductions, counting, colours, things like that. His current tutor is teaching him those. (It is pretty funny listening to her teach him such basic words in the middle of a flood of French.) I'm still not sure somebody else's French class is a good place for him, though. He'd still be very uneven in his skills, which might make him be bored and dislike French. I think he might be better off just keeping on reading and having the occasional tutor (as I can find it). Also, he'll be doing Latin (at least until we get to the point where we can just read that to learn it) and he wants to do Arabic, so I'm not all that interested in making him learn French grammar. I think other weaker languages might be a better place to put his energy? Maybe? I don't know.

-Nan, now wondering if the French Lit idea was a good one or not

[Crissy]

Maybe with a bit more speaking practice it you could refer to it as Conversational French?

[Nan in Mass]

But won't it look like he's just starting French? He's at the level where he can read middle school fantasy in French and have a conversation or tell a story.

[Chris in VA]

You could spend a semester beefing up his vocab and throwing in some grammar (bet he knows some, at least thru osmosis!) and then have him attempt to CLEP some credit, or take a placement exam at a local CC.

[Ailaena]

I think calling it French Literature would be fine, if not downright interesting. I mean, you are going to be reading literature in French... Im not sure I would call it Conversational French because you will be doing more reading and writing than learning basic phrases. Will you already have French 1, 2 and 3 on the transcript?

Plus, no matter what you call it, before he would be allowed to take any French classes in college, they would give him a placement test, even if you were planning on following up with an SAT-II or AP test. Heck, even if you were fresh off the boat from France, they would still want to conduct an interview before placement in upper-division courses. And even if his grammar is less than stellar now, after a few more years of writing and working on it, I would be willing to bet he would make huge strides.

FWIW, my first semester of French Literature, we read out of an anthology of poems and plays (@1/wk) and the second semester we read short stories and two novels. I found it exceptionally interesting because it was a history-based literature analysis class that just happened to be conducted in French (which was a far cry from the bio/chem classes I was taking).

[In The Great White North]

You may want to be more specific than just "literature," since he's just 13. If you want to do similar language studies through high school, the state will probably want you to call it something different each year. My state wants to know you are not just repeating.)

You could call it French Lit 1, French Lit 2, etc. Or you could do French Lit: Poetry, French Lit: 1800's, French Lit: Science Fiction, etc