How do foreign language learning work in the USA (/your state)?

29 comments

1. This is specific to each individual school system or even individual school.

   In my high school we had Spanish, French, Latin, or German to choose from. There were at least 4 year-long levels of each, including advanced placement classes where you could earn college credit in high school.

   It wasn’t strictly mandatory to graduate, but nearly every university required two years of a foreign language, so it was effectively mandatory if you had any interest in attending university.

   This doesn’t include the people completing an international baccalaureate diploma, which had its own separate language requirements

2. This varies by individual school or school district, just like nearly everything else in the American school system. This is because the United States is a huge and culturally varied place, and what works well at a school in the Bronx won’t work perfectly at another school in the suburbs of Miami, or North Minneapolis, or Rural Wyoming.

   That being said, foreign language was compulsory at my school. We chose between Spanish, French, Mandarin, and German, and everyone had to learn Latin as well. The Latin in particular has been immensely useful, and even though I didn’t like Latin class while I was in school, I’m tremendously grateful that it was required now. It has helped me more easily learn the romance languages, and it is very useful in many higher-level professions.

3. I’m for foreign language being taught in school, as an elective, not a requirement. Took 2 courses which were required, and didn’t retain any of it because there is no need to and we have no practice outside of class. I took Spanish, same with most students, and we lost it once the school year was over as you don’t speak it or practice it.

   It’s a good waste of 2 years and I would have much rather have taken a shop class or something more useful to my day to day life.

   Now if I lived in an area with a lot of Spanish speakers so I can practice it outside of class, I’d be more for it, but otherwise, it’s not useful if we don’t have a means to retain it.

4. In Florida, when I was in school >25 yrs ago, taking a foreign language was required in school. I’m sure it still is. French and Spanish were the most popular in high school.

5. My high school offered Spanish, German, French, and Japanese. You were required to take 2 years, _unless_ you got creative and found other classes that counted toward the same credits. I avoided a foreign language by taking 2 years of electronics building, which I loved. I don’t think this is possible anymore (I graduated in 08)

   I personally don’t think it should be a requirement, but this is due to my own biases. I had a severe speech impediment as a kid and although years of Speech Therapy have mostly removed it, I have a ton of difficulty with a few sounds and things like rolling my Rs, which I know is common in other languages, is a non-starter. I can’t imagine learning another language when I struggle so much with just English.

   There’s also the problem that, even living in the Southwest, there’s rarely a time where I’m talking to someone who doesn’t know English. If you don’t actively use a second language, people tend to forget it. It just seems pointless to learn

6. We had the options of German and Spanish. You were required to take 2 years of a foreign language in high school.

   Was learning German fun? Sure. Was it useful? Basically not at all. It has moderately helped when traveling abroad since I can decipher some germanic words better, but English is also germanic, so no real advantage.

   Spanish is the only relevant second language in the US, reliably. It is what our neighbors speak, and if we are dealing with migrants who can’t speak English it’s almost always a spanish-speaker just due to sheer numbers. It’s also the only foreign language most Americans will ever have the chance to practice in the US, and when we travel abroad the places Americans go are almost always accepting of English speaking to the point that trying to use the native language often results in the person you’re speaking with just responding in English.

   This isn’t to say English is superior or Americans are most important or anything, but it’s proximity. It’s very easy for a European to learn German or French or Spanish or any other local language and actually go practice it with native speakers in the environment. You can just pop over to another country for a weekend. For us, with the exception of Spanish (and French if you live close to French Canada), it’s a minimum 10 hour flight just to reach somewhere it’s the primary language. There’s just no good way to practice and keep the skills up.

7. As others have stated, this will vary, so the best I can give you is my own experience.

   * 6th grade (age 11-12), we did an “invitation to languages” where we covered a little Latin, some Romances languages, and a little Japanese
   * The next two years Spanish was mandatory, no other options
   * Moving into high school (14-18) my school offered a number of languages: Spanish, French, Italian, Mandarin, Japanese, and a couple more. I took Spanish because I already had some base.
   * In this state you have to pass an exam in a foreign language in high school, so there’s a requirement to study it at least that long

   Everything to that point was academic requirements. The problem after that is: Why are you learning the language? Many students don’t continue because they (1) have no need to, (2) have no proximity to use the language, (3) aren’t pushed in a way where there’s motivation. Maybe it should be optional, but if it is I don’t want it to be the kind of optional where no one ever considers it.

8. In the US, we mostly teach foreign languages in high school. In Washington, it was two years of one language to graduate highschool and three years to get into a Bachelor’s degree program. If you already spoke a language, you could take a proficiency test to get up to 4 years worth of highschool credits in that foreign language.

   In some states that don’t mandate education be primarily done in English, English may be the second language taught in some schools in some school districts.

   My school taught French, Spanish, and mandarin. The year I got there was the last year they taught German. The neighboring school district had a school with a Japanese class. Availability depends on which teachers you have

   Why most of us are only [good at one language ](https://www.census.gov/acs/www/about/why-we-ask-each-question/language/) comes down to usage. America is almost entirely English-speaking outside of a few border towns. Canada is almost entirely English-speaking outside of Quebec, but even there most people know English. In Mexico, the other nearby foreign country, they know enough English to get money out of tourists at the street markets at least, without getting into tourist towns like Cancun. We can go to Europe and speak English, we can go to India and speak English, if you go to Japan there’s signs in English, and even in China they will use English if the two people don’t know mandarin and instead know a more regional dialect. And that’s if you even travel abroad, since [most of us don’t have a pasaport](https://today.yougov.com/topics/travel/articles-reports/2021/04/21/only-one-third-americans-have-valid-us-passport).

   I personally have used Spanish 5 times outside of school in 7 years, and one of those was as a school assignment to order food at the Mexican place in Spanish

9. My school didn’t offer foreign language until high school, years 9-12, and could take Spanish, French, German, or Japanese. They also did 1-2 weeks in grade 8 where we were introduced to each language where we could pick. To graduate, we only had to take 3 years of a foreign language. This would have been about 15-30 years ago.

   Most people took Spanish as it’s a language with the most practical day-to-day use here with so many Spanish speaking immigrants. Kids who were into anime tended to take Japanese. I picked French because I had dreams of drinking wine, eating fancy cheese, and having deep conversations in French. On the plus side, we got to make crepes once a year.

10. Spanish is the second most common language in America, and the rest aren’t even close. Even with Spanish, taking two years of Spanish in High School is almost useless since you aren’t immersed in it enough to learn anything approaching fluency. Forcing it on students is idealistic, but I hesitate to claim that it has any real positive impact. Any other language is pure novelty in the USA, except maybe in very localized situations. As in, on a neighborhood by neighborhood basis.

11. When I went to high school, my school offered Spanish, French, and German, and Japanese was available in a separate course outside normal school hours. I took French and Japanese, but ended up marrying a German, so today my German is better than my French or Japanese (or my Spanish, which, considering my Mexican heritage, says something).

    I believe the local school where I live now offers Spanish, French, Italian, and Chinese.

    As much as I enjoy learning foreign languages, though, their value is quite minor. Even today we speak English at home. There’s very little that is available in other languages that is not also available in English, and if anyone wants to translate something to another language, English is the first choice because it matters just that much globally.

12. Went to Catholic HS in the 80’s.

    We had to take 2 years of language, and the choices were: Spanish, French, German, or Latin

13. It’s required in most highschools but no one remembers almost anything, because they don’t care about actually learning it. Duolingo is far more effective than learning in class.

14. I’m not *against* foreign languages in the education system, I think they’re beneficial. However, in the US, I think the expectation that they should result in any sort of fluency is not reasonable for the average student. Obviously it’s possible for someone really into it who puts significant effort towards fluency.

    The main problem in the US is simply the lack of ability to find anyone to practice with. In the areas I’ve lived, even Spanish is pretty rare; the people who are native Spanish speakers all spoke fluent English. And Spanish is quite ahead of every other language besides English in terms of number of speakers living in the US. Many immigrants speak languages that are of very limited utility in daily life here, so finding native speakers or even fluent 2nd language speakers is almost impossible aside from Spanish unless you’re very near a specific community.

    I’m in a somewhat unique situation of knowing a *lot* of native German speakers (all of them from different parts of Germany, immigrated to the US at different times). So I thought I’d take German. Even having relatives and family friends that were native speakers and being involved in a hobby (horseback riding) that has a strong German presence (and therefore things to read on the internet in German I would be interested in) was nowhere near enough to really motivate any sort of fluency. Especially when it just devolved into a proxy war through me of these Germans who’d never met each other sniping over pronunciations and rouladen recipes. (One person would teach me one phrase, another would say it’s all wrong you’ll sound like a dumb Bavarian hick if you say that… so on and so forth…)

    I did take a couple semesters of Spanish in college as well.

    End result: I remember hardly anything from either of them because I just don’t use it. (With the caveat that there *are* other parts of the US it would be significantly more present in daily life, just not where I live, but even visiting southern California, Arizona, and New Mexico I never once felt hindered by not knowing Spanish.)

    I actually would probably have more luck learning French due to playing online games with a lot of French Canadians, but I’d mostly be learning your mom jokes, curses and nerd slang so I don’t think it would help me out that much on a trip to France…

    I also know a number of children of immigrants who aren’t even fluent in their parents’ native languages (or they can speak it but not read it – pretty common for my Chinese-American friends actually, since it takes a lot of effort to memorize the characters).

    Actually, I even know a couple of native speakers of other languages that no longer are really fully fluent in their native languages. My SO’s father was German (seriously, why do I know so many Germans?! I met him long after my high school German learning debacle, too) and moved here when he was 8 and started learning English after that; he’s technically still fluent in German I guess, but at the level of an 8yo child in 1956. He doesn’t know the names of anything invented after 1956, or any ‘adult terminology’. The way he describes it is that a modern German talking to him would be talking to a grown-ass adult who is for some reason speaking like one of the kids from *Leave It to Beaver*, so just bizarre. Obviously he could learn the new vocabulary etc if he really wanted to, since he’s got the basic grammar and pronunciation, but he doesn’t have any reason to. After they moved here their mother wouldn’t let them speak German, so even his brothers all talk to each other in English and have their whole adolescent & adult lives.

    Anyway, for Americans I think the goal of learning languages in school shouldn’t really be language fluency but exposure to cultures and also learning things that are useful *for English*. Expanding knowledge of linguistics in general, roots and etymologies of English words, etc. Especially given the emphasis on STEM in education, linguistics actually has a lot of applications in computer science (I learned way more about languages and linguistics and formal grammars as a computer science student than was ever talked about in a foreign language class!).

15. i live 1800 miles away from a different speaking country…its useless for me and impossible to remember without practicing with natural speakers

    yea maybe if i had 6 different languages withing an hours drive…not a 28 hour drive

16. Curriculum in the US varies by state and school district. My high school required at least 2 foreign language credits. Our options were Spanish, German, French, and Japanese.

    Similarly, I love language learning but many kids hated it and didn’t see the point. I think it’s not entirely their fault because I think the way languages are taught in school tends to be wrong. Language learning should be immersive vs rote, but rote learning is often the style that is used. So, most people aren’t going to retain much when taught that way and it truly is a waste of their time.

    I think mandatory foreign language is a good thing though. Good for your brain and good for empathy.

    In the US, we have a lot of Spanish speakers. For example, in a city like Miami, 70% of the population speaks Spanish and the default is to assume you that you speak Spanish. In some parts of the city, they will try speaking to you in Spanish first before switching to English. Spanish can come in handy in those places or when encountering recent immigrants in the US who only speak Spanish.

    We also have a lot of citizens who really only speak Chinese, so it could be useful there too.

17. Foreign language was required at my High School and in University.

    Only Spanish and French was available at my high school and being in Southern California, Spanish was the much more popular option.

18. I find it funny that you don’t list English as a foreign language. Is learning English just mandatory and you’re required to study another language on top of that?

19. Second language proficiency is mandatory for applying to a [University of California](https://hs-articulation.ucop.edu/guide/a-g-subject-requirements/e-language-other-than-english/) school. Two years is officially required, three years is “recommended” but de facto required. Some people take 4 years.

    Most people are nowhere near fluent, think of it as how Norwegians learn French/German, 10 years after high school most of them forget 90% of it.

    I think this is more dependent on municipal school district than state though. Our school district for example only offers “Chinese, French, Korean, Latin, Spanish and American Sign Language.”

    We have immersion schools here for Kindergarten-8th year. My youngest will be attending a school that starts teaching 90% mandarin, 10% English in Kindergarten and 1st year, 80% Mandarin 20% English in second year, 70% mandarin 30% English in third year, etc. And then 50% mandarin 50% English from 5th year on.

    We will be teaching Norwegian at home, but have given up on teaching Taiwanese Hokkien, which is my native tongue.

    I live in a suburb of ~300k people. We have two other major Chinese language schools here, but they operate on the weekend. One is a Taiwanese Buddhist school with roughly 700 students between K-12, the other is run by Taiwanese waishengren with 1065 students in 14 different skill levels.

    There are four other smaller Chinese schools largely aimed towards younger children, one that also teach Chinese traditional instruments, Chinese dance, English as second language, etc. But those usually have 100 or less students enrolled AFAIK.

    There is only one Korean government certified school teaching Korean, but from what my Korean friends tell me most people go to classes run by various churches, you don’t need to be religious to attend. My daughter went to a summer math camp run by a Korean church for example despite being half Taiwanese half Norwegian and not speaking a word of Korean.

    Japanese language schools are harder to find. Between our kommune and the neighboring kommune, the largest school system only has 4 Japanese language schools. There are other alternatives, [this for example](https://www.ocjschool.org/) is an independent school in our kommune, but it’s a 25 minutes drive away, almost 1 hour to get there and back. And I feel like I could die whenever I drive on American freeways.

    I am not too familiar with the processes of learning other languages, but I would assume there is similar for Hindi, Vietnamese and Arabic.

    On the other hand, at least for where we live, language learning here seems to be a lot more accessible than it is in Norway, though having a lot more native speakers of non-English languages may have a lot to do with it.

    Most second-generation Chinese in Norway, even in Oslo where there is a Chinese school, can barely speak a few words of Mandarin, don’t know Chinese holidays, etc. and I wonder if the aggressive pursuit of assimilation there also leads to elimination of non-Norwegian culture. One of the factors that led to us leaving was people being racist to me and my daughter when we spoke Chinese out in public, to the point where we would just stick to English and Norwegian unless we were completely alone. Had a Vietnamese descent friend from a small village say that he refused to learn Vietnamese and told his parents he wishes he was a proper Norwegian when he was a kid. So it’s interesting to me that they are teaching Chinese in at least some parts of the country.

20. The languages you can take were not even standardized within my school district. It really depends on what teachers are available and want to teach. You were required to have one year of a foreign language to graduate, but universities generally require two years for admittance.

    Spanish, German, French, Italian, Chinese, and I guess technically English, were taught as foreign languages. It’s possible there were more, but those are the ones I know for sure. Spanish had multiple teachers and you could take multiple levels. German had one teacher and you could take German 1 and German 2 as separate classes. You could technically take German 3 or above, but there weren’t enough people taking those so they just put you in with the German 2 class and give you a little harder work or expectations. The other languages also just had one teacher, but I’m not sure how many levels they each had.

    I honestly wish we required a foreign language much earlier. It was never required before high school and not many people even took Spanish (the only option) in middle school. I think it’s useful to learn another language even if you’re realistically not going to use it much outside of class.

    >the foreign languages we can choose between are German, French, Spanish, and Chinese

    It sounds like in Norway you don’t really even consider English a foreign language in school? I wish we started Spanish early here and then got to pick a new one once we were in high school. Obviously the main one would be Spanish here but maybe French or German in other states, idk.

    I understand where your fellow students are coming from. Once you know English, learning another language isn’t going to have as much value. That’s mostly why we don’t prioritize it, I think.

21. Where I grew up (suburbs of Chicago), we began foreign languages in 7th grade. My middle school offered French and Spanish. About 3/4 of people took Spanish, which is much more practical in the US. I had to take French because my family actually was transferred to the Netherlands for a year and the American School I attended offered Dutch and French, so French was the only overlap I’d be able to continue upon my return to the US for 8th grade.

    My high school offered French and Spanish, as well as Hebrew and Italian when I attended 30 years ago. Looks like now they also offer Chinese.

22. I went to a K-8 school were everybody was forced to take Spanish. Elementary classes met once a week and middle school was three times a week.

    High school offered Spanish, French or ASL four times a week.

    Took Japanese in college for 2 semesters and I really want to study Russian next

23. At my middle school, there was a lady who would come in for half an hour every other week to teach us Spanish. We didn’t learn much Spanish.

    In my high school, they had tiered classes 1 through 4 in Spanish, French, and Japanese, and it was kind of a loose requirement to take them. You didn’t officially need to take any to graduate, but all of the colleges in the state required you to pass two foreign language classes.

    Spanish was pretty practical, in that there’s a lot of people around here who speak Spanish. If you’re doing any kind of agriculture around here, you’re probably hiring migrant workers from Mexico or other places south of here, and you’ll need to speak Spanish, or have someone who can translate. I’m not in agriculture, but the only time I’ve tried to talk to someone who didn’t speak English, he spoke Spanish, so it’s nice to know for everyone else too.

    I could see French or Japanese maybe being useful for business if you travel there a lot, but I doubt that most people got the same utility out of it that the Spanish students did. They were mostly for the Francophiles and weebs.

    I think there’s room in the education system for the kind of things that make you what people call a “well-rounded person”, and some people just really like learning languages. I think if there’s room for art or music, there’s room to try to learn a language.

24. as someone with life long learning disabilities taking some sort of financial or booster class would have done more good then a semester of Spanish.

25. For clarification, English is your foreign language class right?

26. In my state, in order to graduate from high school, you must study two years of the same foreign language. Exceptions are made for those graduating with a lesser degree due to learning disabilities. Functionally, unless you go to a fairly large school, this means you must study Spanish, as it is generally the only language offered.

    I went to a very large high school. My freshman class had 1200 students. I had the choice between Spanish, French, German, or Latin, and if I had had two years of a different language already I could enroll in a distance learning course for Japanese. I took three years of Spanish, and two years of French. I continued with four additional semesters of Spanish in college. I am not fluent but I can read a majority of the advertisements and notices I see in public.

27. I do have to point out that I love the fact that English class isn’t considered a foreign/second language in Norway according to your post.

    I think that most Americans would love to learn a second language like Spanish in the way that Norwegians learn English. That being said, the way that other languages are taught in the US school system (at least in my experience personally and talking to others) is more like any other academic subject rather than trying to create fluent speakers. I took Spanish for 5 1/2 years in Middle and High School. I was not fluent by any means afterwards. Spanish class was like a combination of English class (I’m guessing the equivilent would be Norwegian) with an emphasis on gramar and vocabulary. I took a year in college and I was my most fluent then. But sadly have relapsed.

    I think that most Americans don’t need to learn a second language and so they don’t. That being said, in terms of school subjects I think people see foreign language like any other school subject if not more useful. Like if Spanish or German actually taught me how to speak Spanish or German I would consider it more “useful” than many high school classes.

28. Florida required that you take a language for two years to attend university. Spanish was the most popular (Spanish is commonly spoken in Florida) and French was second choice.

    Besides that, there were classes offered online: Mandarin Chinese, German, Hebrew, American Sign Language.

29. Like many others have said already, my high school required two years of a foreign language. Our options, however, were Spanish, French, German, ASL, and (I think) Mandarin, iirc. Almost everyone took Spanish, though