I am an upcoming 10th grader and I was wondering whether it would be easier for me to switch from French to German. My mother tongue is Arabic but I'm fluent in English as well. I've been taking French for 9 years, but it's so complicated and it's lowering my total grades, although I'm very good at almost everything else. Next year we take two of the subject we choose (French/German): AL (hard) and OL (easy). If any of you were in this situation, or have any advice for me, please let me know. Also, there's another problem about switching that I hadn't addressed here, because it isn't language related, but if any of you can help me with it, it would be really nice. So, switching to German would mean having to switch classes. And I really don't want to. I'll try to do whatever I can to stay in it, but it would be too hard to keep only one German learner in the French class. To give more context of what's going on: Our class are mainly nice. The other class are kind of the not as nice class. Many of them smoke and stuff and I don't want to pick this up from them. I'm really stuck between wanting to switch to German and wanting to stay in my class. Any advice on that part too would be really appreciated. Thanks!
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Welcome to LL.SE! Could you mention which country this question is related to? The website is international, and the terms are unknown at least to me. – Tommi Sep 14 '19 at 10:43
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If you think you won't feel good in that other class, you shouldn't switch. Learning something all depends on feeling okay. – Janka Sep 14 '19 at 12:28
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What is your mother language, your L1? I assume English? In USA, UK, somewhere else? You can read up in wikipedia about the German grammar: it is really complicated (might seems even worse than French grammar). German nouns have cases, might be a real downer for you. Maybe better strategy would be to found some French students of your age learning English for language exchange, to make your French studies more fun. – Peter M. - stands for Monica Sep 15 '19 at 01:55
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2Also, this question will likely be closed as a not good fit, because any advice relevant to you might not be relevant to anyone else, depending what answers could the community provide. We have no idea how difficult would be for you to interact with those other German learners. Instead, ask how to improve areas of learning French which are biggest obstacle for you. How to make your learning more productive and fun. – Peter M. - stands for Monica Sep 15 '19 at 02:00
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1@Tommi Brander Egypt. If there's anything that you're not familiar with I'd be glad to explain what it means. I need all the help I can get – Nelly Sep 15 '19 at 09:28
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@Janka I get that, but I still don't want French to lower my overall grades, which is very important. Thanks for the advice❤ – Nelly Sep 15 '19 at 15:11
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@Peter M. My mother tongue is actually Arabic, but I'm fluent in English as well. Thanks for your advice! – Nelly Sep 15 '19 at 15:13
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You don't get to pick and choose your classes? In US high schools you can design your own schedule. Unless it's a very small school, no two students are ever together the whole day. – K Man Sep 15 '19 at 23:47
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1Also, do you have any trouble understanding Arabic speakers from Morocco and Lebanon? If so, persisting with French will get you a useful lingua franca if you ever intend to do business or travel in those countries. – K Man Sep 15 '19 at 23:48
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@K Man No, as don't get to do that, we have a completely different educational system. Also, I can sometimes struggle with understanding other Arabic accents/dialects overall, but just the ones with French mixed in it, although I have a complete understanding of Arabic. So French isn't exactly my problem here I guess. – Nelly Sep 16 '19 at 07:38
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1@Tommi Brander Sorry I was confused about what happened at first lol. I edited it back. – Nelly Sep 17 '19 at 13:16
1 Answers
I do not know the Egyptian school system and the concepts of AL/OL and the effects of switching a class are unknown to me.
When I was in school, I got generally high grades, but my foreign languages were at average grades, aside from English which was as high as other reading-based subjects.
With most school subjects one can get by by being clever and doing homework. The level at school was not very high, at least for me, though admittedly in a very different country. With languages doing only what you are told was not enough for me. With English, I was reading books, hearing it occasionally in movies and TV, playing computer games, and even studying vocabulary for fun. Hence, I did well with English. I did not do this with Swedish or French, and hence learned only a little.
You will face the same problem with French and German: You need to practice it, in addition to doing homework and being clever. (If you are not doing your homework, getting in the habit will be a good investment for future schooling.) Luckily this is very easy nowadays, with free services such as Anki(droid), Clozemaster and Duolingo; both French and German are widely studied languages with lots of resources. Furthermore, you can ask for which specific resources are good for learning a particular aspect of a language on this very website.
Unless your school system gives you significant and fairly certain benefits for changing the language, I would recommend not doing it, but rather continuing with the language you have up to the level where you can use it meaningfully and maintain it as a part of your normal life, so that you will not forget the language. It might be useful later, once you are out of school.
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Thank you so much for this detailed answer! It's the same for me with English, I use it daily and hear in movies, games, etc.. so it's way easier for me. I actually do have Duolingo and have reached a good point in both languages. Also I was hoping that the language change will make me multilingual and have more languages learned, as it would be very useful for working in the future. – Nelly Sep 16 '19 at 07:42