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Spanish B or Italian A Lit?

I'm 5 weeks into the IB and I'm don't know if I want to switch my language choice. Basically I'm a native speaker in English, Italian and Spanish but my Spanish is quite weak. I'm doing Spanish B and even though I'm somewhat confident gramatically I find myself lacking a lot of vocabulary and constantly looking up google translate and wordreference to find the right word or series of words because I haven't studied Spanish in 4 years.

However, I have done high school entirely in Italian for the last 3 years (meaning every subject, including literature, history, sciences, etc). My school offers the of to do SSST (self-supported self taught) where you meet with a tutor once or twice a week in your language and once or twice a week with a general SSST teacher that supervises the whole thing where you do your work on your own. I'm definetely confident in Italian essay writing, literature and analysis basically as much as in English and by doing Italian SSST I would also get the bilingual diploma which some people say is recognised and considered by universities as more work and strengthens your application (I want to do STEM in top UK and US unis).

It's been 5 weeks and they need to find a tutor because my school has never done SSST for an Italian student before, and it's only the second year they're doing this so they don't have any SSST exam results for IB students yet. I also saw that only 1% got a 7 in Italian A literature in May 2023. I don't know if it's too much work to catch up on. I'm also considering this though because I seem to work on more Spanish than anything else because my teacher gives out an insane amount of homework and I want to do what will be less effort for me with more likelyhood of a 7.

I can switch subjects until December so if after 2 months I find it's too much work I can switch back to Spanish B with no effort basically since I'm a native speaker.

What should I do?
(edited 6 months ago)
I'll bump this in case someone missed it who could advise :smile:
Original post by moonlight14
I'm 5 weeks into the IB and I'm don't know if I want to switch my language choice. Basically I'm a native speaker in English, Italian and Spanish but my Spanish is quite weak. I'm doing Spanish B and even though I'm somewhat confident gramatically I find myself lacking a lot of vocabulary and constantly looking up google translate and wordreference to find the right word or series of words because I haven't studied Spanish in 4 years.

However, I have done high school entirely in Italian for the last 3 years (meaning every subject, including literature, history, sciences, etc). My school offers the of to do SSST (self-supported self taught) where you meet with a tutor once or twice a week in your language and once or twice a week with a general SSST teacher that supervises the whole thing where you do your work on your own. I'm definetely confident in Italian essay writing, literature and analysis basically as much as in English and by doing Italian SSST I would also get the bilingual diploma which some people say is recognised and considered by universities as more work and strengthens your application (I want to do STEM in top UK and US unis).

It's been 5 weeks and they need to find a tutor because my school has never done SSST for an Italian student before, and it's only the second year they're doing this so they don't have any SSST exam results for IB students yet. I also saw that only 1% got a 7 in Italian A literature in May 2023. I don't know if it's too much work to catch up on. I'm also considering this though because I seem to work on more Spanish than anything else because my teacher gives out an insane amount of homework and I want to do what will be less effort for me with more likelyhood of a 7.

I can switch subjects until December so if after 2 months I find it's too much work I can switch back to Spanish B with no effort basically since I'm a native speaker.

What should I do?

Well, language A lit requires a lot of textual analysis and in-depth work with texts. I'm in DP year 2 and most of my classmates still struggle to do that right, you should choose Literature only if you are truly interested and confident in it ( and willing to read in it a lot). I'd carry on with Spanish as you can find a tutor easily or just develop your skills throughout the 2 years. I'm doing German B sl and i'm much more confident in it now than I was in the beginning of DP1
Reply 3
Original post by moonlight14
I'm 5 weeks into the IB and I'm don't know if I want to switch my language choice. Basically I'm a native speaker in English, Italian and Spanish but my Spanish is quite weak. I'm doing Spanish B and even though I'm somewhat confident gramatically I find myself lacking a lot of vocabulary and constantly looking up google translate and wordreference to find the right word or series of words because I haven't studied Spanish in 4 years.

However, I have done high school entirely in Italian for the last 3 years (meaning every subject, including literature, history, sciences, etc). My school offers the of to do SSST (self-supported self taught) where you meet with a tutor once or twice a week in your language and once or twice a week with a general SSST teacher that supervises the whole thing where you do your work on your own. I'm definetely confident in Italian essay writing, literature and analysis basically as much as in English and by doing Italian SSST I would also get the bilingual diploma which some people say is recognised and considered by universities as more work and strengthens your application (I want to do STEM in top UK and US unis).

It's been 5 weeks and they need to find a tutor because my school has never done SSST for an Italian student before, and it's only the second year they're doing this so they don't have any SSST exam results for IB students yet. I also saw that only 1% got a 7 in Italian A literature in May 2023. I don't know if it's too much work to catch up on. I'm also considering this though because I seem to work on more Spanish than anything else because my teacher gives out an insane amount of homework and I want to do what will be less effort for me with more likelyhood of a 7.

I can switch subjects until December so if after 2 months I find it's too much work I can switch back to Spanish B with no effort basically since I'm a native speaker.

What should I do?

I Teach spanish B and the problem is that student believe that you can learn a language by Osmosis. Learning and speaking a language required work and more whenyou all want a 7.
(edited 4 months ago)

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