> > > > Second languages are fine. They normally don't lie to you. The only problem is that, even if you've passed a second language course in school, that doesn't mean you're really fluent in that language.
> > >
> > > I disagree on this one. I took Spanish for four years of high school, and I am fluent in it. When I got to college, I took a placement test in Spanish, got a perfect score, placed into SPA 3290 (Great Spanish and French poetry of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries), got an "A," and effectively completed a college Spanish program in the first term of my freshman year. :-}
> > >
> >
> > I took Spanish in high school and college, and am _not_ fluent in it. [Spacebar] is correct; taking a second language course does not mean you are fluent. This is, after all, why you had to take a placement test to prove your fluency.
>
> (shrug) Okay. I took Spanish in high school, and I *am* fluent in it. That was my point.

Well, my elementary school (yes, elemenatary school, don't laugh at me) forced me to take Spanish, and I hated it. When I went into middle school, I had a choice of German and Spanish, and I'm taking German. I love it! I also like when they let us write stuff on our own (in English) and not structured essays. But every now and then my German teacher lets us do creative writing in German (Frosch Grille und ein Fahrtfinder).

-Morris Cecil "Der Bär magt Waffeln" Glalet, Tue 20 Jul A.D. 1999