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Italian B HL


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hello.

I'm trying to figure out what subjects I should take since I'm starting with the IB in about three months. How hard it is to study a second language at HL, especially Italian? I have to mention that I understand Italian pretty good, but I kind of suck at speaking. I could take some preparation this summer, before I start, but I don't know if I could deal with it. So, is it pretty hard, or rather doable?

Thanks a lot.

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Rather doable. The grade you get is directly proportional (to throw in some maths lingo there) to the effort you to put in to learning the language.

A language B at HL requires a lot of work, you need to be efficient at speaking it since the oral counts for a bit of your grade. You need to be good at writing since Paper 2 is a minimum of 400 words of comprehensible and rather advanced Italian. You need to be good at comprehension because Paper 1 will give you about 4 texts of pretty advanced Italian and it's vital to understand it completely to get a good grade.

The hardness is subjective, because each person has a different comprehension of the word 'hard'.

Personally, I did French HL in IB. I'd studied it off and on for about 7 years. So when I started it, I was pretty rusty. I didn't have proper French classes for the first year of IB, in the second year the only other person in the class was a fluent French speaker and my teacher had a tendency to go off topic but in English (great teacher though). In any case, what I'm trying to say is that my French wasn't so great and my classes weren't great either but I managed to come out of it with a 4. I couldn't do it at SL because my other classes weren't doable at HL. I did get a 6 for my oral.

The best way to actually get a grasp of the language is to ask your teacher for a past paper and see if you can do it. If you can manage to complete and understand about 40-50% of the paper, I'd say you're up for HL. Below 30% and you're better off doing SL.

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Robbie Italian is a piece of cake for latin language speakers. Italian is the closest language to Italian in my opinion. I speak French and if I could have taken I would. Italian B is possibly the easiest HL in the world. Where are you from by the way Bucharest?

I say you need to be passionate about the language and have some sense of determination but for french, spanish, portuguese and romanian speakers it is EASY.

Edited by sweetnsimple786
No textspeak, please.
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Thanks for both of your replies. I have studied French since 5th grade, I'm pretty good at it, and I kind of have a sense of language. Now, I'm going to a college in Italy, so Italian is compulsory. Italian is pretty easy to understand for a romanian, at least for me it is. I'm wondering though if it would be harder than I could take, but I think that just depends on how much I will study. Thanks, again.

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Italian B will be your easiest subject in my opinion. And i meant to say Italian is the closest language to Romanian. I went to Romania and I understood quite a bit. Like ce fac. Fac bine and multsumesc and salut :bawling: I'm writing in phonetic, I can't spell in Romanian. Besides why are you going to college in Italy?

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Italian B will be your easiest subject in my opinion. And i meant to say Italian is the closest language to Romanian. I went to Romania and I understood quite a bit. Like ce fac. Fac bine and multsumesc and salut :bawling: I'm writing in phonetic, I can't spell in Romanian. Besides why are you going to college in Italy?

I won a scholarship for United World College of the Adriatic :bawling:

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