8 Online Foreign Language Courses For High School Credit
In-person language courses aren’t always the best option for all students. Free online language courses can help, but if you want it to count towards your diploma, you’ll need to find a special online course that offers topnotch language learning and high school credit.
In this guide, I’ll show you eight unique options for a wide range of languages, proficiency levels and learning goals.
Contents
- Connections Academy
- The Keystone School Online
- Stanford Online High School
- NorthStar Academy
- Mizzou K-12
- Greenways Academy
- University of Nebraska High School
- Indiana University High School
- And One More Thing...
Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)
Connections Academy
Price: Free
If you live in an area that participates in Connections Academy, your courses will be free. Connections Academy already has programs in dozens of states from east to west, with many more in development.
Plus, Connections Academy is interactive. Each student gets individual attention and Connections Academy’s learning system aims to foster a collaborative environment.
Connections Academy offers American Sign Language, Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Latin and Spanish.
The Keystone School Online
Price: Tuition info available here
The Keystone School aims to provide individualized and flexible education to its students.
The language courses are intended to meet American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) standards, which focus on reading, writing, speaking and listening. You’ll need to ensure you have a microphone and proper speakers in order to take language courses.
Language offerings include Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Latin and Spanish. This program’s language courses emphasize culture for a more well-rounded education.
Stanford Online High School
Price: Tuition info available here
Founded at the renowned Stanford University in California, Stanford Online High School aims to provide an innovative and rigorous curriculum. This is an especially good option for students who are going to take more than just language courses online—its focus is a multi-year, interdisciplinary program for ambitious students.
Classes are small and interactive, giving you the perfect opportunity to connect with other students and practice your language skills. Students come from across the U.S. as well as internationally, so you may interact with fellow students from more than 30 different countries.
And you’ll have some great language options to choose from. Stanford Online High School offers Chinese, Latin and Spanish, ranging from beginning-level to AP-level coursework.
NorthStar Academy
Price: Tuition info available here
NorthStar Academy’s flexible start dates make it easy to start a course any time of year.
Language courses are designed to meet ACTFL standards. The “student feedback” box is an especially helpful feature—look on the left hand side of most course information pages to see reviews from previously enrolled students.
NorthStar Academy offers Chinese, French, German, Latin and Spanish. Beginning courses are available for all languages, while French and Spanish courses go all the way up to the AP level.
Mizzou K-12
Price: Tuition info available here
Mizzou K-12 is affiliated with the University of Missouri, and the curriculum is developed by the university’s faculty as well as teachers certified in Missouri.
For its language courses, Mizzou K-12 partnered with Rosetta Stone. You may already be familiar with the popular Rosetta Stone language program, which is designed to teach languages in a natural way. The programming is interactive and highly visual, so you really absorb the language rather than just memorizing definitions.
Mizzou K-12 offers four levels of Chinese, English for non-native speakers, French, German and Spanish. Plus, Mizzou K-12 offers two levels of Arabic and Japanese.
Greenways Academy
Price: Tuition info available here
Want to learn a language that’s not commonly offered in high schools? Greenways Academy has options you might like.
Greenways Academy is a Missouri-based online education provider. Because Greenways Academy’s language courses are provided through programs like Rosetta Stone, there are language offerings that you can’t get elsewhere. You can take Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, Filipino, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latin, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish and Vietnamese.
Sure, you could take most of these courses without going through the school—but of course you’d miss out on the high school credit option that way.
University of Nebraska High School
Price: Tuition info available here
Associated with the University of Nebraska, the University of Nebraska High School offers flexibility, but it also offers quality online courses intended to prepare students for college, including world languages.
Language offerings include Chinese, French, German, Latin and Spanish.
French students can take advantage of an AP-level course as well. The courses focus on both language and culture.
Indiana University High School
Price: Tuition info available here
Indiana University High School has been providing distance education to public school students, home-schooled students, adults and anyone else looking to study remotely since 1999.
Indiana University High School offers a wide array of courses, including language offerings like French, German and Spanish.
These courses focus on the core skills of reading, writing, listening and speaking so you can use the language in real life and/or continue your language study at the university level.
If you want to help boost your language skills and earn credit, check out the above online courses for foreign languages.
Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)
And One More Thing...
If you dig the idea of learning on your own time from the comfort of your smart device with real-life authentic language content, you'll love using FluentU.
With FluentU, you'll learn real languages—as they're spoken by native speakers. FluentU has a wide variety of videos as you can see here:
FluentU has interactive captions that let you tap on any word to see an image, definition, audio and useful examples. Now native language content is within reach with interactive transcripts.
Didn't catch something? Go back and listen again. Missed a word? Hover your mouse over the subtitles to instantly view definitions.
You can learn all the vocabulary in any video with FluentU's "learn mode." Swipe left or right to see more examples for the word you’re learning.
And FluentU always keeps track of vocabulary that you’re learning. It gives you extra practice with difficult words—and reminds you when it’s time to review what you’ve learned. You get a truly personalized experience.
Start using the FluentU website on your computer or tablet or, better yet, download the FluentU app from the iTunes or Google Play store. Click here to take advantage of our current sale! (Expires at the end of this month.)
