hey everybody welcome to this a2 english listening practice video you can use this video to practice your listening and comprehension as i speak before we start remember to subscribe to the channel click on the bell and follow us on instagram you ready so today i'm gonna talk about high school i think this is an interesting topic to discuss because high school is different in different countries in today's video we'll focus on high school in america first let's talk a little bit about the structure of high school in america most high schools in the country include 9th 10th 11th and 12th grade before students start high school they attend elementary school first and then middle school second high school is like the third level of education so let me teach you some important words we use to label each year of high school people in their first year of high school ninth grade are called freshmen people in 10th grade are called sophomores 11th graders are called juniors and 12th graders are called seniors these words are important to learn because this is how native speakers refer to different years of high school so during each school year there are two separate semesters normally the first semester lasts from the end of summer to the beginning of winter then the second semester starts at the beginning of the new year and continues on until the end of spring in the traditional school system students have a long summer vacation at the end of the school year however nowadays many schools have a year-round schedule in this system the summer break is shorter but the other vacations like winter break and spring break are longer a lot of students prefer this system because they would rather have more vacation time throughout the year instead of a really long summer break so during each semester most students have around six different classes for six different subjects in general most students take the same or similar classes however some students take advanced level classes we usually call these ap classes i had a few ap classes during my time in high school and they were definitely more difficult than the regular classes i think the normal high school classes in the u.s aren't that hard many of my students who live in other countries tell me that their high school classes were hard and required a lot of work how about your high school classes were they hard another important topic to talk about is the quality of the teachers in my experience some public school teachers are good and some are bad honestly i don't think i had a lot of good teachers most of them were average or bad in private school the quality of the teachers is usually better this is probably the situation in most countries not just the us one question that many people ask me is about which foreign languages american students study in high school well in the u.s most students get to choose which language they want to study the majority of the students choose spanish because it's the most useful foreign language for most americans there are usually more spanish teachers and classes than any other language the second most popular language that students choose is french and the third language is probably italian i studied spanish in high school because i thought it would be the easiest language to learn okay lastly let's talk about the importance of high school in america students need to do well in high school if they want to go to a good college they need to get good grades and they need to do well on the sat the sat is the exam that high school students take if they want to go to college students can take this test multiple times to try to get a good score i only took the sat once and i didn't study for it i didn't really care about going to a good college all right now i'm gonna ask you three questions about today's video to check your comprehension number one in the u.s what do we call people who are in ninth grade number two what are ap classes number three what are the three most common languages that american students study okay remember to subscribe to the channel click on the bell and follow us on instagram for more english tips and lessons i'll see you next time [Music] you