Changing from Chinese 1&2 to Italian 1&2.

[Evarynn]

Hello all,
I've been learning Chinese since Year 7 (I'm not in year 11), while it was fun to learn and a,ll I really didn't want to continue it into VCE, but my father basically forced me to. I just had my first class of Chinese of the year today, and I now realise that I don't stand a chance in passing it.
Despite being in a rather large school there are only about 13 students in my Chinese class, and this is the only Yr 11 Chinese Class.

While I struggled to introduce myself in Chinese, basically every other student did it with apparent ease. I feel like I'm so far behind everyone that I won't catch up, ever. I'm having a lot of difficulty with the homework the teacher gave for the 'Beginners' on the first day... I always got good scores on tests, but I would only learn the words for the tests so now of course I have a lot of trouble remembering them all.

While I only learned Italian throughout primary schoo, I still remember quite a bit of it and can speak it much better than Chinese, mainly due to having a Grandparent who often speaks Italian to me (despite English being her first Language). I honestly think that I would do better in Italian than Chinese, I'm just as interested in their culture and I am actually interested in learning Italian. Even though I would be quite a bit behind and have some trouble at first, I think that I am more likely to end up getting a better score for Italian that I would for Chinese. My mother speaks quite a bit of Italian which I'm guessing would help quite a bit in the long run.

So my question is, do you think it's worth it for me to change from Chinese to Italian (this is assuming that my teachers actually let me).
Anyone that's been in a similar situation than I have please share what you ended up deciding.
Thanks 

[psyxwar]

I'm going to say now that Chinese isn't worth doing if you don't have a solid foundation and/or an actual desire to learn it. CSL is really difficult to score well in and although it does get scaled nicely, it just isn't worth it in my opinion unless you're actually good at the subject. If you're struggling to introduce yourself, then you definitely won't stand a chance in Yr 12 Chinese unless you're prepared to put serious hours into learning vocabulary, practising speaking, writing essays etc.

I'd recommend you drop Chinese and pursue something else. It sounds like you'd definitely do better in Italian (as you actually speak it and you have an interest in learning it) so I'd definitely recommend that over Chinese. However, there are other subjects that could interest you, and having a passion for something really helps motivate you to study it.

[BigAl]

Bono you could do something else over language and achieve a good mark with less effort. I recommend that you should pursue your interest at uni simply because vce is all about competing...and collecting every single mark you can

[Professor Polonsky]

Doing a second language is a great option, but in any language the competition is going to be very tough and you're going to be quite disadvantages if your skills don't much those of others at the beginning of the 1/2. You could study hard and try to catch up, but doing so is probably going to be very hard in a lote subject.

You could try Italian, or maybe a non-language subject would be easier for you to do well in.