Learning a Foreign Language Improves Children's Ability to Learn

Learning a Foreign Language Improves Children’s Ability to Learn

        In schools, many students are taught a foreign language starting in high school. However, due to budget cuts there is a decline of foreign language learning in English speaking countries, but it is imperative that English speakers learn a foreign language. In the loss of learning another language, English-speaking countries lose the opportunity to improve academic performance, increase interactions with people across the world, and gain economic and political benefits. As a result of not providing programs to learn a foreign language, English-speaking countries are remaining stagnant in a global world that is rapidly advancing.

        Students gain valuable language skills and cognitive abilities by learning a second language, and can only benefit and increase in their ability to obtain new information. In addition to improving students’ reading, writing, and listening skills: “With the core language skills – abilities to speak and listen, to read and write – come higher-order capacities: to interpret and understand, to recognize cultural differences” (Source A). The ability to learn another language allows students to improve academically and helps increase interaction with other people. The increase of interaction between people helps an individual understand a “cultural difference” that can impact their life. The sharing of cultures is vital to society because it improves other individuals understand more ways to live.

        In education and learning, the mission of a student is not to repeat facts and information that are taught. The mission is to understand and analyze the information that is given to them; to further thinking in the classroom and to draw their own conclusions. Through learning a second language, schools are able to promote independent thinking by giving the skills and the abilities to think beyond the classroom setting. It gives the students a connection to the world that is outside of their country. It is proven that when students learn a foreign language the brain is more flexible and more willing to learn: “The lack of foreign language learning in our society, she states is ‘a devastating waste of potential.’ Students who learn languages at an early age consistently display enhanced cognitive abilities relative to their monolingual peers” (Source D).  Learning another language can also improve other aspects in a student’s life. As a result of exercising the brain, it is able to think more effectively, which can benefit them throughout their whole life. This is an important key factor for young children, which allows them to obtain more information than those who do not know a second language.