Why people should still learn foreign languages
By Samantha Harvey, Wimbledon High School
Nowadays, many people in English-speaking countries are starting to learn foreign languages less and less. This can be because they have not been taught them well in school, or they assume they can get by speaking English when they go on holiday. As a self-diagnosed budding linguist, I decided to write this article to show how useful foreign languages can be.
For a start, learning foreign languages actually improves your brain. Studies have shown that students who study a foreign language have improved analytical skills, creativity, problem solving, dealing with abstract concepts, listening skills, memory and can also improve your skills and grades in Maths and English, and improves the knowledge of your own language (as you learn more complex structures in other languages you have to translate to English).
Foreign languages can also change your perception of different cultures. I have been learning Mandarin for two years now, and my knowledge of the Chinese culture is much better than it was before I started learning. When you learn vocabulary about festivals and holidays, for example, the specific words you learn by themselves show you what people do during festivals. Pair that with reading and writing exercises about what people do during these times, and you find that you have learnt a lot. Foreign languages can create more positive attitudes to minorities, foreigners and a better appreciation of cultural diversity. It can, therefore, expand one’s view of the world.
Finally, foreign languages are a good arrow in your bow for getting jobs. Four out of five new jobs in the US are created as a result of foreign trade, so we can see how important a knowledge of a foreign language could be. Foreign language skills can create more opportunities in many spheres of employment.
On top of everything else, international travel is made easier and more pleasant by knowing a foreign language.
Some people claim that traditional languages English students learn, like French, are not very useful anymore, and languages that are becoming more vital to learn, like Russian or Mandarin, are very hard to learn. I would say that the utility of each language depends on a particular person’s job, family, where they like to go on holiday, etc. However, just because a language has a different alphabet (like Japanese or Russian), or no alphabet at all (Mandarin), doesn’t mean that it is impossible to learn. And it is very likely that the people saying this have never even attempted to learn the languages they supposedly find hard. What I have found in the last three years that I have been learning Mandarin for, in contrast to French and Spanish which I also learn, is that while it’s difficult to get your head round at first, like any new challenge, if you work at it, by two months of learning it for two hours a week, writing characters does not seem that strange anymore. And after three years, it doesn’t really occur to me anymore that it is more difficult because there is no alphabet.
In conclusion, from the point of view of someone who has actually been there and tried that, I think it is easy to see why people should still be learning lots of foreign languages. It is an incredibly useful way to achieve lots of things in lots of parts of life and enhances your brain as well.
