When one lives in a certain country, it’s very easy to forget about the rest of the world out there. It’s easy to fall into the rut of forgetting that a world exists outside the borders of your daily commute, and you fail to appreciate the massive complexity in cultures and places that makes our world so beautiful.
Remember this helps answer the question, “why is it important to learn a second language?” Knowing a second language will help generate internal appreciation for the world beyond our borders.
And there’s no better time to learn that second language than when you’re young. For the reasons we’ll cover below, you should definitely help your kid to learn a second language when young.
Table of Contents
1. It’s Easier to Learn Young
First and foremost, it’s far easier to learn another language when you’re young than it is when you’re older. As a child, you’re already in the learning mode. Half of your day is spent at school trying to absorb new information and put it into practice. Thus, a child’s mentality is much more prepared to absorb a new language.
Someone who’s older, on the other hand, is probably far past college or any other educational focus. Thus, their mentality isn’t so kind to the difficult task of learning a new syntax.
In addition, children’s minds are still forming when they are young. Their brains and verbal abilities are still developing. It’s easier for the knowledge of a new language to be formed as those brain capacities are still developing, than when your verbal abilities have already been set in their ways for decades.
All this to say that if you don’t help your kids learn another language now, they may never learn one later.
2. A Better Appreciation for Worldwide Cultures
An essential part of learning any world language is learning more about their culture. If your child is going to a school to learn the language, then there’s no doubt that the curriculum will include and provide for some sections on cultural appreciation for the speakers of that language.
Your kids will be given exposure to cultures different from their own and thus will be able to have an appreciation for those ways of life that exist outside of the bubble they live in.
3. Make Study Abroad a Reality
A study abroad experience is one of the most life-changing experiences ever. A study abroad program can completely alter how your child sees the world, as well as provide them with the basic skills and mentalities necessary to be an independent person.
You can help them achieve their study abroad dreams by helping them to learn the language of whatever country they’d like to go to. With the knowledge of that country’s language, they’ll have a much better chance of being admitted to and having a good experience in the study abroad program.
4. Connect with Fellow Students
If your child attends a school with any international students, or students who also speak the same second language, then they’ll be able to connect with their fellow students on a whole new level than ever before. This will only intensify their knowledge of and appreciation for other cultures.
5. Build a Work Ethic
Few things are as hard as learning a second language. This is especially true when you consider that most of your kid’s peers probably aren’t going to be as committed to learning if a second language if they’re even doing that at all!
Thus, by getting some who will teach kids languages to instruct your kids, you can ensure that your child is able to build a seriously good work ethic. That work ethic will serve him or her well not only in college and higher education but also when it comes time for them to join the workforce.
6. Help Them Connect with Family Back Home
If your ethnicity means that you have family in a different country that you often go visit, then teaching your child the language of your home country is one of the greatest gifts you can give them. Not only will you enable them to have a better appreciation for their heritage and where they come from, but they will also be able to connect with their family back home far better.
Too often, families that move to the United States and stay in the country for a couple of generations fail to teach the next generation the language of the country of their heritage. Then, the kids miss out on developing that intimate connection to their heritage and with their cousins and other families back home.
7. Improve Verbal Skills
Learning another language will help one to improve verbal skills in one’s first language when one is young. This is because you’ll learn words and phrases in the second language that you may not have had any knowledge of before. Then, you can apply those same words and phrases translated to the first language.
By teaching your kid a second language, you’ll ensure that they are ahead of the curve when it comes to verbal skills. They’ll blow their teachers away in English and any compositions classes as well, mark my words.
8. Keep Their Minds Sharp
Last but not least, learning a second language helps to keep your mind sharp. There are a hundred and one studies that show that learning a second language sharpens the brain. It helps engage vital parts of the brain that don’t normally get as much activity, ensuring that those parts of the brain continue to develop and grow.
Why Is it Important to Learn a Second Language When Young?
With all of the reasons that we’ve discussed above, you can now safely answer the question, “why is it important to learn a second language?” Not only so, but you can also see that the best time to learn a second language is when young. All that remains is for you to start teaching your kids another language!
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