U.S. should be teaching kids more languages
Many countries in Europe, Asia and Africa introduce a second language to their elementary-age youth, reaping numerous personal and cultural benefits. Some countries, like Luxembourg, have a reported bilingual rate of 99%.
The United States, however, has yet to adopt this practice, with only about 20% of Americans reportedly being bilingual. Devastatingly, New Mexicans learn a foreign language at a rate of only 9%. I think students in America would benefit in numerous ways if they were given the opportunity to learn a second language as young as 5 years old. While I acknowledge it’s not uncommon for American students to choose to take second-language classes in high school, by this age, achieving fluency becomes increasingly challenging, which may discourage students who are trying to learn a language to fluency.
There are many reasons to learn a second language. Being fluent in more than one language requires more cognitive function due to language co-activation, meaning the cognitive processing of one language does not shut off just because the other is in active use.
This means that no matter what language is in use at any given moment, a bilingual individual is actively discerning which language is being spoken to them at any given time. This makes the bilingual individual very good at inhibitory control (navigating conflicting stimuli) and switching between tasks. Additionally, bilingual individuals are better equipped when it comes to understanding speech, even when there is excess background noise. These cognitive abilities become automatic to a person and can be useful in work environments that are full of noise or other stimuli or require attention to multiple tasks.
Bilingual people who started learning their second language at a younger age also have a greater capacity for empathy as they have learned perspective-taking long before monolinguals have had to. From a young age, bilingual children have to understand which language the person they are corresponding with speaks and adjust accordingly. This has a huge impact on empathy as it makes the child place themselves in another person’s position and take on their perspective. Since bilingualism requires so much cognitive power, adults who
experience a stroke can recover much better if they are bilingual; they will also develop dementia later in life than those who are monolingual.
Bilingualism offers the ability to communicate with a wide range of people. This opens the door to cultural experiences one might not have experienced otherwise. Living in New Mexico, it would have been extremely valuable if I had the opportunity to learn Spanish from a young age. I could be fluent in Spanish now if I had been taught how to speak it starting in elementary school.
This skill would have allowed me to communicate with my state’s vast population of Spanish speakers. Unfortunately, schools in America do not put much emphasis on second-language learning in schools. In the U.S., 16 states have no second-language requirement for high school graduation, and 24 more allow their second-language requirement to be satisfied with other non-language related courses. Even in the states with second-language requirements for high school graduation, it is not entirely helpful for students to begin their language acquisition journey in their late teens.
No matter what age you have learned your second language, you will generally reap the same benefits, so why is it so important that we implement language learning at a young age? It is very difficult for American children to truly learn a second language if they only start their practice in high school or by ages 14-17. There is a “critical period” for language acquisition, and the older you get, the harder it is to learn a language, especially to fluency. According to a study performed at MIT, children can learn the grammar of a new language until around 17 or 18.
However, achieving native-like proficiency is “nearly impossible” unless the child starts practicing by age 10. This means the practice of beginning a new language learning at 14 years old poses great difficulty to the learner who is trying to reach fluency. This is partly
because children are inherently great learners, but it could also be due to social factors inhibiting learning. The older we get, the less time we can afford to learn a new language due to the demands of daily life. Even if the barriers to language learning were purely social, it would still be important for children to learn new languages young as they have much more time to spend studying and practicing than adults with jobs and other responsibilities do.
Introducing a second or foreign language at a young age could also help with cultural
awareness. It would allow children to learn about and interact with the cultures that speak the languages they are learning. Additionally, we could teach dying native languages to children and attempt to save these languages in areas where only older generations are fluent in the area’s native language. According to the Administration for Native Americans, there are 75 Native languages near extinction in the United States. Focus on language learning in schools could make learning these languages more accessible.
It is time we start emphasizing language learning in America. We are far behind other developed countries when it comes to our rates of bilingualism. It is clear those who speak more than one language reap many social, cognitive and personal rewards. Children are best at learning, so we should be doing our best to teach them these important skills while they are still in their critical periods for language acquisition.