Guardian Atricle- Leanring a New Language

Why has learning a new language become a foreign concept to the young people of today?

A recent study has revealed the shock-horror of the amount of young people shying away from foreign languages despite the myriad of options, nearly all British students are being offered. Figures are showing a dramatic 50 per cent decrease in A-level students who take French and German in the last decade; even the interests of Mandarin and Arabic have dwindled.

  Physiological studies have found that being bilingual is not only a great asset for the future of work, but the development of the cognitive process; the brain is offered much more mental benefits than those who are monolingual. For example, the brain is able to be improved in the functionality of challenging it to communicate in a various range of language systems and negotiate meaning, thus advancing other skills, such as problem-solving tasks in addition.

  Multilingual people, especially young children are skilled at switching between two systems of speech, writing and structure, and according to Pennsylvania State University, this “juggling” skill makes them skilful in multi-tasking and other researchers have found that, those who are bilingual are less likely to become distracted overall.

  One of the key dilemmas to the British system is that English itself has turned into a variety of sub-languages. The idea of crass language or political correctness being unacceptable in public grammatical speaking no longer takes its place as important anymore, so English within itself as a source of irony, eloquence and poetry is now something very foreign to many people.

Can one really suggest that it all started to fall apart when children of Britain stopped learning “Bonjour, comment allez-vous?” Just to have a point proven, it can be said that, the old scholastic curriculum may have had its problems but, due to the limited options, Latin and Greek were all compulsory hurdles in which all had to take part in and funnily enough, they all jumped them. By restraining our knowledge in various other languages, we are unintentionally restraining our knowledge of other countries, cultures and deeper understanding. As Britain is currently one of the most multi-cultural areas of the world, diverse languages should be flooding our academic systems, wouldn’t you think?

  Learning a foreign language draws your focus to the technicalities of language, including the grammar, use of words, and sentence structure making one more aware of everything around them, and the ways in which language can be structured and manipulated. These skills can make an individual a more effective communicator and more successful person within society. Language speakers also develop a better ear for listening, as they are skilled at distinguishing meaning from hidden messages.

 What should be learnt is that, the joy of language lies in the freedom it gives us. By allowing the spread of different languages, we are able to travel in space and in time, through reading something we may not understand at first, of course and become overall better people for the future. Bon voyage.