Benefits of Learning a Foreign Language

One strives to learn a foreign language for a variety of reasons. A teacher in a multilingual school has to have the ability to reach out to students of different cultures. Migrants lessen the impact of adjustment if they have made an effort to learn the language of their new country in advance. Learning a foreign language enables bridging of social barriers. A person gets to enjoy social and economic benefits, as well as the mental benefits of learning a foreign language. Here are some reasons why you should learn a foreign language.

1) Learning a foreign language boosts brain power.

A foreign language is a whole new system with distinct rules, etymology, and meaning, which are just a few of the complexities of a language. Learning a new one puts the brain to task by recognizing this new language structure. As the brain works out meaning and makes full use of this new arsenal to express ideas, it sharpens skills on reading, negotiating, and problem-solving.

2) A person’s ability to multi-task is developed.

Multi-tasking is stressful to those who are not skilled at it. People who are multilingual are proficient at slipping from one tongue to another, one language system to another totally different language mechanics. This is a very distracting and demanding work, not only for the tongue and language faculties, but especially for the brain. People who have developed this are highly proficient multi-taskers and commit very minimal error when juggling various activities.

3) The onset of dementia and Alzheimer’s is stalled.

With other factors held constant, several researches suggested that multilingual adults experienced the onset of Alzheimer’s and dementia at a later age of 75 compared to monolingual adults who had the first signs at age 71. The studies were conducted with other variables such as gender, overall health, educational level, and economic status, but there were no significant results that contributed to the mentioned diseases as significantly as the number of languages spoken.

4) Memory is improved.