This I Believe Proposal

This I Believe Proposal

            I believe that one of the most essential things in life is being able to communicate with others, including those who do not speak one’s native language. In order to do this, language needs to be taught to students in school, and that process of learning should not be started when the student reaches high school. By the time a student reaches high school it is very difficult for them to learn and grasp a completely new language, and to be able to speak it fluently. If students are taught a second language starting at young age, then they will be easily able to pick up the language and speak it as easily as they do their first language. There are many benefits of learning language at a young age compared to at the high school level.

            Many research studies have shown that it is easier for a young child to pick up on and repeat new sounds; when learning a second language, young students are easily able to repeat the sounds they hear, and tend to not overthink everything they are saying. Students who are multilingual have been shown to do better on all aspects of standardized testing. Not only is learning a second language beneficial in an academic sense, but also out in the real world. Especially in the field of business, it is important to be able to communicate with partners around the world.

            My experiences with trying to learn a second language made me believe that it is important to learn a foreign language as early in a child’s education as possible. I was not taught Spanish in grade school, but I took it in high school and found it difficult to pick up on it and memorize all the rules that came along with it. If I had learned it at a younger age I would have been fluent, and to this day I wish I knew Spanish fluently because it would help me get much further in my career after college. There is a great amount of research that has been done to show that learning a language is more beneficial than learning it later, that it helps a person in all aspects of their life, and that it provides many academic benefits. I want connect the benefits of learning a second language, and learning it early, with being more successful in all areas of life, and at every age. It has neurological and academic benefits, it creates a more culturally diverse environment, necessary for economic development and national security, because interaction amongst different cultures is an essential component for both. If foreign language is encouraged and enforced at young age in school systems, then not only will students be more educated, but the world will also learn how to communicate better with each other, and in turn there will be less misunderstandings and miscommunications. Some may consider learning a language at such a young age a waste of time because the time could be better spent learning things that specifically help improve standardized test scores. I am proposing that schools focus on something much more important than test scores: learning how to communicate with those who are different from what the norm is.