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Debate:Should students learn a foreign language? (view source)
Revision as of 12:15, September 2, 2008
, 12:15, September 2, 2008no edit summary
If our country is gaining immigrants and trading with more countries than ever before, learning a second language would be essential to maybe gain a better job or promotion, or maybe to meet new people.
If our country is gaining immigrants and trading with more countries than ever before, learning a second language would be essential to maybe gain a better job or promotion, or maybe to meet new people.
--JPBrick
--JPBrick
This being my first edit I apologise if I'm somehow messing up the structure. Being European I figured it might be interesting to add something about my perspective on languages. Since Europe is roughly of the same size as the US (on a very general scale that is), but consists of some 50 nations using some 30 languages our situation is very different from the US, where even the largest neighbour to the North mainly speaks the same language. In Europe most people learn at least one foreign language from third or fourth grade. Personally I took English for ten years (3rd to 12th) and German for 5 (7th to 11th), then some Russian while in the military, and Dutch as an exchange student in the Netherlands during college. Having countries with different languages virtually around the corner shows you the use for knowing languages in a more direct way than a remote possibility in your future professional life. I do believe however that knowing a foreign language is never 'bad' as in being a waste. As someone pointed out above it is not possible to fully understand a culture without knowing the language of the culture. Which language to start with is of course a matter of discussion. Considering the growth of the Chinese impact I guess you could say everone should learn Chinese of some form, but in the US I assume Spanish (or possibly French) might come to more immediate use.
I'd also like to point out that the more languages you know, the easier it becomes to learn more.
--SwedeSteve