Location via proxy:   [ UP ]  
[Report a bug]   [Manage cookies]                
Scribd Logo
Upload

Welcome to Scribd!

  • 46 views

    Benefits of Learning A Second Language: by Julie Ellis

    Uploaded by

    Richelle Cantong
    The document discusses the benefits of learning a second language. It details 6 important benefits: 1) career advantages from being bilingual, 2) better travel experiences through cultural immersion, 3) improved understanding of one's native language grammar, 4) brain health benefits including delayed dementia, 5) cognitive benefits such as better focus, memory, and test scores, and 6) personal satisfaction from mastering a new skill and interacting with others in their native language. Research on older adults indicates that learning a second language keeps the brain active and can delay the onset of Alzheimer's and dementia. While children most easily acquire new languages, adults can still gain these cognitive and health benefits from foreign language study.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Benefits of Learning A Second Language: by Julie Ellis

    Uploaded by

    Richelle Cantong
    46 views2 pages
    The document discusses the benefits of learning a second language. It details 6 important benefits: 1) career advantages from being bilingual, 2) better travel experiences through cultural immersion, 3) improved understanding of one's native language grammar, 4) brain health benefits including delayed dementia, 5) cognitive benefits such as better focus, memory, and test scores, and 6) personal satisfaction from mastering a new skill and interacting with others in their native language. Research on older adults indicates that learning a second language keeps the brain active and can delay the onset of Alzheimer's and dementia. While children most easily acquire new languages, adults can still gain these cognitive and health benefits from foreign language study.

    Original Description:

    article

    Original Title

    article 1 langauge

    Copyright

    © © All Rights Reserved

    Available Formats

    DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Did you find this document useful?

    Is this content inappropriate?

    The document discusses the benefits of learning a second language. It details 6 important benefits: 1) career advantages from being bilingual, 2) better travel experiences through cultural immersion, 3) improved understanding of one's native language grammar, 4) brain health benefits including delayed dementia, 5) cognitive benefits such as better focus, memory, and test scores, and 6) personal satisfaction from mastering a new skill and interacting with others in their native language. Research on older adults indicates that learning a second language keeps the brain active and can delay the onset of Alzheimer's and dementia. While children most easily acquire new languages, adults can still gain these cognitive and health benefits from foreign language study.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    46 views2 pages

    Benefits of Learning A Second Language: by Julie Ellis

    Uploaded by

    Richelle Cantong
    The document discusses the benefits of learning a second language. It details 6 important benefits: 1) career advantages from being bilingual, 2) better travel experiences through cultural immersion, 3) improved understanding of one's native language grammar, 4) brain health benefits including delayed dementia, 5) cognitive benefits such as better focus, memory, and test scores, and 6) personal satisfaction from mastering a new skill and interacting with others in their native language. Research on older adults indicates that learning a second language keeps the brain active and can delay the onset of Alzheimer's and dementia. While children most easily acquire new languages, adults can still gain these cognitive and health benefits from foreign language study.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    You are on page 1of 2

    Benefits of Learning a Second Language

    by Julie Ellis
    I studied French and Spanish in high school. While I did not continue my French study
    in college, I did take two more years of Spanish and graduated with good fluency. While
    my motivation at the time was a boyfriend from Mexico attending the same college, and
    even though that relationship ended, I have never regretted being fluent in a second
    language. At the time, I was unaware of many of the benefits that are now known,
    based upon cognitive research.

    6 Important Benefits
    1. Career Advantages: People who have fluency in at least two languages (their native
    and a second one) are in greater demand in the job market, and will often beat the
    competition because of that second language. Any company that has or plans to have
    an international presence will almost always select the candidate with 2nd language
    proficiency.
    2. Better Travel Experiences: When individuals speak the native language of countries
    they visit, they are able to establish immediate rapport with the locals and are thus
    more intimately immersed in the culture, learning things that a typical foreigner would
    not. On several occasions in my travels throughout Central and South America, I was
    invited into homes for meals and great discussions about politics, economics, and such.
    My perspectives have certainly been broadened.
    3. Improved understanding of grammatical structure in ones native language: This I
    discovered first-hand as well. Just learning verb tenses in another language allowed me
    to identify them in English and made me a better English teacher.
    4. Brain Health: Medical studies now indicate that the part of the brain that controls
    language function is improved through the learning of a foreign language. More recent
    studies also indicate that learning a foreign language late in life appears to delay
    dementia and Alzheimers. An important study by Dr. Thomas Bak at the University of
    Edinburgh and replicated at the Perleman Medical School at the U. of Pennsylvania
    show that the attention mechanisms of the brain area stretched and kept active when
    older adults work on learning a foreign language.
    5. Cognitive Benefits: Studies also show that children who grow up in households in
    which two languages are spoken and become fluent in both of those languages have
    greater ability to focus in school. They also appear to have better short- and long-term
    memory functions. Some studies suggest that students do better on standardized
    testing, and are better able to remember lists and sequences.

    6. Personal Satisfaction: There is always of feeling of accomplishment when one masters


    something, and that goes for learning a language. Not only do I feel accomplished, but
    I enjoy going to a Mexican restaurant and having the ability to converse with the owners
    and wait staff in their native language. When I see a Hispanic family at the store,
    conversing in Spanish, I love greeting the young children and engaging them is simple
    conversation. Parents are pleasantly surprised and, I believe, feel a bit more respected.

    We all know that children pick up a foreign language much more easily than adults, and
    that is why, of course, such instruction is begun at the elementary levels in most public
    schools today. But learning languages as adults and senior citizens now appears to

    You might also like