Why learning a second language is important.

The knowledge of a second or foreign language never goes to waste. You may use it while in a new country to communicate with grandma and grandpa and other family members who do not speak English. Knowing a second language also means a whole new literature is in your hands. However, these aren’t the only benefits, a new language:

Stimulates Your Child’s Brain

Learning a new language undoubtedly empowers your mind.  Acquiring a new language means that you’re going to learn a whole new set of rules of grammar and culture. While your brain is trying to keep up with the new language’s complexities and take in the new patterns, new developments are happening in the brain. Just like muscles, the brain gets stronger and bigger the more you put it to good use.

Scientists have established that we use the left side of the brain when speaking our native language. Whereas, the second language usage isn’t limited to a specific hemisphere. It uses both of them, increasing the size of the white and grey matter of the brain.

It Improves Your Attention Span

With the human attention span seemingly narrowing more and more every day, according to many studies, deciding to learn a new language may be the antidote to this situation.  Recent studies show that the average attention span of most people has reduced from twelve to eight seconds. Researchers suggest that learning a new language helps the brain maintain focus and minimize distractions. This is a result of regularly switching between languages.

It Boosts Your Creativity

Knowing a foreign language isn’t beneficial only to the brain; it also influences your level of creativity. As a person starts to learn a language, they get familiar with the culture of the place where that language is spoken. The more you learn about new cultures, the more you’ll look at the world around you from different perspectives. The change of views will make you more original, elaborate, and flexible—all qualities of being a creative person.

It Improves Your First Language

One learns the mother tongue intuitively and without any formal education. However, being raised in a society where a particular language is spoken, children start to pick up the language they hear. And for most Africans in the diaspora, the is most likely English or French.

However, learning another language is a whole different deal. From the beginning, you’ll get introduced to grammar, vocabulary, idioms, and sentence structure. As you learn more about the second language, you become more conscious of what you know in the first language. While before you couldn’t quite explain the abstract rules and language structure, learning a new language helps you put names to what you learned instinctively in the first language.

It improves their multitasking skills

Not many people are good at multitasking. However, this often doesn’t apply to bilingual people. They are some of the most experienced when it comes to multitasking. Their brain has been practicing code switching from one language to another daily. When the brain gets used to this demanding job of code switching, it isn’t difficult for if to use this skill in other tasks too.

A study done by the United States National Institutes of Health concluded that bilinguals switch tasks faster than monolinguals. They found that bilingual children in their research responded quite well to their multiple computer tasks in comparison to their monolingual friends.

It Slows Down Cognitive Decline

Learning a language may reduce your chances of getting early onset of cognitive impairments. Millions of people in the North America live with cognitive impairment, be it Alzheimer’s, Dementia, or any other disorder. The latest study on the effect of bilingualism in cognitive aging found that people who spoke more than one language regardless of their gender, ethnicity, and occupation experience the onset of cognitive decline four years and a half later than the ones who spoke only one.

It Boosts Your Child’s Self-Esteem

No one wants to be put in the spotlight, especially when talking in a foreign language when the chances of making mistakes are quite high. Yet, this is what characterizes language learning. It breaks you out of your shell again and again that eventually, you’ll feel comfortable in every situation regardless of whether you’re making mistakes or not. Nothing beats the confidence you feel when talking to a native speaker in their language. That’s when your self-esteem will sky-rocket. Becoming proficient in a language is like mastering any other skill. Once you’re there, you’ll feel confident and nice about yourself.

The benefits of learning another language are innumerable. Those that are mentioned here are just a part of them. You will find learning a second language both exciting and appealing and often opens the door to the many benefits that come with language proficiency.