The Language Advantage
There is no doubt that children who learn another language are off to a brainy head start. They have a greater understanding of words and more enhanced reading skills than their peers who are monolingual. Children gain cognitive and academic benefits even from some exposure to a second language.
The Benefits Of Language
The tasks of learning two sets of vocabulary and grammar, then learning how to shift from one language to another, provide terrific brain stimulation. Even better, children gain the ability to compare and translate languages, making connections between words in both languages and what they symbolize. Thinking about language is a very sophisticated exercise that comes early to children learning more than their mother tongue. Often, they are not just learning words, but how to think about the world in more than one way and communicating it because they can tap into multiple ideas from various languages not known in their own language.
Academic Benefits
Research around the world reveals that students who learn more than one language are more creative and detailed when answering exam questions, perhaps because knowing words in different languages offers them more elasticity and flexibility in their thinking. Learning a Romance language, such as Spanish, Italian, or French, gives the student the ability to analyze unfamiliar words. This is especially true of Latin. This helps boost overall performance on written exams. Analytical thinking starts early as the child has already learned how to break words down into “pieces” because they have an increased “phonological (sound) awareness”. Overall, the rules for learning languages make more sense to a child who has grasped a new language. Understanding language rules in general can make learning a third or fourth language easier later on in life.
More Cognitive Benefits
Language plays an enormous role in cognitive development, which is the development of the ability to think and solve problems. Research demonstrates that learning a new language promotes abstract thinking. A more flexible brain grasps rules and processes information more easily. In fact, a higher IQ isn’t necessarily because a student is inherently more intelligent but may be owing to a more extensive experience in switching between languages.
Family and Community: A Bridge Between Cultures
Learning languages is not just about learning words but bringing connection between cultures. The child lives in a family and a community. A child will have a closer emotional bond to his family and culture of origin if he can speak his “heritage” languages including that of his extended family. Children who are brought up this way normally feel pride in their heritage. Those who keep their parents’ native languages usually have better relationships within their families, feel better about themselves, and have a more positive attitude about school than their peers. They also have a sophisticated sense of their identities, seeing themselves as capable of enhancing acceptance among people of diverse origins.
Your child will probably get by just fine speaking only English, but beyond academic and even economic advantages, being able to speak another language opens up more connections within the family, community, and the world. Another language is a bountiful gift.