There are a number of obvious benefits to learning a second language.
The ability to travel more easily and gain an understanding of cultures that you would never encounter otherwise are just a few benefits of language learning.
But there are also some surprising benefits.
Better grades, better salary, and better cognition are just a few.
The best part?
You don’t have to be a native speaker to reap the benefits.
Benefits in school
Test scores/grades
Studies such as that from Marian et al (2013) show that students who know two languages do better on reading and math tests than their single language peers.
And these aren’t just the standardized reading and math tests but the classroom reading and math tests too.
In addition, having a bilingual program improves academic performance for all students in both languages.
Christian et al (2010) saw this in their review of multilingual programs in schools.
The schools had a bilingual program where certain classes were taught in students’ majority language such as English and certain classes were taught in the minority language such as Spanish.
They found that whether students’ first language is English or Spanish it didn’t matter; all students improved in both English and Spanish reading and writing or math.
It also benefited students across the board, regardless of socioeconomic status.
Preschoolers
Exposure to a second language from birth shows up in skills long before school starts.
Researchers have found increased pre reading skills such as sound recognition and phonemic awareness.
Pre math skills such as counting and number sense increased as well.
Benefits at work
Job opportunities
It’s easy to think of more opportunities that would open up by knowing another language.
Not only careers like translator or travel guide but even jobs that don’t require two languages benefit from bilingual employees.Â
Even knowing the target language for the country in which you want to work helps!
Knowing Swiss German helped my husband find a connection for an electrical company here in the states and not knowing French made him miss out on another opportunity in Switzerland.
Good employers know the increased cognitive skills that a multilingual employee can have and value that.
Salary
How about more money just for being fluent in more than one language?
Agirdag (2014) found that people with active fluency earn about 2-3k more than their single language or limited fluency peers. That’s the same job, same company, same base skills.
Unfortunately this benefit does require equal fluency in both languages.
Benefits in life
Aging
There are numerous studies that show that even a little bit of knowledge of a foreign language can improve cognitive abilities even with aging.
Bak et al (2014) supports this slowed decline.
They studied people in various stages of aging (adult, later adult, elderly) and tested their cognitive skills.
Those who were native speakers in 2 or more languages showed the least decline with aging.
But even a little bit of learning, at any time in life, can slow the cognitive decline too.
Cognition and Executive Functioning
Executive function is like having a personal assistant in your brain.
Some people have better assistants than others for various reasons.
But Carlson and Meltzoff (2008) found that native bilinguals have better executive functioning skills than those who speak one language.
They also found that the more fluent you are in a second language, the better your executive functioning is.
That means you don’t have to be fluent to reap this benefit!
Task switching (more commonly known as multitasking) is easier, the more fluent you are in two languages.
Bialystok, E (2017) studied people who spoke more than one language and noticed this.
The more fluent a person was in a second language, the better they were at multitasking.
Downsides
I have found only 2 downsides to learning another language.
- Temporary vocabulary struggles as the brain processes all the information but not everyone struggles with this.
- The effort needed to learn and maintain the knowledge of a new language.
Neither of these outweigh the benefits of learning a second language in my opinion.
Children will struggle with one language in the beginning, just remember how toddlers speak!
But that struggle is temporary and will fade with time and practice.
As for the other downside, anything worth doing, will take effort.
Is that effort worth it for you?
Why not learn another language?
With these many benefits, which language would you learn and why is it German?
