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There's a lot of fantastic literature written in all of the languages mentioned so far.
It seems we've hit a sort of golden age for Spanish literature. Someone could spend a lifetime just studying French or Russian or Chinese literature. Japanese literature has been wonderful for a while, too. I'm less familiar with Arabic literature, but I'd be shocked if there weren't a bunch of it, given how many people have spoken Arabic for so many centuries.
There's also a whole world of popular culture opened up in each of those countries, but only to people who can handle the language.
I know people like to complain about the quality of language teaching in schools (not just American schools), but it really does open up new doors. I learned a language well enough that I could have kept going with it in college, though I chose to switch languages for various reasons. Even at that point, though, I was good enough to read children's novels, and I could almost follow along with movies without subtitles. With modern methods of language instruction, I could improve my skills quickly enough to be pretty fluent in my high school language if that were my priority.
I might go back to it someday, too, even though there are other languages ahead of it in line.
Some might argue that language study materials are there for people who want them, but schools are an opportunity for everyone to have that particular door opened, and language classes really help. They get students past some of the hurdles that auto-didacts find a bit more difficult, and the classes can reach people who might otherwise not have known how great it is to make a stab at not being monolingual.
Also, it's great to force kids to learn some grammar, and a good way to do that is to expose them to grammatical concepts in a language that isn't English (so they don't assume they know all about everything already).
Also, it's great to force kids to learn some grammar, and a good way to do that is to expose them to grammatical concepts in a language that isn't English (so they don't assume they know all about everything already).
I agree with you about this and it's amazing how so much of the vocabulary in certain languages (particularly Romance languages) is either a direct cognate to English words or very similar conceptually.
I think the data is out there that Spanish surpassed French several years ago as the most-taught second language in the United States. French is still third I believe. Overall French is an okay language to learn, but it's not as prestigious or useful as it was during the 20th century. It used to be that many international institutions (UN, Olympics, etc.) utilized French as their working language for people from different countries, but now that English has become the de fact international language of trade and communication, and because most Americans speak English, French is less important to learn here.
It certainly isn't an important language for Americans to learn but the thing with native English speakers is we can study pretty much any language we want and find some justification for it. We already speak the world's most important language.
There's a lot of fantastic literature written in all of the languages mentioned so far.
It seems we've hit a sort of golden age for Spanish literature. Someone could spend a lifetime just studying French or Russian or Chinese literature. Japanese literature has been wonderful for a while, too. I'm less familiar with Arabic literature, but I'd be shocked if there weren't a bunch of it, given how many people have spoken Arabic for so many centuries.
And French, by the way, is pretty critical for understanding Russian literature that came before the revolution (1917).
While that may be true, we must not neglect those who are unable to mater their native tongue or are having difficulty doing so.
Adding a second language when someone is struggling with the first is a bit counterproductive don't you think?
No, I don't think so at all. When a student is learning an L2 (second language), time is typically spent learning the structure and grammar of the L2. This is true whether the school uses a whole language or phonetic based approach. The grammar instruction not only helps them pick up the L2, it also deepens their understanding of their L1 (native) language's grammar and structure.
Bilingual students who start L2 instruction at the beginning of their school career, for example, tend to be a bit behind their peers at monolingual schools in L1 reading skills in the early grades, but by 5th grade have typically surpassed their monolingual peers. All of that time spent on building language-related connections in their brains pays off, not just in terms of the second language.
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