What are the Benefits of Learning a Second Language for Children

Having your child learn a second language provides numerous benefits, both to them as a child and when they become an adult.

Additionally, in the UK, only 17.5% of people are bilingual. So, by providing your child with the opportunity to master another language, they’ll be part of an exclusive and valuable group of people.

To educate you further, this article will detail the many benefits of your child learning a second language.

Better Academic Achievement

Learning a second language can improve children’s cognitive skills and hence will have secondary benefits for their academic career.

When a child learns a new language, they’ll have to improve their reading and speaking skills. This, in turn, will help them when it comes to reading in other subjects, such as maths or science.

Studies have suggested that children who speak a second language, on average score higher on standardised testing. Therefore, providing your child with the opportunity to learn another language could impact their final grades too.

Critical Thinking Improvements

Learning a new language at a young age can impact a child’s critical thinking skills. By improving critical thinking, a child will find it easier understanding complex problems when studying further.

This is because learning a new language requires children to understand different sentence structures and verb conjugations. The child will have to think carefully and assess how to write and pronounce sentences correctly.

This can be adopted into their studies, helping them to think clearly about the problems in front of them. It is for this reason that studies have indicated children who learn a second language excel more in mathematical subjects.

Memory and Retention Benefits

As your child could be learning hundreds of new words, sentences, and verbs, learning a new language will improve their memory and retention too.

Some languages have words that don’t exist in English and nouns sometimes have genders too, which will require memorising to be grammatically correct. This all results in your child training their mind and improving retention.

This will undoubtably seep into their studies and general life, helping them find it easier to remember text and books.

Brings Out Their Creative and Explorative Nature

Learning a second language can also encourage children to learn about new cultures and customs. Language helps keep culture alive, so, by providing opportunities for your child to learn a second language, you’ll be opening their eyes to a whole new world.

Additionally, it’s been found that children who learn another language have a better appreciation for other cultures associated with the languages they learn. This means they’ll be more likely to explore these cultures in later life, encouraging travel.

They’ll Learn Quicker by Starting Young

Learning a language at a young age is invaluable as children are likely to absorb it much quicker than their adult counterpart. Therefore, providing them with this experience early in life gives them a head start.

When we reach adulthood, the ability to learn new things decreases. This is because adults may have inhibitions or fears of embarrassment that children don’t experience as much.

As a result, children tend to pick up new skills much quicker and can successfully juggle multiple languages at once.   

Have Your Child Learn a Second Language at HSOG

At The High School of Glasgow, we provide language learning experiences to all our pupils. From as young as Junior 1, children start learning French with a specialist teacher as part of the curriculum. In addition, we offer Mandarin and Spanish as extra-curricular clubs for Junior School pupils. This provides them with early exposure to a second language and options to do additional languages, helping them capture all the benefits mentioned above that come along with it.

Our modern languages department in the Senior School is also extensive and provides a number of opportunities. For example, First Year pupils are given introductory courses in both German and Spanish. All languages can be studied at National 5, Higher, and Advanced Higher. In addition, we provide non-examinable introductory courses in Italian, Japanese and Mandarin.

To learn more about our co-curricular activities, see our page here. If you want to find out more about the language tuition we provide, you can come and see our facilities yourself. See our visiting page here for more information.