“The US Census Bureau estimates that the US will have 138 million Spanish speakers by 2050, making it the biggest Spanish-speaking nation on Earth” (http://takelessons.com/blog/-benefits-of-being-bilingual). Fresh out of high school, a woman gets her first taste of freedom in Spain on a solo trip. As she is leaving her hotel to go out late at night, cold fingers press against her mouth from behind and she is pulled into the dark. Her cries for help were nonexistent to the people passing because the tongue she spoke in was only foreign ramblings to the natives. Public schools should make Spanish a mandatory class along with the required academic classes because being bilingual offers many more career opportunities that those who only speak English
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Many say that it is a waste of time that should be spent studying math or history or science. People against taking Spanish don’t believe that studying the language will aid their English or any other academic classes. Yet all languages require one thing for accuracy: grammar. No matter if it’s Spanish, English, or German, you are going to have to know certain grammar that most people do not truly understand even in their native language. When being taught a foreign language, there comes a point when you have to know the word order for sentence structures, and a lot of times it becomes difficult for people because they find that they don’t even know what a direct object or preposition is. Often times grammar has a low score on testing because of the lack of teaching these things in English class, but you are practically forced to learn them when studying another language, resulting in a better understanding of the grammar in English as well. Knowing and/or learning Spanish could aid your English speaking as well as create better study habits for other …show more content…
Some say they are not planning on travelling anyway, so why does it matter? English has gotten them around just fine so far. From studying abroad in college to taking a family vacation to Mexico, these are truthfully experiences that are on many people’s bucketlists. These dreams can be trumped by not knowing the native language, because of the incapability to do even the most simple tasks like ask for the check at a restaurant chosen for dinner.
When a bilingual is abroad, they’re not merely ‘getting by.’ They can swim around and explore the depths of a culture, scooping up new pearls of wisdom as they do so, rather than frantically treading water, doing their best stay alive...non-native-speaking travelers tend to shy away from asking questions and involving themselves in general scenarios where language is present
Many say that it is a waste of time that should be spent studying math or history or science. People against taking Spanish don’t believe that studying the language will aid their English or any other academic classes. Yet all languages require one thing for accuracy: grammar. No matter if it’s Spanish, English, or German, you are going to have to know certain grammar that most people do not truly understand even in their native language. When being taught a foreign language, there comes a point when you have to know the word order for sentence structures, and a lot of times it becomes difficult for people because they find that they don’t even know what a direct object or preposition is. Often times grammar has a low score on testing because of the lack of teaching these things in English class, but you are practically forced to learn them when studying another language, resulting in a better understanding of the grammar in English as well. Knowing and/or learning Spanish could aid your English speaking as well as create better study habits for other …show more content…
Some say they are not planning on travelling anyway, so why does it matter? English has gotten them around just fine so far. From studying abroad in college to taking a family vacation to Mexico, these are truthfully experiences that are on many people’s bucketlists. These dreams can be trumped by not knowing the native language, because of the incapability to do even the most simple tasks like ask for the check at a restaurant chosen for dinner.
When a bilingual is abroad, they’re not merely ‘getting by.’ They can swim around and explore the depths of a culture, scooping up new pearls of wisdom as they do so, rather than frantically treading water, doing their best stay alive...non-native-speaking travelers tend to shy away from asking questions and involving themselves in general scenarios where language is present