700 Reasons: Reason #410
- Reason: 410
- As students progress through their education at school, a modern language will be of benefit to their personal and educational development in a variety of ways. It will allow them to establish contact with people of their own age who speak other languages and to access information from other cultures. It will help them thereby to understand that experience of the world through another language can be just as 'real' and 'valid' as experience of the world through English. It will offer them the positive experience of developing an entirely new mode of understanding and expression and an opportunity to acquire an explicit understanding of what the components of language are and how these may be manipulated for different purposes. It will allow them to derive cognitive benefits through problem-solving, memorisation, recall, making connections, attending to detail and pragmatic strategies. All of these are basic transferable skills that can be activated or enhanced through a modern language. Learning a modern language will help students to develop strategies for learning and using language that will assist them not only with their current modern language but with others also that they may subsequently learn. It will encourage them to appreciate and participate in cultural and linguistic diversity
- Reference:
- Scottish Executive, Ministerial Action Group on Languages (2000) Citizens of a Multilingual World: Key Issues (www.scotland.gov.uk-library3-education-mwki-07.asp)
- Related Keywords:
- Culture, Diversity, Intercultural competence, Key skills, Language awareness, Learning strategies, Networking, Personal and social development, Problem solving, Secondary sector, Understanding
700 Reasons to study languages...
