Feb

21

Should I Teach My Child a Second Language?

Posted by Homeschool_Dad

February 21, 2009 |

Is learning a new language part of your child’s homeschool education? It probably should be. However, some people simply want their child to master English first, then worry about foreign languages later. (Mastering English is difficult enough, don’t you think?) But I think it’s important to learn a second language for several reasons.

1) As a homeschool parent, I’d like to outdo the public school system (it’s perhaps foolishly competitive of me to feel this way — but I do!). Since most high school require a minimum of two years of a foreign language, I’m hoping to give my kids at least four years of foreign language instruction/experience.

2) Enhances Social Studies skills. Anytime you learn another language, you invariably learn in depth details about other cultures. That’s always a worth while goal, in my opinion.

3) Improves communication skills. If you child can speak more than one language, that means that are able to communicate with more than just English-speakers. When they become adults, multi-lingual homeschoolers will have a leading edge in the workplace.

4) Builds reading skills. No matter what the language is — you are strengthening those “reader” neurons in your brain. My daughter fell in love with learning Spanish recently, and I’ve noticed that her everyday reading skills have improved.

Of course the big question is: How do you teach your child a second language? We’ll discuss that in the next blog post!


Comments

1 Comment so far

  1. singlemom on February 22, 2009 7:25 am

    A second language is necessary to get into college here in Maine. My daughters learned ASL (American Sign Language). Zowie is also going to be learning Spanish, which she chose because she has friends who speak the language. We are using Rosetta Stone. We have the Master CD-Rom which has all of the languages on it.

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