Learn a new language, improve as a person
This week, we continue the theme by diving into how you can also look forward to developing your mental aptitude.
In our last article, we discussed the meaningful benefits that can be brought to one’s career that comes with picking up a new language.
Stronger Memory
Languages are informed by their cultures. Learning the grammar rules of a new language is tough in the beginning because they don’t perfectly correspond with the grammar rules of your mother tongue — the language that you think in — and therefore, don’t make the most ‘logical’ sense to you.
Here’s an example. The Japanese language uses a particular grammatical feature known as particles to indicate the relation between words in a sentence. One such particle is ni (に), used to denote points in time. They can be used to express clock time, days in a week, months and years, but cannot be used to denote words like “today”, “now”, “when” “morning”, “evening”, among others. Isn’t that more than a little confusing? The way to get past such challenges in the learning of new languages is simply through good old memorization.
Strengthen Self-confidence
Practice makes perfect. If you’ve always been a hesitant public speaker, well, there’s no avoiding this now. Oral exercises are an integral part of foreign language learning, with the purpose to improve one’s pronunciation and intonations. Common forms of practice include reciting simple sentences after the teacher, holding mock conversations and debates with other students, and presenting your opinions, and responding critically to others. It might feel awkward at first, but it’s more than comforting to know that the other students are on the same level as you, and that everyone, especially your teacher, is invested in seeing you grow and develop to the level of a native speaker.
Develop Creativity
In order to facilitate the learning of grammar and vocabulary, teachers would instruct their students based around a theme — an aspect of the foreign language’s culture, such as taking public transport, seeing a doctor, ordering food at a restaurant, and many more. Naturally, this widens your perspective on a foreign language culture — while also giving you plenty of ideas to use for writing practice, be they for constructing sentences or composing speeches.
Furthermore, everyone has their own method and tricks to help them assimilate to the rules of a new language. Maybe it’s by developing associative memory techniques, to help you summon a particular word or phrase to mind when the time calls for it. Other times, it’s coming up with understandable, creative substitutes for a term or sentence when you can’t quite find the right words for it.
Better Thinker
As we covered in the above paragraphs, learning a language is a technical challenge that would really get your brain to work those cognitive skills, testing your abilities in memory and understanding in ways you wouldn’t necessarily expect. The result? You become a better thinker overall. These benefits brought to you as an individual are applicable to a great number of things, such as improving your relationship with others and enhancing your travel experiences, just to name a few!
If this article has convinced you to take up a new language for self-enrichment, look no further than our website FluentUp, which provides beginner to advanced, specialized to general languages courses for English, Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Italian, German and more!