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Because language learning. WHY LEARN A LANGUAGE????????. Enriches our community intellectually, educationally and culturally Contributes to social cohesiveness within and across borders through better communication and understanding
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Because language learning.. WHY LEARN A LANGUAGE???????? • Enriches our community intellectually, educationally and culturally • Contributes to social cohesiveness within and across borders through better communication and understanding • Contributes to our economic, diplomatic, strategic, scientific and technological development • Enhances employment and career prospects for the individual
LANGUAGE LEARNING contributes to the overall education of learners, by developing the capability to: • Communicate, interact and negotiate within and across languages and cultures • Understand themselves and others, and to understand and use diverse ways of knowing, being and doing
and…. • Think critically and analytically, to solve problems, to make connections in their learning and to continue to learn in a knowledge-based society • Understand their own and others’ languages, thus developing a richer range of literacy skills, including English literacy…..
Cognitive Development and Literacy The study of languages: • Accelerates cognitive development, verbally and non-verbally • Develops higher order thinking skills, mental dexterity, analytical and decoding skills • Leads to higher order linguistic skills, understanding and greater literacy in the first language
In other words… • Learning a new language teaches the learner something about the nature of language and languages, and this is knowledge which needs to be developed by a literate person. • Language teachers not only teach a language, they also teach about language as a concept, and about communication, context, and culture (Liddicoat, Crozet, Jansen, and Schmidt 1997). • Learning a second language helps to create a perspective on one’s first language and helps one to learn about one’s first language.
And…. • Most importantly, it helps one to come to see languageas an object that can be talked about, which is a fundamental step in becoming literate. • Second language learning is therefore a resource forenhancing literacy, not a problem for acquiring literacy. • It forms part of a whole package for learning about language as a part of schooling and provides additional insights into the nature of language that are not available to the monolingual learner.