L is for Languages…
Children who go to school now are lucky. They get to learn languages at Primary School, but when I was young we didn’t get to learn them until Year 7.
Learning languages is great fun – it doesn’t matter whether it’s French, Spanish, German or even Chinese. Practicing what you’ve learned with your friends is always enjoyable, and you can talk without parents or teachers knowing what you’re saying!
It’s also very interesting to learn about how people live in other countries – what school is like, what festivals they celebrate, the traditions and foods they have. I think that learning another language helps you with your English too, as you get to revise what adjectives, verbs, adverbs and nouns are without even realising you’re doing it.
Of course, knowing a language is useful. If you go to a country on holiday and you can speak the language there, you can make friends, order food, go shopping and impress your family with how clever you are!
I enjoyed languages at school. They were my favourite subjects and I always tried really hard to practice and improve. I’m glad I did, because now I use them every day for my work. If you enjoy languages, and you work really hard in your lessons, they are great subjects to study. And if you do languages at university, you get to spend a whole year living in a country where they speak the language you are learning!
There are loads of jobs where being able to speak other languages is useful. So they’re not just something fun to do at school along with the “serious” subjects like Maths and English, they are a great thing to learn as a child and for your whole life.
This post is a guest piece from the ever wonderful Ian Braisby.
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