Hobbies For children: 5 Benefits of Learning A New Language for Children

Ten-year-old Anya is fascinated by Japanese manga comics and loves playing online games based on ancient civilizations. So, when her parents encouraged her to take up an activity during her summer break, she told them that she wanted to learn Japanese. They knew a foreign language would be quite handy, as she aims to become a game developer when she grows up.

Like Anya, many children are learning a new language. Learning a new language has many surprising benefits for children. There are numerous studies that show the various benefits of language learning. A study published in the journal Cognition in 2020 found that children who learn a second language performed better on working memory and attention control tasks.

5 benefits of learning a new language for children

1. Children can benefit by learning a new language, as it strengthens brain functions like memory and creative thinking. Learning a language also makes children smarter.
2. Knowing a new language can be incredibly useful to develop communication skills in children. By learning a language, children would be able to communicate with people from different cultures and make new friends, and understand and appreciate different cultures.
3. Language learning can be a rewarding experience for children, as they get a sense of achievement, which can boost their confidence.
4. Language learning helps children understand a culture deeply, and this helps them develop empathy and understanding toward others.
5. Learning an additional language helps children learn multitasking and observation skills. This is because the brain is constantly working to process and recall new information while learning a new language.

Tips to help your child learn a new language quickly

Learning a language, be it foreign or a language spoken in a different part of our country, has become easier and more accessible, as many online tools are available. Apart from language learning apps like Duolingo and Babbel, you can encourage your child to read books related to the culture of the language they picked up to learn.

Here are a few tips to make language learning easy and fun for your child:

• Let your child watch age-appropriate content in the language.
• Let them pick up a children’s book in the language they want to learn.
• Encourage them to listen to podcasts in that language.
• If you speak the language you want your child to learn, start speaking to them in that language, even though they might not understand it fully. Continuous exposure to the language helps children pick it up faster.
• Let them practice new words of the language daily.

How children can choose a new language to learn

It would be easier to learn if your child chooses a language with similar roots as their primary language. However, with the available resources, your child can pick up any language and start learning it. Let your child decide the new language to learn, as they should be interested to know about the people and the culture of the people who speak that language. Some of the popular foreign languages to learn are German, French, Spanish, Japanese and Korean.

Learning a new language is a rewarding hobby for children and can open up a lot of possibilities for them. With technology making language learning more accessible, let’s encourage our children to start learning a new language as a fun and engaging hobby.