The Importance Of Learning Language

To some people language is power and for others, the purpose of learning a new language is to bond closer with people who speak another language. Personally, I choose to learn languages because I am required to and learning useful languages can come in very handy. Learning languages can be hard for some and easy to pick up for some. Currently I speak 3 languages: English, Indonesian and Mandarin (excluding the Javanese dialect). Obviously, I had some struggles learning the languages but some languages are easier to learn than another and there are different factors and explanations about why we pick up some languages faster and some languages harder. Since I was born in Indonesia, Indonesian is the first language I learned. Ever since I

During elementary, all of the students in my school were required to learn Mandarin. Although we had Mandarin classes everyday, no one was able to speak Mandarin fluently due to the fact that no one was interested in learning the language. I have been taking Mandarin classes since I was six but still couldn’t speak the language fluently until everyone suggested me that Mandarin is an important language and I should find the time to learn it. So by the time I was in grade nine, I went to Taiwan to learn Mandarin in a Taiwanese for almost two months. In Taiwan, most of the people generally don’t speak fluent English and so, I had no choice but to speak Mandarin to the people there (Even in the school). At first, it was really hard for me to express what I wanted to say and it was very difficult to communicate with my teachers. The sentence structure of the Mandarin language and finding the right diction to talk to the people around me was much of a struggle. After quite some time, slowly and gradually, I got used to it that I could understand the lecture in history class taught in Mandarin. I could communicate properly, write papers in Mandarin and have daily conversations with native Taiwanese and all of my Taiwanese friends. After Taiwan, I went back home, and although I managed to learn to speak Mandarin, my Mandarin wasn’t nearly as fluent as my Indonesian and

According to some researches, there are specific moments (especially when you are young) when you pick up languages faster and easier. (Argyres, 1995) “Lenneberg’s classic study of the stages of language acquisition as potentially largely due to stages in brain development, and/or Long’s recent, in-depth discussion and survey of research on critical vs. sensitive periods in language acquisition with regard to both first and second language acquisition.” (Argyres, 1995) After Mandarin, I learned a few other languages but I disregarded them and I didn’t consider them to be languages I am fluent at because I can only understand some of it but cannot speak the languages well. In Lenneberg’s classic study, the delayed development of a prefrontal cortex and cognitive control allow children to pick up languages easier than adults. (Lenneberg, 1967) Some researchers say that there are two hypotheses when you are learning languages as you grow older: The Exercise Hypothesis and the Maturational State Hypothesis. (Johnson & Newport, 1989) The Exercise Hypothesis states that human beings are more superior in learning languages when they are young and if they exercise their brain capacity by learning languages, learning languages will be easier when they are older. (Johnson & Newport, 1989) Maturational State Hypothesis says that