For yet another year, Avum has sponsored a LEGO robotics team, who, like last year, call themselves team WHAT? Each year, along with competing in a robot game with a pre-programmed robot, the team has to create a research project. Like last year, when the team researched ways to help deaf people during emergencies, the team’s research project fits well with their name; this year, the topic is education, and the team is finding ways to help improve foreign language learning.
The team studied benefits and impacts of foreign language learning and discovered that learning second languages can help your cognitive health, and delay mental diseases like dementia and alzheimer’s. Also, knowledge of a second language helps students do better in other subjects, like math. Moreover, the team discovered that people are far more likely to retain a knowledge of a language and become fluent if they start learning at a young age (ideally before eight). In fact, a large percentage of people who learn languages in high school forget them very soon after school gets out. Knowing other languages, such as Spanish, Chinese, and Arabic, is becoming extremely important in our globalized economy. Finally, if they speak Latin, they will be better at working with English, especially science, or, if their original language also has Latin roots, they will become better at working with that language.
The team concluded that second language learning should begin in elementary school, starting in kindergarten; Katy Allaback, a parent of a member of the team, and an English as a Second Language teacher, strongly agrees. This concept would need to be implemented by a simple four point plan:
- Require all elementary school teachers to take classes certifying them capable of teaching second languages.
- Require at least forty-five minutes of direct instruction of a foreign language to all students grades kindergarten through third and thirty minutes of direct instruction in a foreign language to all students grades four and five.
- Require standardized testing, and interventions for all students grades kindergarten through fifth.
- Continue to teach these languages through middle and high school to keep students “brushed up” on their knowledge.
By the time these students have graduated, they will be bilingual, well educated, and ready to make the United States have some of the highest levels of education in the world. They will be mentally healthier, and ready to live a successful and very productive life, as bilinguals. They will also be able to work better internationally, securing a good place in our globalized workforce.