by Christine G.

Created on: March 15, 2009   Last Updated: November 17, 2011

When I was studying advanced French at Laval University in Quebec City, many of my classmates were African students. They all spoke fluent English as well as their mother tongue and two or three other tribal languages.   Their French was more functional than mine. My butcher, who is Belgian, speaks English well, and is also fluent in French, Dutch, German, and Flemish.

Multilingualism is taken for granted in many parts of the world.  English-speaking North Americans tend to ask, "Why bother? Everybody speaks English anyway." Some believe that foreign-language immersion programs will overload their children's brains and cause them to do poorly in school. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Learning a foreign language at any age stimulates the brain to grow additional dendrites which enrich the forest of neurological connections between cells. Even elderly people can benefit from this phenomenon. It was once believed that after a certain age, no growth was possible in the brain, but recent research has exploded that myth. Now, it is believed that intellectual activity inoculates against age-related brain deterioration, even slowing the progression of Alzheimer's. With the brain, as with the muscles of our body, it's a case of use it or lose it.

Children have lots of space to store information in the "uncommited cortex", which is waiting to receive new programming. Far from overloading the brain, multiple language channels will stimulate the brain to work more effectively, to be open to new possibilities, and to make creative connections. Studies have shown that participation in foreign-language immersion programs improves performance in all school subjects.

Non-immersion programs (such as the ones through which I learned French, one irregular verb at a time) may never create fluent speakers. However, if students are exposed to an environment where the language is used, they will have a foundation which will permit them to adapt much more quickly than those who have never studied the language. When visiting foreign countries, even a few broken phrases of the local lingo will make it much easier to order lunch or find the bathroom.

Even if a foreign language is studied and never used, it leaves a residue of understanding of what other languages are all about. Studying foreign literature in the original language quickly convinces us of the impossibility of accurate translation. It is difficult enough to transmit basic ideas from

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