by Irina C. Ivan

Created on: October 02, 2009

Learning a foreign language as a self-development tool

Many of the benefits of learning a foreign language are obvious. Knowing a foreign language opens more professional opportunities especially that we are dealing today with a global business environment and it makes any traveling experience more enjoyable. But there are some less evident benefits of learning a foreign language that can be considered of even more value than these ones.

Learning a foreign language is one of the best self-development tools that we have at hand, as it helps us develop our cognitive skills, analytical thinking, it enhances our creativity and our adaptability. Neuroscience claims that the process of learning a foreign language is a powerful way of forging into neural maps and creating new ones.

A research conducted in Massachusetts in 2007 has pointed out that students who study a foreign language develop a sharper mental acuity than their non-learning peers. The group of students who studied a foreign language for two years obtained better results in the tests than their mates who did not study foreign languages. Moreover, surveys have shown that people who study foreign languages do better in math than those who do not include foreign languages among their learning interests.

The process of assimilating a foreign language comes along with benchmark between the targeted language and your native one, mental associations and comparisons. That's why, besides accelerating brain activity, learning a foreign language also leads to a better understanding of the mother tongue and to a more appropriate and effective use of it. Learning a foreign language will also boost your creativity because the process forces you to re-phrase, find synonyms and use multiple verbal variations on the same topic.

Last but not least, people who learn foreign languages will increase their ability to assimilate ideas and notions they are not familiar with from cultural perspective and they will adapt faster to changes and respond more efficiently to challenges in their lives.

Multilingual people will also interact better with persons belonging to other cultures, having enhanced social communication skills. As you can see, foreign languages are a great mean of boosting brain activity, emotional intelligence and of enriching the vision on life.

Learning a foreign language has never been easier and more cost-effective. Come to Fluent Future and learn a language for free, meeting native speakers of the language you are seeking to learn, or pay rated teachers for individual lessons.

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