The Importance of Foreign Language Learning in Education

Education is a big problem in the United States, but one of the major issues tends to fall short of receiving the attention it deserves. This problem is the teaching of foreign languages in K-12 education. As our businesses go global, gaining multinational business partners, Americans need to be able to communicate in order to be competitive in this market. Following 9/11, foreign language education also became important for our nation’s national defense. It is now more important than ever to learn the less-taught languages of Chinese and Arabic in order to protect our country and also maintain our competitive position in the global marketplace. These problems will be solved if we enforce more strict standards of education requirements of foreign languages in the early stages of education. Studies have shown that younger children are able to learn new languages faster and develop a more native accent than adults, and it is therefore going to be a crucial move by the individual state departments of education to enforce these standards in order to improve the future of our country.