if you've ever tried learning a foreign language then you know how incredibly stressful arduous
frustrating that process can become and as a result a lot of people who started off this
journey with really good intentions tend to quit and this video is here specifically to help you
not do that before i talk you through all those benefits i want to introduce you to
lingoda a really great language learning platform and the sponsor of today's video i'm lingoda user
myself i have been doing one of their sprints which is a pretty intense learning challenge you
either do 15 or 30 classes per month 30 ie class every single day but there are numerous benefits
to doing this first of all you become really good at the language really quickly but second of all
if you go to every single one of your classes you get money back generally speaking i really
really like the structure of how you learn all the teachers are professionally trained they're native
speakers of course and you do these group classes where you keep meeting the same students over and
over which i have found really nice not only do i find it motivating and you know i like that i'm
like oh jenny over there but i also like seeing their progress because it reminds me that i'm
making progress as well as i go through the course so if you would like to sign up with lingoda i do
have this little discount code right here and i would encourage you to use it if you have any
questions about lingoda genuinely do drop them in the comments below and i will get back to you
otherwise let's crack on with number one language learning makes you smarter being bilingual or of
course multilingual has been found to correlate with higher levels of academic achievement better
cognitive abilities problem solving and critical thinking skills interestingly brain scans have
also shown that people who are bilingual tend to have higher volumes of gray matter in the regions
of their brain that are involved in executive function and learning languages apparently
can literally increase the size of your brain number two language learning makes you better
at multitasking now personally i'm not a big fan of multitasking i feel like if you're gonna do
something do that thing and do it properly and then move on to the next but because of the day
and age we live in age of distraction you know it is a difficult ideal to aspire to being bilingual
makes you better at multitasking because you are forced to switch between thinking or talking in
your mother tongue to this other language that you are working on acquiring so that process
is very similar to the process of multitasking number three it makes you better at focusing and
again in this notification era that is a very valuable skill multiple language speakers are
better at processing information because their brains are constantly activating both languages
and choosing which one to use and which to ignore depending on the context number four
language learning improves your memory i would say this one's pretty straightforward right by
forcing your brain to retain all this information you are there by training it to hold on to facts
a study from the university of granada and the university of europe in toronto has revealed
that bilingual children develop a better working memory which is the memory that holds processes
and updates information over short periods of time than monolingual children number five it makes you
more creative every single language i have ever learned or attempted to learn has forced me to
view the world in a slightly different way and by the way in my case it's these six languages
that i have learned and check is my mother tongue now i'm gonna use an example that i've used before
on this channel so if you're a subscriber you're gonna recognize that if you're not a subscriber
then consider becoming one please and thank you um the example comes from russian they have two
words for the color blue they have light blue and dark blue and that literally forces you to see the
world differently right like the way you perceive color changes there are myriad examples i could
use from other languages the bottom line is that by seeing and perceiving the world differently you
are building your creativity number six learning foreign languages improve your math skills now
i'm not bad at math but i am definitely more of a humanities social sciences type person
so i was like okay do you tell more and here's the direct quote children who study a foreign
language even when the second language study takes time away from the study of mathematics
outperforms students who do not study a foreign language and have more mathematical instruction
during the school day in another older study from 1997 students were tasked with learning a foreign
language for just one semester for 19 minutes per week and the results were astounding immediately
their language performance jumped up obviously but also their math skills so there you go there
is a direct correlation that is worth exploring number seven language learning helps you improve
at your mother tongue the article i read on this topic while doing research for this video used a
really good example they talked about learning basketball so when you're learning basketball
you are learning all these drills and techniques and tactics and ultimately that's going to make
you better at basketball but it's also going to have the side effect of making you better
at other sports for example volleyball there are a lot of transferable skills this is also true of
language learning when you start learning new languages you're going to come across all these
new concepts you're going to learn about language structure reading skills you're going to learn
about verb conjugation and different types of words like nouns pronouns verbs adjectives and in
learning all that stuff about languages in general you're gonna apply it to your mother
tongue so you're gonna start to understand how language operates i know for a fact that this
works because i'm not a native english speaker but as a result of my understanding of language
i am so much better at english and this is not a brag but genuinely i'm so much better at english
than a lot of my friends who were born in the uk or us who haven't been exposed to other languages
i think german poet gets to put it best when he said those who know nothing of foreign languages
know nothing of their own number eight learning a foreign language helps you pick up other languages
faster now i'm gonna let you in on a little secret about all those youtube polyglots like myself yes
it seems impressive that people speak a lot of languages but the amount of effort that you are
putting into learning your second language is not the amount of effort that somebody has to put in
when learning their fourth their fifth their 20th you're gonna build your confidence you're
gonna figure out what works best for you in terms of learning style and your learning is
just gonna take off it's gonna accelerate number nine language learning makes you more empathetic
this is probably my favorite of all the benefits because it's the reason why i create these videos
i think language learning should be accessible to everyone because as a result of it we just become
better humans we understand other cultures better we become more tolerant and ultimately if everyone
was doing it i think it would create a slightly more peaceful world there was a study done in 1989
that compared two groups of children one group was taught in a monolingual setting and the second was
taught in english and in spanish and at the end of the experiment they were tested and it became
clear that the bilingual group became far more empathetic toward hispanic culture there's another
really interesting study by dr catherine kinsler at colonel university in which she also compared
two groups of children one group was monolingual the second was bilingual and here's a direct quote
from it children in multilingual environments have social experiences that provide routine practice
in considering the perspectives of others they have to think about who speaks which language
to whom who understands which content and the times and places in which different languages
are spoken number 10 it makes you more confident now when you start learning a new language
inevitably you're gonna sound like a five-year-old for a while now you could allow that to put you
off language learning and it did that for me in the past where i was like no i'm just not good
enough and i'm not even gonna try but if you do try and you put yourself outside your comfort zone
you're gonna reap the benefits for example there is no way i would be making videos on youtube
if it weren't for language learning for one i wouldn't speak english but also more importantly
i just wouldn't have the self-confidence i want to mention lingoda that language learning platform
here one more time because i feel like learning languages in a group setting is the perfect way to
boost your confidence there's a natural built-in element of practicing your language skills in
front of other people and doing that is going to make it so much easier to become conversational
number 11 it improves your decision making so here's an interesting fact when you speak
a foreign language you actually become less emotional um the article that i read used the
example of swearing when you swear in a foreign language somehow it doesn't feel as harsh or as
bad as when you do it in your mother tongue now what's interesting about this lack of
emotion is that it makes you better at making clear-headed logical decisions when you deliberate
in a foreign language you distance yourself from the emotional responses and the biases that are
deeply associated with your mother tongue number 12 it delays the onset of dementia sadly as we
age neurocognitive decline is inevitable but you can put it off with language learning according
to this 2013 study bilinguals showed symptoms of dementia four and a half years later than
monolinguals all other measures being equivalent now even the most effective drugs can only delay
symptoms by 6 to 12 months so learning languages in this context is an absolute no-brainer number
13 it makes you better at music now i'd argue the opposite is true as well being musical makes
you slightly better at languages because it helps with your pronunciation but in this case the study
talks about something different it talks about tonal languages studies have shown that speakers
of tonal languages like mandarin and cantonese were better at identifying musical pitches than
speakers of non-tonal languages like english and french number 14 advance your career between
2010 and 2015 the number of u.s job postings asking specifically for bilingual candidates
more than doubled and this trend just continues so on an upward swing according to a more recent
2019 report 9 out of 10 u.s employers rely on employees with language skills other than english
now i know both these examples are us-based but this trend is definitely true globally
just if you speak a second language you are going to be far more employable and some languages are
better than others as we're going to learn in number 15 which is all about improving
your earnings mit economist albert saiz calculated that there is a 2 premium for american college
graduates who speak a second language in other words you get a two percent salary boost thank
you so much for watching if you have any questions at all then drop them in a comment below i have
pinned a comment with the lingoda discount link if you would like to use it i definitely do recommend
lingoda so go check it out otherwise i will see you next friday in a new video thanks for watching