Being bilingual is a great advantage, especially in the United States where there are so many people from all over the world. Spanish is spoken very wildly in America, especially in the southern states. Many people, as adults, realize that knowing a second language, or even a third, greatly benefits them, especially in their job.
Children should be taught a second language when they begin school. Having children learn a second language beginning in elementary school would allow them to learn a great deal more of the language than if they only took a couple years of it in high school. If a language, such as Spanish, was taught to children from the first grade, they could learn the basics like nouns and verbs while they are in elementary school, and then went into sentence structure and verb conjugation in middle school/junior high, and could continue to learn more and more about the language and how to use it in conversation in high school. By the time they were out of high school they would almost be fluent in the language.
It has also been shown that it is easier to learn a second language when you are young, so starting it in elementary school would make it easier for children to learn and keep learning about later on. Because they would have been learning the same language the whole time they were in school, it would be easier for them to be able to remember the vocabulary and they would also have better pronunciation of the words.
After you have learned a language other than your native language, it is easier for more people to learn a third. People who have already learned a second language could easily learn another from the same language family, such as the romance languages. It is said that once you have learned a language from one family, the others are much easier to learn. The romance languages are fairly similar to one another. A lot of the words resemble each other with only minor changes, and the sentence structures and verb conjugations are extremely similar, with only the words being different for the most part.
Some elementary schools do have Spanish programs, but often they do not start at levels below third grade. Also a problem with having the Spanish programs is that many times elementary schools cannot afford all the extra programs such as art and music and physical education and when this happens, Spanish is often the first one to be cut. All these programs are important, but in my opinion Spanish will be much more valuable to students in the future and should receive more funding.
Being bilingual gives people more job opportunities and also gives them an advantage when applying for a new job. Being bilingual also often means getting paid more for the work that you do because you are able to communicate with more people. Being introduce to a new language at an early may also spark the interest of children who are interested in learning more languages and have a talent for them and may encourage them to go into careers involving languages, such as translators. Having language programs from very early on in children’s education would do nothing but benefit them.
