Are you keen to encourage more students to continue their language-learning journey this year? Perhaps you’d like to increase take up at GCSE, A Level and beyond? Or maybe you just want to inspire your students to develop a passion for languages? Then this poster is for you!
It illustrates five great reasons to study languages – all vital transferable skills that will help students to stand out on university applications or to future employers!
So, here are our 5 reasons to study languages:
1. They will make them better communicators
Of course, they’ll be able to communicate in more than one language, but this will also improve their skills in their own language, as they learn how languages work.
It goes without saying that language study is all about communication. And being able to speak to people in their own language allows you to connect with them on a different level. This is great for holidays when you can have more enriching cultural experiences. But it’s invaluable for employers, who look for employees with language skills in order to connect with customers, suppliers and partners in their own language.
And being able to speak another language isn’t the only linguistic benefit to studying languages. We can better understand our own language by learning about how other languages work. This includes thinking about grammar, word choice, and more. This is a skill that employers seek out for many roles and one which will really make your students stand out!
2. Languages will improve their interpersonal skills
Your students will improve the way they use verbal and non-verbal communication. They will develop a greater interest in and understanding of other cultures. They will also learn how to negotiate and find solutions that everyone agrees on.
Learning languages helps students understand the culture and identities of the communities that speak them. This will develop students’ awareness of the need to be sensitive to cultural differences, which is incredibly important for the development of interpersonal skills.
And as they study the foreign language, students will learn more about the importance of both verbal and non-verbal communication.
Employers will actively look for candidates with soft skills like these, as they know that these candidates will be able to work closely with other people from all backgrounds to reach shared goals.
3. They will make your students more critical thinkers
Your students will develop their skills in organising and selecting information, inferring meaning and drawing conclusions.
Your students will develop critical thinking skills by learning about language and word choice. They will learn how language choices can reveal the speaker or writer's intentions or bias. These skills are incredibly important in many careers, as they allow us to make better-informed decisions.
4. They will make your students better decision-makers
Your students will develop their skills in evaluating statements and information put in front of them to make judgements and decisions.
By studying languages, your students will learn how to identify the important information in what is being said. They will learn to analyse meaning and inference and all of this will help them to draw better informed decisions. Of course, this is a vital skill that many employers will look for.
5. They will make them better problem solvers
Your students will develop strategies to decode unfamiliar words, buy themselves thinking time and find creative solutions to problems.
Learning or speaking a foreign language can sometimes feel like a bit of a jigsaw puzzle – until we’re completely fluent, we often come across words we don’t understand, or find ourselves searching for the right word mid-sentence. So, as language learners, we very quickly learn creative strategies to help ourselves solve these problems.
This trains our brains to carry out the same process when we come across other problems in life – and this is an incredibly useful skill that employers are actively looking for.
Like this?
If you’ve found this poster helpful, you may also like our ‘How Can Languages Help in Your Career?’ poster.
Designed to help your students identify more of the transferable skills that languages give them, it can be used together with this poster to encourage more of your students to continue their language studies.
Ready to start planning your next school trip?
Please don’t hesitate to contact us for further information.