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1. Protect Your Brain Against Aging

Knowing a second language can postpone the onset of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. As scientists unlock more of the secrets of the brain, they’re learning that speaking more than one language may have benefits that extend from childhood into old age. The more languages you know, the less likely you are to experience memory loss or decline of your other mental skills!

2. Learn How to Think Outside the Box

We often fail to realise how much the language we use influences our view of the world. Learning a foreign language helps you see things from a different perspective. This is important as the ability to consider multiple viewpoints to a problem is the cornerstone of thinking in a fresh and efficient way. It turns out this is the definition of ‘lateral thinking’ – the ability to use creativity to solve problems in a ‘not obvious’ way, outside traditional patterns.

3. Enhance Your Decision-Making Skills

According to numerous studies, multilingual people tend to make more rational decisions when they do not think in their mother tongue. Using a foreign language can lead you to respond to a difficult situation in a manner that is more practical and less emotional. Well, we perceive and navigate the world through our senses, but we make sense of it through our intellect, which is fundamentally influenced by language.

4. Improve Your Mother Tongue

Learning a foreign language helps you understand your own language and culture better through comparison. It is like only having seen the colour blue your whole life, and then discovering red, purple, orange, green and yellow. Now you can see the whole spectrum of colours and understand how they relate to each other.

5. Climb the Career Ladder

The international market presents communication challenges that may not have been an issue when organisations traded solely within their homeland. Whether your goal is to remain in your current position or to switch jobs, learning a new language can set you apart from a sea of qualified job applicants. For example, can you imagine a manager who does not know business English?

6. Become More Open-Minded

As Mark Twain once wrote, ‘Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts’. Likewise, learning a new language and immersing yourself in another culture is a process that really broadens your mind.

So … what are you waiting for? Now is the time to develop your skills in the language you’ve always wanted to learn. Whatever your level of English, E-planet is here to help!