Multiculturality, encompassed with a variety of languages, surrounds our day-to-day lives. It is through languages that we continue the expansion of our cultural scope, as well as develop more diverse viewpoints to tackle everyday experiences. With so many benefits that come with multiculturalism and multilingualism, let’s dive deeper into a few perks of speaking multiple languages.
Improved Memory and Multitasking:
Research has indicated that when comparing multilingual students to their monolingual peers, the multilingual students have better working memory overall; this is because managing between two different languages allows our brain to retrieve the information in a more productive way, thus resulting in improved memory. With an improved memory, bilingual students are likely to experience overall better academic performance, organization, and management.
Multilingual individuals also experience an improvement in multitasking as switching between languages allows our brains to become more used to handling tasks simultaneously.
Higher-Paying Jobs:
According to Workforce Essentials, individuals who speak more than one language on average earn 5% to 20% more than monolingual individuals. Only about 20% of individuals speak a second language fluently in the United States, meaning that speaking another language fluently puts you ahead of 80% of Americans who are monolingual.
In today’s day and age, multilingual individuals are invaluable to companies, allowing the company to branch out their audience to more people around the world.
Increases Cultural Scope & Awareness:
Learning another language also allows the individual to immerse themself within a new cultural atmosphere, which may foster different traditions, customs, values, or religions. It is by learning languages that we can learn more about the people who speak them and the cultures they follow.
Expanding your cultural scope ultimately allows you to learn more about the world around you, broadening perspectives and improving awareness.
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