While some countries make it mandatory for students to learn a second language, many leave it up to the students to decide. Studies have shown that there are cognitive benefits from learning a second language, like improved memory, so should studying a second language be compulsory? Why or why not?
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I donāt think it should be compulsory, no, but highly recommended, sure. Only in cases where schools do have the options of many languages to choose from. āCause some just donāt have the resources or teachers to cater to teaching multiple languages.
So based on that, no, I donāt believe it should be compulsory
And I am going to say compulsory, because if I was forced to learn a second language, I want everyone else to be forced to, as well. 
There are so many benefits to knowing another language. Sneak-talking to family in a country where your language isnāt usually heard, making all kinds of new friends, being your own tour guideā¦
In my school we were given mandatory classes on French and Spanish until year 9 then we had the option to pick it at GCSE. I donāt really mind the basic studying we did from year 7-9 but I still donāt think even that should be compulsory, at the end of the day some people struggle picking up on other languages even in their basic form and they will always be at a disadvantage. Plus imagine if someone was only able to communicate non verbally, they wouldnāt be able to do the spoken stuff. No matter what your cut off is, somebody gets excluded.
So no I donāt think it should be mandatory I really think people should be able to pick what clssses they want to do!
We HAVE TO learn a language starting in 7th grade and ending in 12th. But I donāt think it should be mandatory
while it annoys me that some gringos will somehow forget the fact that languages other than english exist (i have personally lived through this), i donāt think a second language should be compulsory.
english as a second language IS compulsory for me, from first grade to now that iām trying to graduate uni (we either have to take classes or to take the TOEFL or the IELTS and get a certain score on them in order to be able to graduate). but i know that learning languages, as anything else, kinda becomes more boring when itās compulsory, and iād hate if people came to hate learning languages because they were forced to
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Okay, I think I might actually have an interesting perspective on this as someone who was forced in high school to study 4 foreign languages (English (6 years), French (3 years), German (3 years) and Spanish (5 years)).
When I was in highschool I wasnāt too happy with all these languages, learning 3 different languages with different grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, it was a lot and very confusing at time. Sorry not sorry, but I especially didnāt like French in school, so much grammer, it just wasnāt fun, and they always had so high expectations from us (only talking in French to us from the 2nd year onwards, and if you dared to make a mistake, well, they werenāt happy). So no wonder all that work didnāt pay off and I donāt remember much but Bonjour, Merci, de rien and counting to 10.
This is kinda my main point, teaching kids a language simply for the sake of teaching them a language, thatās not good. The usability of the language after school is very important, how much will you be putting it in practice? Does that weight up to all the effort you have to put into learning a language. You can teach someone a language, but if they donāt get into contact with it enough, that knowledge fades over time. In this is also some casual criticism on the way languages are taught in schools in my experience, mostly focused on one to one translation of words, I remember getting points multiple times as I had written a synonym instead of the one word on the list. This just leads to studenten who āstampā words, learning the list with almost brute force, which will usually end up in the short term memory instead of contributing to the knowledge on the language. Skills like listening, speaking and reading is much more important. Skills you actually need to be able to interact with a language, not a ton of useless words.
So, in short, yes, I do think 1 language is great, as long as that language is actually useful in the life of students after school, but I think the way we teach languages should be adjusted a bit.
(Also, I still feel a bit salty they forced me to study all these languages even if I had dyslexia and it was a challenge for me. All because I āscored sufficientlyā in them, yeah, because at times I sacrificed my mental health by working so hard on them to keep up)
I actually did an essay on this and no, itās been proven that forcing somebody to learn a language is a form of abuse
Now obviously studying a language is different, I have a French GCSE and they didnāt teach me how to be fluent in French, but being compulsory with this kind of thing just doesnāt sit with me.
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oooh can you tell us more about this? iād never seen it put this way
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Iāll have to see if I can find the journal articles but of course colonisation involved exploiting people who didnāt understand the language of the colonisers but iirc there was instances of people being forced to learn the language which as you can imagine wouldnāt have good results.
But itās also along the lines of forcing non-verbal people to speak!
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oooh i think i know where youāre coming from!
and yeah forcing people to learn a language played such a messy part in colonisation (iām reading BartolomĆ© de las Casas these days and what he says about how Spanish culture (religion and language) was imposed is actually so interesting)
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Yeah, I can definitely understand this.
Personally, I wish I was forced in school to learn a second language. I feel like we live in a world thatās so divergent in languages in general, and the fact that they leave it up to a child (Iām thinking elementary-high school-er) is kind of crazy in my mind. Plus, the language boom happens in elementary school and I just wish I was forced or at least exposed to different languages in Elementary School and Middle School. Especially where I live, I feel like Spanish is so important and Iām kind of disappointed looking back that I didnāt take the chance to learn it when I was given the opportunity.
So as long as school funds allow it, I believe that there should, indeed, be some sort of compulsory language lessons in Elementary - High School Years. That being said, I donāt think these classes should be graded. Again, I despise the way the US school system works in general, but many studies have shown that focusing a class on learning instead of grades fosters the learning aspect of it.
I donāt know, just personal thoughts
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This is a good point
I can only speak for my province, but in Ontario, students have to take French from grades 4-9 (grade 9 French is a requirement for high school graduation). After that, it becomes a choice. The reason we do so is to acknowledge the fact that French is one of Canadaās official languages. A lot of students end up dropping French after gr 9 because they donāt do well in it.
If the classes werenāt graded, maybe more people would stick with it
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I had to, and I chose German. Ich Liebte es. (I loved it.)
Well, for a lot of non-english speaking countries, English is already compulsory. I guess since the whole world speaks English, it would be necessary for everyone to learn it to communicate properly with people across the world.
But Iām not sure if it should be compulsory, forcing students to learn something they donāt want to would be a bad idea, but it would be very useful to know a second language either way. Maybe the basics should be mandatory but the rest would be the studentās choice, instead of learning how to write stuff like argumentative essays like in my English class.
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Yeah thatās how it is here, at least, and it being compulsory makes kids who have a harder time grasping it end up hating the class and language (and usually language learning) altogether
This doesnāt help people not liking English, though
i know a lot of cultures dislike English being seen as āthe world languageā or whatever, so it being reinforced like āyou HAVE to learn english because itās useful for blablablaā will end up putting them off even more
in my case, i was lucky and always liked language learning (learning my fourth and fifth languages rn :3) but, for example, my sister struggled more and ended up disliking English classes in general
and it really shows in how we both understand and use english even now as adults
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Itās the same here, we have 2 additional compulsury languages along with our native one. Iāve met a lot of people who hate language learning and just cheat on the exams anyway
Also true
It is unfair that English became the norm for everyone to know, because thereās nothing else that sets it apart from other languages. English speaking people wonāt even need a second language in that case.
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oh dang, thatās a lot
i can imagine people feeling burnt out and resenting this, so them trying the bare minimum makes sense
and this reminded me of another point i had! not being allowed to learn things at oneās own pace will, more often than not, make them resentful of the classes, both for people who are faster and slower than the pace of the class
agreed! itās really unfair!
and a handful of english speaking monolinguals have taken this as a reason to put down other people who may be learning english as a second or third language, which i hate
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It is? The second one is English, third one is usually another european language like German or French. A lot of people donāt know how to speak the third language they learn, itās just for the grade.
Yesss schools definitely need to adapt, but thatās an entirely different topic. I wish school systems werenāt so outdated
Honestly Iāve seen so many people judge others for their grammar online, but not everyone speaks English as their first language.