italki - It is better to learn a foreign language where it is spoken?

Cathy Kim

It is better to learn a foreign language where it is spoken? - Independent writing practice. Nowadays, learning foreign languages has become more essential than before because it is required to speak more than one language in many fields such as companies and universities. Thus, there is an increasing number of people who want to learn other languages. Some people learn foreign languages in their own country while other try to go abroad and learn foreign languages in which they are spoken. From my point of view, the latter one is more favorable because of the more advantages it brings. First of all, It is obvious that learning a language is a natural process. Think about when we learn our mother tongue at the beginning. No one starts learning his or her first language from grammar or memorizing a vast number of vocabularies. Rather, we learn a language by listening and speaking a lot with people who speak their native language. Thus, it is important to learn a language where it is spoken in that there are more opportunities to listen or speak when even you do not want to learn. Therefore, one who lives in a country where the language that the person wants to learn, the person can naturally develop his or her language skills on a daily basis, sometimes in an unconscious way. Secondly, based on my own experience, if we learn a new language abroad, it is far more exciting and interesting by communicating with local people specially when travelling around. The major problem of those who study foreign languages abroad, is that they usually make a group with those who are from the same country. Going on a trip, however, is the best way to practice one's language skills on site and to interact with local people. I went on a trip to Xi'an when I was studying in China and I learned a lot more than just language skills such as the history of China as well as the actual language spoken by local people like slangs. The knowledge and new information I learned from the trip helped me to understand the country better and its people and their languages. To sum up, I strongly believed that learning a language should be performed at the places where the language is physically spoken due to the advantages of developing a natural way to learn a language and the additional knowledge and information gained by communicating with local people.

Nov 27, 2014 7:54 AM

Corrections · 3

It is better to learn a foreign language where it is spoken? - Independent writing practice.

Nowadays, learning foreign languages has become more essential than before because it is required to speak more than one language in many fields such as companies and universities. Thus, there is an increasing number of people who want to learn other languages. Some people learn foreign languages in their own country while other's try to go abroad and learn foreign languages in which where they are spoken. From my point of view, the latter one is more favorable because of the more advantages it brings.

First of all, It is obvious that learning a language is a natural process. Think about when we learn our mother tongue at the beginning. No one starts learning his or her first language from grammar or memorizing a vast number of vocabularies. Rather, we learn a language by listening and speaking a lot with people who speak their native language. Thus, it is important to learn a language where it is spoken in that there are more opportunities to listen or speak when even you do not want to learn. Therefore, one who lives in a country where the language that the person wants to learn, the person can naturally develop his or her language skills on a daily basis, sometimes in an unconscious way.

Secondly, based on my own experience, if we learn a new language abroad, it is far more exciting and interesting by communicating with local people specially when travelling around. The major problem of those who study foreign languages abroad, is that they usually make a group associate with those who are from the same country. Going on a trip, however, is the best ways to practice one's language skills on site and to interact with local people. I went on a trip to Xi'an when I was studying in China and I learned a lot more than just language skills such as the history of China as well as the actual language spoken by local people like slangs. The knowledge and new information I learned from the trip helped me to understand the country better and its people and their languages.

To sum it up, I strongly believed that learning a language should be performed at the places where the language is physically spoken due to the advantages of developing a natural way to learn a language and the additional knowledge and information gained by communicating with local people.