It’s that time again when we’re all overwhelmed with classes to pick for the upcoming year. In the confusion, it’s easy to overlook or even entirely dismiss the language elective. However, as many have undoubtedly heard, learning a foreign language offers so many advantages in all aspects of our daily lives that it definitely shouldn’t feel like a chore imposed by the school.

1. It makes you smarter: Yes that’s right, learning a new language will increase your overall intelligence. Bilingualism challenges your brain to recognize, communicate, and negotiate meaning in different language styles, improving its overall functioning. From there, problem solving skills and memory retention are developed, making you more observant to your surroundings and perceptive of possibly misleading information. Studies show that students who study multiple languages even score better on standardized tests.

2. You improve your first language:  Learning a foreign language draws your attention to the mechanics of your own language. As you explore the abstract rules and structure of a language, your ability to manipulate and shape sentences and words increases, thus improving your skills at communicating, writing, and editing in your own mother tongue.  

3. Multi-tasking skills: It’s the twenty-first century! At a time where everyone is constantly bombarded with multiple duties at once, multitasking skills are essential to our daily lives. While learning a second language, people subconsciously have both (or more) languages activated at the same time, and they constantly have to decide which one is more appropriate. All that switching back and forth increases one’s cognitive flexibility, allowing one to deal with multiple things at once or adapt to changing circumstances.

4. Increased attention: A bilingual person’s flexibility to changing circumstances also means that they have stronger control over their attention and can better limit their distractions.

5. More culturally open:  In an international society where people from all over the world interact, being culturally open is extremely important. Learning a new language exposes you to new cultures and perspectives from different parts of the globe, and even gives you insight on your own culture from a different point of view. It offers new opportunities to travel and learn from other people, once again increasing your overall knowledge.

So go ahead and fill in that box for a language next year, because who knows? Maybe knowing this extra little slice of the world will make your life completely different.