Catherine McCrary: Teaching a Second Language to the Young

Voicing the opposite of my opinion this week is Catherine McCrary, one of my fellow journalism and mass communication majors.

I first discovered Catherine's opinion on this week's topic (English only vs. Bilingualism) when she and I were preparing for a radio interview for a class project. I had actually wanted to try this topic several weeks ago (before I knew Catherine's stance on the issue), so naturally, I was really excited when she brought the topic up. This nice little coincidence meant that I didn't have to go around asking people if they had the opinion "op-me" about adding a "second" language here in the U.S.

I put second in quotations, because as I talked about in my last post, the U.S. doesn't even have an official "first" language, even though most people speak English.

Anyway, so during my interview with Catherine, she really emphasized that it's important for children to learn other languages from a young age. Why? "Because children have an amazing aptitude for learning language at a young age," she said. And right now in America, the logical choice of a second language for children to learn would be Spanish (in case you haven't noticed). When I asked her whether children in America should be required to study Spanish all through school, she quickly and adamantly replied, "Absolutely!"

She stated that children in other parts of the world are required to learn English in school, not just because English is a global commerce language, but also because immersing a child in another language at an early age has been proven to increase IQ or standardized test scores. Catherine gave an example from Canada, where children were immersed in French for the first 3 years of school. When they entered the 4th grade, the Canadian children were finally taught in English, and by that time they were fluent in both languages, had an appreciation for French-Canadian culture, and had higher IQs.

This fascinating article expounds on the example that Catherine gave.

So how does language make a person "smarter" per se?


Catherine explained that "language affects the way you think." And thinking in 2 (or more) languages improves your thought processes. "It is very much a mental thing," Catherine said. "Everyone has a mental capacity for language which is why all languages are basically the same at their roots (i.e. most languages have verbs, nouns, adjectives, etc.)"

She described language as cyclical. "Behavior affects language which in turn affects our behavior."

Catherine clarified with an example of an Amazonian tribe in Brazil that has a very interesting language. For one thing, they don't actually have past tense verbs. "They literally cannot think in past tense," Catherine said. Also the tribe doesn't have any specific numbers past "one" and "two." Instead they use the equivalent of our word several or few. Because of their lack of number system, the people in this tribe have difficulty picking out exact numbers. In one experiment, they were shown several nuts and after were asked to pick out the exact number that they had been shown. But they had trouble doing it. Language changes the way they think every day. (I found a really interesting article that expounds on this tribe, the Pirahãs.)

This is also a good example that demonstrates how knowing more than one language helps you to think in different ways.

So this is Catherine's opinion. She believes that America should have a "second" language.

What's your opinion?