Foreign Language Persuasive Speech

Any of you guys that have been to a foreign country know that not understanding the native tongue can be a scary thing. I was in Puerto Rico this past summer with my dad. Neither he nor I knew Spanish well enough to converse fluently with locals, which made the trip a have an uncertain feeling at times. We were driving across the island, when we stopped to ask for directions. Unfortunately we couldn’t find a single person who spoke English well enough to understand our questions. Eventually we ran into somebody who, through hand signals was able to point us in the right direction, or so we thought. We ended up driving all the way back to where we started… just taking a much longer route. This may not have been the case for me if I had been taught Spanish at a younger age. My name is Will Lenhart; I am a fourth former here. I think that schools should start teaching foreign languages in elementary school.

Even though all of us were required or are currently taking a foreign language here at Woodberry and at almost all schools across America. For the most part we began in the 8th or 9th grade. Yet this isn’t helping increase bilingualism in America. I know I had a difficult time starting to learn a foreign language in 8th grade. And as you can see in the handout you have, the majority of students agreed with me, that learning a foreign language was difficult for them too. The rest of the world starts teaching a foreign language much earlier than us, so why do we wait? Foreign languages should be taught from 1st grade on because it is easier to learn at a young age and it’s beneficial after