Week 12

In chapter 4, it is discussed that students in Singapore spend half of their time in primary school on language learning.  I think it's very interesting that bilingualism is so popular in non-primarily English speaking countries.  Although I don't think that English will ever become the only language learned, I think that it's very important for people of other nations to know English, since it is used so frequently in the world.  There may be a lot of languages that become lost, but I don't think that all other languages can completely disappear.  For example, I know that in Ireland for a while, Gaelic was on its way to becoming extinct.  However, Gaelic began to be taught in schools, in order for a younger generation to begin learning it, and also, in order to become a teacher or policeman, or any government job in Ireland, one must be able to speak Gaelic.  Besides this fact, I think it is beneficial for children of a young age to learn more than one language.  We have discussed in one of my other classes that there may be a possible critical learning period for languages, and to some extent, I think this is true. If children are exposed to language in half the time that they are in school, they will have a much high chance of becoming fluent in that language, or know it enough to be able to communicate efficiently.