Multilingualism is the New Literacy

From Madrid to Mumbai and the Czech Republic to China, English language mastery is on the rise. On the plus-side, native English speakers enjoy the privilege of traveling just about anywhere in the world and being able to find people who speak our language. But there are other implications we’re just beginning to reckon with. 

In a recent Op-Ed in The New York Times titled “Parlez-Vous Anglais,” columnist Pamela Druckerman framed the rise of English speakers around the world as a threat, rather than what it must be: a call-to-action. 

For too long, people from the United States have avoided learning other languages, leaning on the fact that English has become the undisputed lingua franca worldwide. As a result, we’ve missed out on the myriad benefits and opportunities that bilingualism (and better yet, multilingualism!) affords.

In an increasingly global and connected world, it’s time for the United States to make learning other languages a priority. 

The Rise of English Mastery

The EF English Proficiency Index, which rates the language proficiency of adults around the world, has shown significant and steady gains since it was started in 2011. In the 2018 report, a record 12 countries—including Slovenia, South Africa, and Sweden—reached the highest level of proficiency. “In 2018, the English language is as important as it has ever been. It is the de facto language of communication for all types of international exchange—goods, services, and ideas,” the report said.  

This trend will certainly continue as public and private investment in English education grows. As English becomes a basic job requirement in many countries and contexts, more schools now require it as part of their curricula. 

In Europe, 80 percent of primary school students and 94 percent of high school students are studying English. And in China, there are more people who speak English as a second language than there are people in the United States who speak it as their first.

Outside the classroom, the globalization of media enables non-native speakers to hone their skills in new ways. Netflix and YouTube in particular provide easy, on-demand access to conversational English, giving students the opportunity to learn to speak with fluency and nuance.   

Druckerman worries that “English will mutate” and “native speakers will lose their competitive edge” in the corporate job market. The real problem, however, is what Druckerman notes only in passing at the end of her essay—that “the ubiquity of English lulls us Anglophones into thinking it’s ok to be monolingual.”  

The Benefits of Bilingualism 

The reality is that the United States does an abysmal job of teaching second languages. We typically start too late, use ineffective pedagogy, and divorce academic learning from relevant context. As a result, less than 1% of adults in the U.S. speak a second language they learned in school. (In Europe, 53% do.) 

The lack of focus and priority we’ve placed on language learning reflects a classic U.S.-centric view of the world: we expect, and require, others to come to us.

This orientation isn’t just arrogant, it’s short-sighted. There are benefits to teaching and learning second languages that extend far beyond the ability to order a coffee in France, take a taxi in Shanghai, or ask for a bathroom in Mexico City.  

We’ve long understood that the bilingual brain is more dexterous. Research shows conclusively that language learning improves memory, attention, and focus. It also correlates with higher academic achievement and standardized test measures, as well as greater self-efficacy and self-esteem. Who wouldn’t want these benefits?

Just as importantly, the process of learning a foreign language is an exercise in cultural humility that forces us to see the world through more than our own lens. I was privileged to begin learning Spanish in elementary school, and later added Portuguese by spending time living and working in Brazil. In the decades since, my language skills—while far from perfect—have enabled me to navigate cultures and contexts with relative confidence and ease. I’ve been invited to quince?eras and Condomblé celebrations that most foreigners will never see. I’ve traveled by bus across Portuguese-speaking Mozambique and lived for months with a Nicaraguan host family who taught me more about patience and purpose than I could have ever learned in school.

Closer to home, living in the Bay Area, not a day goes by when I don’t find an opportunity to reach out to someone in their own language, rather than assuming they should meet me in mine. 

Language is a skeleton key that gives us access, insight, and empathy across lines of difference. 

I’ve come to think of speaking multiple languages as a super-power, which is one of the reasons I always dreamed of raising multilingual kids. When my first son was born, I decided to try an experiment: What if I only spoke to him in Spanish? I assumed the effort would be short-lived, but five years and another son later, we’re still going strong. Despite the fact that neither my husband nor I are native speakers, Spanish is our boys’ mother tongue. They speak Spanish at school and with us, and frequently teach us new words and correct our grammar. And while I initially worried about how they'd learn English, they've simply absorbed it from everyone else around them. 

The impact on my sons' early development has been profound in ways I hadn’t anticipated.

From the time they could speak, my boys knew that there was more than one word for a feeling, color, or thing. In a sense, they’ve been hard-wired to know that multiple perspectives can co-exist.

And as white boys growing up with all the privileges afforded by their race and class, I can’t help but notice how the experience of struggling a bit to fit in with the English-speakers on the playground has built a healthy dose of self-consciousness and humility. 

?Our Call to Action

Rather than seeing the rise of English around the world as a threat, let’s take this moment as an opportunity. We owe it to ourselves, and to our kids, to make bilingualism the norm in the United States. This is not an impossible task; we know exactly what it takes.

Language learning has to start early and focus on immersion and relevance rather than memorization and tests. Most high school graduates will say that the hours they spent in French or Spanish class had little effect beyond turning them off from language learning.

If high schools made proficiency rather than seat-time a graduation requirement, everything would change. 

The rest of the world isn’t gaining on us. It is already ahead in recognizing what we still haven’t—that monolingualism is the new illiteracy. It’s time to make foreign-language proficiency an integral part of a U.S. education.

#CollegeCanWait #Purpose #Empathy #Compassion #Multilingual #Education