Is Learning a Foreign Language Really Worth It? (Ep. 158)
(Photo: SuperFantastic)
Our latest podcast is called “Is Learning a Foreign Language Really Worth It?” (You can subscribe at iTunes, get the RSS feed, or listen via the media player above. You can also read the transcript, which includes credits for the music you’ll hear in the episode.) We produced the episode in response to a question from a listener named Doug Ahmann, who wrote in to say:
I’m very curious how it came to be that teaching students a foreign language has reached the status it has in the U.S. … My oldest daughter is a college freshman, and not only have I paid for her to study Spanish for the last four or more years — they even do it in grade school now! — but her college is requiring her to study EVEN MORE!
What on earth is going on? How did it ever get this far?
In a day and age where schools at every level are complaining about limited resources, why on earth do we continue to force these kids to study a foreign language that few will ever use, and virtually all do not retain?
Or to put it in economics terms, where is the ROI?
Great question, Doug! We do our best to provide some answers.
In the episode you’ll hear from Albert Saiz, an MIT economist who specializes in immigration. In a paper called “Listening to What the World Says: Bilingualism and Earnings in the United States”(abstract; PDF*), Saiz calculated how much learning a foreign language can boost future earnings.
Learning a language is of course not just about making money — and you’ll hear about the other benefits. Research shows that being bilingual improves executive function and memory in kids, and may stall the onset of Alzheimer’s disease.
And as we learn from Boaz Keysar, a professor of psychology at the University of Chicago, thinking in a foreign language can affect decision-making, too — for better or worse.
Bryan Caplan, an economist at George Mason University, talks about how much time the average U.S. student spends learning a language, and how well that learning is retained. (Spoiler alert: not very well!) Caplan also tells us what he really thinks about foreign language education in the U.S.:
CAPLAN: If people are going to get some basic career benefit out of it, or it enriches their personal life, then foreign language study is great. But if it’s a language that doesn’t really help their career, they’re not going to use it, and they’re not happy when they’re there, I really don’t see the point, it seems cruel to me.
Perhaps most important, Caplan points to the opportunity cost of language study:
CAPLAN: There are so many kids who remain barely literate, and numerate in their own language.
Finally: a big thanks to the fourth- and eighth-grade Spanish and Mandarin students at LREI (Little Red School House and Elisabeth Irwin High School) in Manhattan, and to their teachers and principal, for letting us listen in on a lesson. Or, shall we say: muchas gracias and xie xie.
*Review of Economics and Statistics 87, no. 3 (August 2005), pp. 523-538; published by MIT Press Journals. © 2005 President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Ben
I attended a dual English-Hebrew school from nursery school through 3rd grade. Essentially, I grew up bi-lingual to that point. I have retained all of the spelling, and grammar, but I am not conversational, although I can still pick it back up quickly if I want to put in some studying. My Hebrew language knowledge has given me an ability to access a part of my culture in a way I deeply value, and with more skill than many of my peers, who were not as immersed when they were younger.
Despite this, I feel that it was a huge mistake for my parents to send me to a school with this kind of language immersion, and I would be opposed to any sort of dual-language immersion program for children, even though I am fully aware of the fact that it is the perfect and easiest time for them to learn another language. The half a day I spent learning another language was a complete waste of my educational time. I was short-changed from learning English, Math, Science, and Art. Looking back on this, I truly believe that time could have been better spent learning more relevant things. (And yes, I would feel the same way if I learned Spanish or Chinese and not Hebrew.)
If kids want to study language, if they are motivated and excited about learning another language, they should be encouraged to, and opportunities should be made available to them to do so at the middle school, high-school, and college levels. However, I think it is a supreme waste of time and resources to force students, at any level, to study a language they are uninterested, and most likely will not retain or ever put to any good use.
I intentionally chose a liberal arts college without a language requirement. My wife attended a school with one, and was a dual Spanish major. She remembers very little of it, and she regrets majoring in Spanish, wishing she had taken advantage of the opportunity to study a variety of other subjects. She feels studying language has limited her education.
Timothy Wilson
The "Hidden Side of Everything-- or the Obvious Side"?
I have been listening to your podcast for a long time, and really enjoyed it, but I was really disappointed with your latest podcast about the (lack of) value of knowing a foreign language. To me it seemed superficial, ethnocentric and amazingly short-sighted. Knowing two foreign languages has opened up the world to me. Sure, It may not have made me any richer, but I have travelled and made wonderful friends and my life has been greatly enriched. Not everything is about the money that can be made immediately. If it were, we wouldn’t worry about the cost of cutting down forests—after all, we profit from the timber, right? But there are environmental costs, and even psychological costs of living in a world without trees. You failed to take into account so many factors. I know that economics is not just about money; it is about incentives, and human happiness is a great incentive. You really dropped the ball here. It’s not just that I am in favor of learning foreign languages—your latest report was simply poorly done, and failed to look at any other aspect than wages in the US. That is hardly the “hidden side”—I would call it the most obvious side, leaving all the hidden aspects unexamined.
John M
I spoke three languages. I say spoke, because I really didn't retain them. The idea that English is important is true. English is the world language. It is easy for non-English speakers to decide on a second language. If you have not special reason for something else, the smart idea is ALWAYS English. We English speakers have no such easy choice.
As I said, I spoke three modern languages and used to read Greek and Latin. I liked to learn the languages. But if you don't like languages, or are not good at it, it is not worth it.
Fernando
One important question that was not dealt with was that of unemployment rates of people speaking more than 1 language vs. only-english speaking persons.
I can see that in the US a 2nd language might not make a big difference in salary, but imagine that it could make a difference in employment...
Bryan M
Engineer here - my engineering friends who know a second language (especially those who know Spanish, Arabic, or Mandarin) definitely have a leg up on their salaries.
2 problems with Americans learning a new language: 1) there is no defined goal 2) we don't immerse ourselves around those speaking the language.
Mudit
I listen to the Freakonomics podcasts on a regular basis and found this one especially interesting. I am extremely interested in acquiring foreign language skills and have always encouraged my children to do so too.
As a generalization, one would think if a "foreign" language if one is comfortable (maybe bilingual) in that language. If that be the case, then one would expect that there would be other cultural factors in play besides merely knowing a foreign language as one would make the kind of decisions indicated in Prof Boaz's experiment.
Having said that, I am of the opinion that the people who choose to learn a foreign language to an advanced level self-select and at some point get into situations where they need to use or can benefit from their language skills.
Ethan
Hey guys, big fan. Was a little disappointed by this show, namely the glaring mistake lumping "learning a foreign language" with "bilingual education".
Learning a second language means taking the student and setting aside time to learn a language for a given time. Bilingual education means educating the whole day (and preferbly at home as well) switching between the two languages. It is this type of learning that truly expands cognative development.
Here in Hawaiʻi, we are working to develop bilingual education in English and ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi, which leads to my followup question:
What is the ROI on learning your native tongue?
Elizabeth
Disappointing ROI results for the French/Spanish double major! (Guess I was one of those .01% of people who were able to learn a language fluently in school. Go figure.) But really, I already knew that this would be the case. I do love to read in foreign languages, see foreign films, etc. but I've never used those languages in my career.
However, I believe there's value in our country's students to learn foreign languages, if only to curb some of the xenophobia in this country. Why do we hate immigrants so much? They're a positive in economic terms!
Regarding why so many students don't retain their languages outside of school: There are plenty of studies that show language learning happens most naturally in younger children. Starting a student on a foreign language at 13 is completely backwards and flies in the face of decades of research. What would happen if we had bilingual preschool?
Leo
LOL, I am learning English with podcast too. But I do like economic.
Carl
I work as a full-time professional in-house translator at a law firm translating Japanese and Chinese -> English, and I'm surprised that despite framing this topic as a matter of "economics" there is so little talk of supply and demand. The people posting here are right; cognitive benefits aside, learning Spanish or French probably won't increase your job prospects by a great deal. Why? Because so many people already speak both (high supply). Furthermore, the French and Spanish economies, while significant (but unstable), are dwarfed by some of their far Eastern neighbors, and there just aren't that many opportunities for French and Spanish speakers in the US that could support an individual's middle-class lifestyle, let alone a family (low demand).
If parents really want a significant ROI, they need to be having their kids learn Mandarin, Korean, or Japanese (German is also in high demand). These Asian languages are the hardest for native speakers of English, and a myriad of public and private jobs await anyone who can speak them at an appreciable level (for Asian languages this typically takes a bit more than four years of university language classes, so start as early as possible).
Matthew Scott
I felt that the argument presented in the podcast was not followed through to its logical conclusion. You did mention that Chinese-speakers, like other non-English speakers, earn one of the biggest premiums for speaking English. This advantage is heightened the more their 'home' economy is integrated with the global economy, for which English is still the lingua franca. Now consider the fact that the Chinese economy will in a few years be larger than the American one. Surely at that point, using your commendable logic, the 'language premium' would shift away from Chinese people who speak English toward Anglophones who speak Mandarin. Looks like American children should get started on their Chinese. Xie xie indeed.
The Economist's response to you makes some other useful points, I thought: http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2014/03/language-study
Raïssa
I would think that starting to learn a second language at a younger age would have much more impact. Beginning a second language in high school not the best time....what can you find out about that???
Kate
I really enjoyed this episode, but I found one important economic concept missing from the analysis.
Economists tend to favor options, and the more languages we speak, the more options we have both in terms of where to live and what type of jobs are available to us. For example, I spent two years unsuccessfully looking for a job in the U.S. after graduating in 2011 (not even a business degree and two foreign languages could help me find anything other than a minimum-wage internship). However, last year I decided to move to a Latin American country currently experiencing much more economic growth than the U.S. and make use of my Spanish fluency in my job search. Upon arriving I immediately got hired by one of the biggest and most highly esteemed tech companies in the world–one of the very same companies that didn't even give my resume the time of day back in the States. Since finding such success down south many of my underemployed friends back home have mentioned wanting to follow in my footsteps–the only problem is, many don't speak a second language.
In my opinion, this is the true benefit of learning a foreign language: it gives you options. While the economy in the US is moving at a snail's pace and millenials continue struggling to find good jobs, speaking another language fluently gives you the flexibility to move to a country whose economy is better off than your own. This, plus your native English fluency, will make you an extremely attractive choice to employers.
Jarek
Language is one of the few things that you cannot BS your way through- you either know it, or you don't, and it's immediately obvious. Every job I have ever gotten was because I could communicate in a particular language. Learning one of the new world power languages, like Chinese, can open doors which would be totally impossible without the skill. So I personally believe it is very worthwhile.
That said, what interests me more is, how does the prevalence of English and advancements in technology affect the future of language study? As mentioned in other comments, some things may become totally irrelevant 20 years from now. Language study might be one of those things, replaced by subjects totally unknown to us today.
bblase
I learned more about English grammar and language after learning Spanish it also made me have a deeper understanding of tangential ideas for instance: history and story are the same word in Spanish, historia, therefore I indirectly became exposed to and later aware of the importance of bias, historiography, and storytelling's role in framing/coloring one's perspective on a topic, historical or otherwise.
Tom Kelley
I generally agree with the previous complaints about calculating the ROI of learning another language. That said, the ROI or better put, "what am I going to get out learning this language" is an important perspective to explain why most Americans (USA Americans) or native English speakers only speak English.
Learning a new language as a middle/high school student is an enormous effort. Without the prospect of becoming rich or famous it might not seem like it's worth the effort. Since the rest of the world learns English, the benefit of learning another language is somewhat diminished. Selfish yes. But, that's human nature.
If, however, you find yourself in a prison in Latin America, you might regret not paying attention in Spanish class.