Welcome to the Listening Time Podcast.
Hey everybody, this is Connor and you're listening to episode 183 of the Listening Time Podcast.
I hope you're doing great.
I hope that your English learning is going really well and And I hope that this episode will give you some encouragement to continue strong with your English, because we're going to talk today about the benefits of learning a language.
I wrote down some different benefits that I was able to find online and just some benefits that I have been able to see in my own life from being a language learner.
So I hope that this episode will give you some insight, extra motivation to continue on with your English learning or continue learning any other language that you're currently studying right now.
So I'm sure that this episode will be relevant and interesting to all of you.
And as always, I want to encourage you to start using my advanced episodes.
You'll need to eventually use native-level content if you want to be able to understand native speakers when they speak fast.
So that's what my advanced episodes are for.
They help get your ears accustomed to real English spoken fast.
And of course, you have the transcript for all of those episodes.
So the link to sign up is down below.
And you can also sign up for my U.S.
Conversations podcast, so you can practice listening to two people having a conversation in English together at normal speed.
Eventually, you'll need to be able to do that if you want to reach a high level in English, of course.
So that's why I created that podcast to help you practice with that.
The link to sign up to that is also down below.
And remember to give this podcast a five-star rating and write a review if you can.
All right, let's get started.
Are your ears ready?
You know what time it is.
It's listening time.
Okay, let's talk about some different benefits of learning a language.
You're learning English right now and maybe another language.
So what added benefits might you get besides just learning the language?
What other benefits might you see?
Well, let's start with the brain benefits.
So this is something that a lot of people are very interested in.
They want to know if learning a language helps their brain or not.
And I think it does.
There have been different studies that have looked at different benefits that language learning has on the brain and I'm not an expert on this and I can't tell you 100 that language Language learning will help your brain in these different ways.
But I think that studies have shown that it's possible, that it's likely that learning a language can have some different benefits for your brain.
So one benefit is increased creativity.
So this is pretty interesting.
It's probably not something that people would think of, but I think that studies have suggested that learning a foreign language helps your brain be more creative.
By the way, when we say that studies suggest something, we're saying that these studies point to this conclusion, but maybe not with 100 certainty.
It looks like this is the conclusion.
So studies suggest that you become more creative, or you can possibly become more creative, by learning a language.
And I guess this makes sense, because when you learn a language you kind of have to exercise your brain in a different way.
There's really nothing else like learning a language.
There's nothing that's exactly the same or even comparable, in my opinion.
I think it's a unique thing to learn.
It's not like learning music or learning some type of hobby or skill.
I think learning a language is a very unique exercise and I think I can see why it might make you more creative, just because you kind of have to use your brain in a different way when you're learning a language and I'm sure when you use your brain in different ways, this can have a positive effect on creativity.
I don't know exactly how that works.
I'm not an expert on any of this, but I think it kind of makes sense.
And another benefit that learning a language might have on your brain is that it can possibly strengthen your problem-solving skills.
I think this one is a little more apparent or obvious, because when you learn a language you really exercise the problem-solving part of your brain.
I think when you're trying to understand a sentence that is unfamiliar to you.
You kind of have to solve this problem, right?
You have to solve the problem of this unknown sentence and you have to try to make sense of this sentence.
I think This happens a lot in language learning, where you hear a sentence that you don't immediately understand, but then you think about it and analyze it and then after a few seconds you get it and you say oh, now I understand what that meant.
And I think that that's problem solving, right?
Your brain is trying to solve that mystery.
So I can definitely see how learning a language can strengthen your problem solving skills.
I think that that one is a little more obvious to me.
And another benefit that you might get from learning a language is that it might increase your ability to concentrate.
This is an interesting one.
So I guess learning a language requires a lot of focus, right?
It really engages your concentration, because when you're reading something or when you're listening to something in a foreign language, you have to be more focused than if you listen to something or read something in your native language, right?
If you're interacting in a foreign language and someone says something to you in a foreign language, if you're not paying full attention, you might not understand them.
You might miss a few words or something like that.
So you really have to be focused.
I'm sure that you know this.
I'm sure that when you try to listen to native English speakers speak fast, or when you use my advanced episodes or my US Conversations podcast podcast, I'm sure you have to pay attention.
You have to be focused.
So that's pretty cool.
And another benefit might be that learning a language increases your ability to multitask.
This is one that I had never thought of before.
I guess this might have something to do with the fact that when you speak multiple languages, you often switch between the two languages, right?
You go back and forth between Spanish and English or Portuguese and Spanish or whatever.
And that switching between languages might help you become a better multitasker in other areas of your life.
Maybe you can go back and forth between two different activities more easily.
I don't know about this one, but I read this, I think, on a couple different websites, so I wanted to include this one.
I thought that this was also pretty cool.
And then, in general, talking about brain health and the way that your brain ages, I think that many people would agree that learning a language can possibly help your brain age better.
When I say age better, I'm saying as it gets older, it doesn't decline as much, right?
If you say that someone has aged very well, that means that they look good even though they've gotten older, right?
So this is probably the most interesting example brain benefit for me.
I think that it would be really cool if the language learning that I've done could help me, help my brain actually be healthier in my old age, right.
So there is some evidence that learning a language can possibly slow down cognitive decline.
That's really cool.
So it might slow down the processes that lead to different dementias and other brain-related issues.
That sounds like a great benefit.
I don't know all the details of that.
I haven't read the studies, but I know that there is some evidence that suggests that.
So that's great.
And another thing that might happen is that learning a language might improve your episodic memory.
So your memory of specific events in the past.
And I think that I saw a study about this with older adults how language learning helped increase this specific type of memory.
It helped improve it.
So that's also really cool.
So, as you can see, there are a lot of different possible benefits related to your brain in terms of learning a language.
But there are other benefits besides just the brain benefits.
I think one of the most obvious ones is that learning a language can help your career.
And I'm sure many of you listening to this podcast episode right now because you want to learn English for your career, for your work, for some opportunity.
I'm sure many of you are doing that, and so if you speak a foreign language, this can help you work for foreign companies, of course, and And I've had many students in the past that have learned English and it has allowed them to get a job with a company from the US or from Europe and they were able to earn their salary in dollars or in euros and then spend in their local currency.
So this made them rich almost in their countries.
So I've talked to many people who have a really great quality of life in their country because they were able to get a job with a foreign company and that's because they learned English.
So of course that's a big benefit.
Learning a language can give you opportunities abroad.
Maybe your company can send you to another country to work.
That could be really cool.
Learning a language. can also help you work with foreign clients.
And maybe you own your own business and speaking English or another foreign language might give you the opportunity to work with clients that don't speak your language.
So You can expand your business like that.
And then also if you speak English.
In particular, if you learn this language, this can help you communicate with international co-workers.
You can talk to other people in your company that are based in different countries, and because a lot of them probably speak English as well.
So there are plenty of benefits for your career.
And then I thought of some other benefits.
These ones are not career-related or brain-related exactly, but I think that they're still very important.
I think that learning a foreign language improves your knowledge of your own language.
This has definitely happened to me.
So when you learn a foreign language, specifically as an adult, it really helps you analyze your native language.
You can better understand the grammar of your own language.
When you learn the grammar of another language, you can see the differences.
You can compare the two and contrast them.
When you contrast two things, it means that you compare them to show their differences.
Okay, so you can contrast the grammar in your language and the grammar in the language that you're learning, and it might also help improve your vocabulary in your native language.
This has happened to me.
There are words in English that I didn't really know the meaning of before, but in Spanish or in French, for example, There is that same word.
Maybe it looks a little different, but it's a word that is much more commonly used in Spanish or French.
It also taught me the definition of that word in English.
So your vocabulary in your native language can also improve by learning a foreign language.
So overall, if you learn a language, I think that your knowledge of your native language is going to improve.
You're going to have a better understanding of your own language.
So I like that benefit.
And learning a foreign language helps you communicate better overall.
It makes you more conscious of language in general.
People that haven't learned a foreign language.
They might not think so much about the language that they're using.
They might not be as conscious of different linguistic related things, and so I think that this is something that I've seen in my own life after becoming a language learner.
I'm just more conscious of certain things in the words I'm using, the sentences I'm saying, And I think, more specifically, it's really helped me talk more effectively to non-native speakers of my own language.
So it's helped me talk more effectively to people who are learning English or people who speak English but aren't native speakers.
So I know what types of words and phrases and expressions might be harder for them to understand.
So I don't use all of those hard words and phrases and expressions when I'm talking to them.
I try to find simpler ways to say the same thing.
I'm going to do a whole advanced episode on this.
I think I don't remember when it's going to be released, but I'm going to talk about this because this is something that I find very important.
I think that it's important to try to help people non-native speakers of your language understand you.
It's good to adjust your speech to help them out if you can.
So I'll talk about that in that advanced episode.
And one other benefit that I wanted to mention of learning a foreign language is that it can boost your self-esteem.
When you learn a language and you feel like you've reached a pretty good level in that language, you feel competent.
You feel like you've accomplished something.
You have this new skill.
You can imagine that the more skills that you have, the more self-confidence you probably have.
So if you don't have any skills, you probably lack some confidence because you don't feel like you can do that much.
But when you have these different skills, you feel more capable of doing different things.
So this can really boost your self-esteem and This is also related to travel, for example.
You can travel to a foreign country and speak English there and be understood and understand the other people.
That can feel really good and boost your confidence when you can travel with ease.
When you do something with ease ease this means that you do it in an easy way, in a comfortable way, okay.
So that can definitely boost your self-esteem.
When you feel competent to travel and speak a foreign language and understand it, that can definitely make you feel pretty good.
And I also think that learning a foreign language and being able to speak it is kind of like learning to play an instrument, in the sense that when you have this skill, people are impressed.
For example, if people hear you play the piano well, they probably instantly have a better image of you.
They think of you even more positively than they did before, because they see that you have this talent or this skill and And they admire that right.
The same goes for speaking foreign languages.
When people hear you speak a foreign language, they're often very impressed and they congratulate you on being able to do that.
I don't think that this is the best reason to learn a foreign language.
I think you should do it for your own benefit and not to impress others.
But of course many people would see this as a benefit, being able to impress others with their foreign language skills.
Again, not the most important one, but I wanted to include it as well.
Alright, so I'll stop there, but I'm sure there are tons of other benefits that you might be able to think of.
But really I hope that this gives you more motivation to continue on with your English learning, And I hope it motivates you to also use my advanced podcast episodes and my US Conversations podcast to take your English to the next level, to start to understand native English spoken fast.
This is something that you'll need to be able to do eventually, and you can use these resources to make this a little more accessible to you, because i provide the transcript for you, so this is something that can really help you out.
So if you want to check those out, the links to sign up are down below, And please give this podcast a five-star rating if you haven't done so yet.
And write a review if you can.
All right.
Thank you so much for listening to this episode.
And I'll talk to you on the next episode of Listening Time.
