Why learn another language?
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And there are so many more reasons to learn a language...
Please visit and review the studies: https://www.actfl.org/advocacy/what-the-research-shows
Please visit and review the studies: https://www.actfl.org/advocacy/what-the-research-shows
What is Immersion?
Language immersion is a teaching method for learning a second language. Unlike more traditional language education, where the language is taught as a subject, language immersion teaches the language as a subject, but also teaches core content in the target language, in our case German.
Students starting at Kindergarten spend half the day in English, learning ELA, Social Studies and Related Arts and half the day in the target language, learning German, math, and science. |
Why German?
"The state of South Carolina has recorded capital investment from German companies totaling over $4.1 billion since 2011, creating more than 9,000 new jobs in the last four years. There are over 160 German companies in the state, employing nearly 27,000 South Carolinians. Germany is South Carolina’s 3rd largest trade partner purchasing more than $3.8 billion in products in 2014. With investment topping $1.1 billion in 2014, German companies accounted for nearly one-third of all FDI and nearly one-half of jobs created by FDI in South Carolina". https://dc.statelibrary.sc.gov/bitstream/handle/10827/20278/DOC_SC_Just_Right_German_Industry.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
https://www.goethe.de/en/spr/wdl.html
https://www.economist.com/prospero/2014/03/11/johnson-what-is-a-foreign-language-worth
https://www.economist.com/prospero/2014/03/11/johnson-what-is-a-foreign-language-worth
Other reasons...
- German has the largest number of native speakers in the European Union (far more than English, Spanish, or French).
- 92 Nobel Prizes and counting! 22 Nobel Prizes in Physics, 30 in Chemistry, and 25 in Medicine have gone to scientists from the three major German-speaking countries, while many laureates from other countries received their training in German universities. 11 Nobel Prizes in Literature have been awarded to German-language writers, and 7 Germans and Austrians have received the Peace Prize.
- Germans are world leaders in engineering.
- German and English are similar. Many words in German sound or look the same as equivalent English words, because the two languages share the same roots. For example, look at these words: Haus = house, Finger = finger, Hand = hand, Name = name, Mutter = mother, schwimmen = to swim, singen = to sing, kommen = to come, alt = old, windig = windy.
- German is the language of (take a deep breath) Arendt, Bach, Beethoven, Bonhoeffer, Brahms, Brecht, Buber, Einstein, Freud, Goethe, Grass, Hegel, Heidegger, Heisenberg, Kafka, Kant, Mahler, Mann, Marx, Mozart, Nietzsche, Planck, Schoenberg, Schubert, Schumann, Wagner, Weber, and hundreds more great philosophers, writers, artists, scientists, and composers. But these days it’s also the language of choice for writers, filmmakers and thinkers from a wide array of cultural backgrounds, such as Yoko Tawada, Zsuzsanna Gahse, Terézia Mora, Michael Stavarič and Melinda Nadj Abonji. German isn’t just for “Germans” any more (but actually it never was).
- German is the second most commonly used scientific language in the world.
- Almost a fifth of the world’s books are published in German, and few of these ever appear in English translation.
- Many of the Western world’s most important works of philosophy, literature, music, art history, theology, psychology, chemistry, physics, engineering and medicine are written in German and continue to be produced in German.
- Germany is the world’s second-largest exporter.
- The German economy ranks number one in Europe and number four worldwide. Its economy is comparable to that of all the world’s Spanish-speaking countries combined.
- Germany is home to numerous international corporations.
- Direct investment by Germany in the United States is over ten billion dollars.