Forgetting a language: why forced learning doesn’t work
For many years, high schools have required students to study a foreign language for two years in order to graduate.While learning a language is always a good idea, being forced to do it by schools can take away from the experience. The current system relies heavily on extrinsic motivation, as many students are essentially required to do this for any hope of a decent future. Usually what ends up happening is that many students will “learn” the language, but forget most of it by the time they graduate because they never had any intrinsic motivation to do it. Why doesn’t extrinsic motivation work? Well, imagine this: someone walks up to you and offers you $5 to eat a sandwich. Would you do it? Chances are you’d wonder why they’re offering you extrinsic motivation to do something so simple, creating suspicion concerning said sandwich and perhaps making you not want to eat it. Now, you might be wondering, why wouldn't you want to learn a language? Nothing but good can come from that, right? Well, for one, not everyone has time to devote to learning a whole new language. Many students have jobs on top of all their other subjects, hobbies and social lives. Plus, if schools didn’t require you to study a foreign language, it might make people more open to the idea. Have you ever decided to clean your room because you wanted to, but then just as you were about to start, your mom told you to clean your room, and suddenly you didn’t want to anymore? It’s like that. Now, that does mean that the people who choose not to learn a foreign language might have less opportunities, but…will they really? English is already a very popular language, with well over a billion people able to speak it, and over 350 million speaking it natively. Sure, there may be less opportunities, but will it really be noticeable, with over a seventh of the world’s population able to speak english? Well, it really depends on what career path you take, but that’s besides the point. The point is, learning a language is a great idea, and you should definitely consider it, especially if you think you might need to be able to talk to people from another country, but this system of having it be forced upon you like this just doesn’t work.