20 good answers to “Why are you teaching your children Spanish?”

teach Spanish to children map

1. There are 51 million Latinos in the U.S. today, and I want my children to be able to talk to any of them.

2. I want my kids to get the job interview that someone else doesn’t.

3. I want them to understand and appreciate other cultures and their own.

4. I want them to have another perspective on history.

5. I want them to test out of the language requirement in college.

6. I want their travel experiences to be less stressful and more meaningful.

7. By 2050, 30% of the U.S. population will be Latino; I want them to be able to talk to their in-laws, neighbors, bosses, and friends.

8. I have relatives (friends) who speak Spanish, and it’s important to me that my kids can communicate with them.

9. I want them to be able to read the Noble Prize winners for literature in the original.

10. It’s satisfying to be able to order well in Mexican, Cuban, Spanish, Peruvian (etc.) restaurants.

11. Why should they be at a disadvantage?

12. Because reading the subtitles just isn’t the same. Also, it’s so hard to eat and read subtitles.

13. It’s good for their mental development.

14. It’s good for their English vocabulary.

15. So they will score higher on the SAT.

16. I want them to be able to help people here and in other countries.

17. I want them to be able to keep pace with popular culture.

18. It makes learning French, Italian and Portuguese so much easier.

19. It’s fun!

20. Aren’t you?

Printable Story Sticks
Beautiful Dolphins: Learn Spanish with Pictures

7 Comments

  • Christie E.

    Jun 29, 2011

    I like numbers 9 and 12 the best. LOL!

  • Andrew

    Jun 30, 2011

    Wow, you actually nailed a lot of the things I’ve thought of before while struggling along in my journey to learn Spanish and trying to find reasons to keep going, to keep myself motivated. One of the biggest ones for me is that Spanish is SUCH a common language, it’s spoken in SO many countries, essentially an entire continent (minus Brazil, which speaks a very similar language that’s far easier to learn if you already speak Spanish). There are 358 million native speakers of the language and a total of 500 million or so use it as their first or second language (using Wikipedia for this), and it’s the official language in 21 different countries.

    If you want to travel as much as I do, then YES you need to speak Spanish, it makes SO much sense! Did you know that Spanish is the second most natively spoken language in the world after Mandarin Chinese? Check this out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers

    Awesome stuff, I’m going to tweet this, thanks.

    Cheers,
    Andrew

    P.S. Can I make a suggestion? Don’t close comments so soon (I personally wouldn’t close them at all), I often will go several days without checking my RSS reader and then I’ll go through and check everything all at once and frequently I’ll read a post of yours then go to comment and can’t because comments are closed.

  • Andrew

    Jun 30, 2011

    Oh, also, I forgot to mention that if you learn Spanish that will allow you to understand most Portuguese and Italian that you will hear or see written, another nice fringe benefit!

    Cheers,
    Andrew

  • admin

    Jul 1, 2011

    Thanks for the suggestion. I close comments because I got a lot of spam and hated wasting time deleting it. I’ll try leaving them open longer and see how it goes. Thanks too for your comments. Your blog is so much fun! I loved the post on how to respond like a native. Anyone who hasn’t read it can find it here: Respond like a native.

    Saludos,
    Jenny

  • Andrew

    Jul 2, 2011

    Thanks so much, Jenny! I’m really glad you like it. Have you seen the Shakira series I’ve done? Everyone seems to really like those, I’m going to be doing those forever, they’re just too popular to stop doing. I think those sorts of things (using popular media like that, music and movies and such) is a fantastic teaching method, especially with kids (Shakira would be better suited to those in high school, though) who are generally bored to tears with the typical textbook stuff.

    Cheers,
    Andrew

  • Laura

    Jun 27, 2015

    Another reason: with every language you learn, it makes it that much easier to learn another (scientifically proven btw).

  • Jenny

    Jun 27, 2015

    So true!