Learning foreign languages in a global world

Learning foreign languages has become closely connected with modern life because people increasingly study, work, travel, communicate, and consume information across national and linguistic borders. A student can watch a lecture created in another country, speak with people living thousands of kilometres away, apply to an international university, work for a company whose clients are located in several countries, or participate in an online community where several languages are used every day. Digital technology has made this contact faster and more common, but it has not removed the importance of languages. In some ways, it has made language ability even more valuable because people now have access to far more information and far more international communication than previous generations had. …