Learning a language can improve a child’s self-esteem

Knowing other languages has multiple advantages: such as sharper memory, improving decision-making and maximizing cognitive flexibility. And those benefits increase when we learn a second language at a young age.

Learning a language other than their mother tongue improves something fundamental to children’s development: self-esteem. But how does this relationship work?

Along with key factors such as anxiety, extroversion and introversion, inhibition, motivation and learning styles, self-esteem – defined as self-confidence and self-satisfaction – is among the emotional variables most studied by psychology experts. Some of them have noted that language learning is a specific domain in which self-esteem plays an important role and is particularly at risk because of the way we learn languages in the classroom setting.