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RELEVANCE OF THE KNOWLEDGE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES AS AN INSTRUMENT OF COMMUNICATION AMONG PEOPLE AND COUNTRIES. INTEREST IN LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY BY GETTING TO KNOW A FOREIGN LANGUAGE AND ITS CULTURE The world seems to be shrinking very rapidly as international barriers break down and people can more easily come into contact with other cultures and languages through travel, communication or new technology. This so-called globalization of the world is a modern and sometimes controversial trend which looks as though it may be here to stay, at least for the time being. Two aspects of this globalization are the development of a positive attitude towards foreign countries and culture, and the growing trend for using English as a world language. Therefore, foreign language teaching must introduce students to the most outstanding social and cultural aspects of a country and help them to develop attitudes of tolerance and respect. We play a key role to develop them. Needless to say, I consider this topic essential. In this essay I am going to study the relevance of teaching a foreign language as an instrument of communication and the increasing interest in language diversity. In the first part of the essay, I will discuss the way foreign languages can act as a barrier to international communication and I will point out different methods that have been proposed to reduce the linguistic barrier. In the second part, I will underline the interest in language diversity by getting to know a new language and its culture and I will suggest how to develop our students´ socio-cultural competence. FIRST. RELEVANCE OF THE KNOWLEDGE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES AS AN INSTRUMENT OF COMMUNICATION AMONG PEOPLE AND COUNTRIES I will start by explaining briefly the current situation. Between three thousand and four thousand languages are spoken in the world. It is difficult to give an accurate number because some regions in the world have not been studied in depth yet and particularly because many linguistic varieties are difficult to classify within the blurry borders of categories such as language, dialect or accent. Languages can be grouped into: • Families: a language family is formed by all the languages which are historically related and have a common origin. Eg.: the Indo-European family (many European languages+ Indian, Pakistani and Persian derive from it); the Semitic family, the Chinese-Tibetan family, the American-Indian family... • Branches: several languages within a family when they show a high degree of similarity to one another. Eg: Romance or Latin languages are a branch of the Indo-European family (Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Catalan, etc.); Germanic languages (English, German, Dutch, Swedish...), Celtic languages (Irish, Gaelic...) or Slavonic languages (Russian, Czech...). This diversity of languages can be a barrier to international communication. According to David Crystal, language is the main means by which people communicate, although, ironically, it also constitutes the main barrier. The fact that so many languages exist prevents people from understanding each other. The lack of a common language is generally seen as an impeding process for globalization. Throughout history there have been many ways in which we tried to overcome this barrier. Among them and according to Crystal: 1. Increasing the number and availability of translating and interpreting services, where the aim is to provide semantic equivalence between the mother tongue and the target language. The most usual way to overcome a linguistic barrier is to find someone who translates or interprets it. However, there are many problems because exact equivalence is impossible and there is always a loss of information. There are also technical problems if we use translation in a large scale, as it can result very expensive. 2. Developing an auxiliary language that everyone will understand, a kind of artificial device easy to learn (Esperanto). An ideal artificial language should be 1) easy to learn, 2) applicable to mother tongues, 3) enable the user to apply it for a rich range of functions, 4) standardized, 5) neutral and 6) enable its users to think more logically. However, one cannot be persuaded to learn it if no one else knows it. 3. Developing an existing language that everyone will understand, a lingua franca like Latin had been in the past. We understand lingua franca as a language that is used for communication between different groups of people, each speakers of a different language. In the Middle Ages and The Renaissance, Latin was used as the main medium of communication in Western Europe. Nowadays, the absolute protagonist as a lingua franca in any field is English. But why English? The answer is simple, because of the power of the people who speak it. The political, economic and military power of the United Kingdom initially and now of the United States of America contribute significantly towards the role of English as a lingua franca. The main problem we find with English is that it is spoken in so many parts of the world which makes it difficult to keep it standardised. Another problem is that English may in fact become too dominant. It is perhaps regrettable that this dominance of English pushes other languages into the background, an imbalance which the European Year of Languages tried to correct. Every language deserves and has the right to our deepest respect and recognition. Public interest in world language diversity is steadily growing. 4. Providing increased motivation and opportunity to learn foreign languages. This seems to be the most realistic way to break the linguistic barrier. Learning foreign languages is especially relevant in this sense, as communication skills is the first requirement to be met by the individual to function in an increasingly multicultural and multilingual context. This is acknowledged by all governments of the European Union, which over the years have scheduled several activities in education with the ultimate goal of enabling every citizen to have a working knowledge of at least two languages in addition to their mother tongue. In Spain, the RD 157/2022 passed on the 1st of march, states that, in the long run, mastering a second language has a positive effect on students 'personal development and on their cognitive level, especially when the FL is learnt from an early age. Indeed, numerous studies seem to confirm that the acquisition of communicative competence in a language other than the mother tongue, in the primary stage, is often associated with: • The improvement in other fields such as mathematics, artistic expression or literacy • The development of auditory memory and listening skills, thereby contributing significantly to the development of communication skills in all aspects at a deeper level, the development of an appropriate awareness about the diversity of our society, acceptance of differences as an enriching factor and to develop understanding, tolerance and appreciation of other cultural identities. Some other advantages of learning foreign languages are: • A medium of international and national intelligibility; a way for countries to open doors to a wider cultural world and a mechanism to broaden our minds, because we find other ways of thinking about things. • Improve students´ channels of information and help them to communicate with people from different countries. • Help them access a wider range of professions. • Prepare them to cope with an ever-changing environment, as they overcome their insecurity and develop their confidence as they face up new social and personal demands, • Improve Communicative Competence by the incorporation of other linguistic codes, • And help students to fully appreciate one's own language. Apart from this, young students are better prepared to learn a language than adults at an auditory and phonological level, because their brain has a natural capacity that diminishes as the years go by, and when communicating, children´s spontaneity comes in handy when learning a second language because, generally, they have less inhibiting factors. Besides, The European Union has suggested that European citizens have a personal document called a ELP (European Language Portfolio), which is intended to act as a guide to people’s language learning and to show their competence in different languages and their contacts with other cultures. As we can see, some of the most important reasons why we should learn a FL have to do with international communication, but this has to do not only with knowing the linguistic aspects of the language, but also with knowing about the culture in which the language is a vehicle for.