Band 6+: As a part of their education, students should spend a period of time living in another country to learn its language and culture. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

One school of thought holds that students should live in another nation in a time period to learn its language and culture. I partially agree with this opinion based on several reasons that I will mention subsequently in this essay.

Undeniably, students would reap enormous benefits from trying overseas life. Firstly, they would easily access opportunities to interact with native speakers including lecturers, students and neighbors even in daily life. Hence, this may gradually enhance the speaking and listening skills of the learners thanks to various real life conversations frequently, which they could not get in their hometown. Additionally, living in another country would facilitate the chances to immerse in local culture directly, assisting them to have a deeper insight of local life not only from images or videos. Consequently, learners spending a life period to study abroad would efficiently acquire local languages and customs.

However, I still claim that experiencing foreign life may have some unforeseen risks including language barrier and racism. Regarding the former, native speakers tend to use their dialect or slang to communicate, which are not taught in the official curriculum. Hence, students would have to face various linguistic problems due to their lack of local knowledge, acting as a precursor to several uncomfortable situations in daily life such as miscomprehension or misleading. With respect to the latter, when studying abroad, students may fall prey to racism and discrimination, which is a current common problem in several countries. This would cause various undesirable cultural experiences or inaccurate prejudices about ethnicity for students, who may not have enough proper awareness and try to acquire local cultures.

In conclusion, living abroad to absorb native language and culture would confer substantial advantages for students thanks to opportunities to communicate with proficient speakers. Nevertheless, I am also convinced that this phenomenon may have some repercussions based on language barrier and discrimination.