"The whole world speaks English, so I don't need to speak a foreign language." Well... no they don't. And yes you do. [...] Of course, language acquisition is hard. It generally takes years to achieve some measure of fluency in any language, and longer for some languages than others. All the more reason to get started early. So parents, if you're trying to motivate your kids to take foreign language study seriously, send them abroad. There's nothing like international exposure to generate a little enthusiasm.