Some teachers think that international student exchange would be beneficial for all teenage school students. Do you think its advantages will outweigh the disadvantages?
The language barrier
School seems always come up with a novel program to facilitate its students. International student exchange, for instance, has become an arguable topic to talk about. Although some teachers claim it brings more merit than demerit, others think otherwise. Personally, I would argue that the benefit students obtain from such program will outweigh the disadvantage one.
The most predominant problem students face during the period of exchange is more likely to be language barrier. This is because people in their country destination speak different language. As far as I am concerned, language comprehension is obviously essential since it helps us to communicate with others, particularly local people. Sean Lords, an American English teacher working in Seoul, says that language represented as a huge problem when it comes to go abroad. According to him, people who cannot speak local language may feel anxious, curious and angry at the same time as they do not understand what local people talk about. This may leads them to feel be alienated from society. However, student exchanges will not experience some problems relate to language if they take a course in order to acquire the language spoken in their country destination prior to going there.
The general view has been that students joining this program will be able to have international networking. In this case, they will take a part in several school programs which clearly involving many novel foreigners. For this reason, they will get an opportunity to communicate and share their ideas together and this is extremely good to built up their networking. For example, Nindya Soewandono, my local public figure, often encourages all young people in my neighborhood to get involved in every local events we have because this is a chance to meet and built a relation with others. Besides, we will never know who and how we get assisted in the future. By having an international networking, I believe that a hundreds opportunities will be obtained by student exchanges, especially those which can benefit them tomorrow.
In conclusion, everything is bound to have good as well as bad impact and I think so does international student exchange program. Language barrier, which is issued to be the drawback, is possibly tackled by taking a language course. Therefore, I would suggest that students should participate in this program as it offers a golden chance to expand their network which may be really helpful in the following days.