Language learning is never just about words.
Language is the medium in which human beings think and by which they express what they have thought. The educational benefits of language learning manifest themselves as early as the first weeks of instruction. That observation encourages students to compare the two languages, thus learning about the nature of all language. At the same time, the teacher can help students notice that the language they are studying often depicts familiar things in a startlingly different way from their own language. That observation, in turn, engenders the awareness that every language embodies a unique way of perceiving reality, so that each language is also different from all other languages.