Quote of the week: “The knowledge of the world does not reside in the minds of old men, but in old books.” Rafael Martinez You have heard it before. Your Spanish or French teachers have always tried to emphasize how "important" it is to learn a new language. They talk about the writing skills, the "great expansion" of vocabulary that you get, and the importance of communicating with the people of other cultures. Sure. That's something that you get when you learn a new language. However, I would argue that being bilingual isn't important because of any of these things. click for link to image credit I would say being bilingual is so much more than that. Being bilingual opens your world to a new way of understanding things. Not just through talking to other people, but also through reading. When I was about three, my mother gave me a book of short stories in Spanish from the famous author Rafael Pombo. These were children's books that c...