What's the most practical language for students to learn?

Though I am a French teacher, I feel it is essential for all Americans to learn a foreign language, regardless of which one. As a culture, we need to expand our horizons and learn that it is NOT "all about us." There is a global market out there from which we can learn and benefit. Combined with studying abroad during college, bi- and trilingual young adults are more marketable in the job market. They are also more empathetic as humans.

I belive Latin is the most practical for any students who lives in a Romance-speaking world. This applies to English as well, even though English is technically a Germanic-Romance hybrid. Latin understanding has been shown to greatly improve preformance on SATs, in English class, (as well as Spanish, Portugese, Italian, French, Romanian, and other Romance languages), and for careers in the Linguistic, Medical, Biological, and Scientific fields. Latin is a wonderful asset that has tragically slipped away from most high schools. I saw a figue a few years ago that stated that the average age of a high school Latin teacher in the United States was 51 years old. Where oh where have the young Latin teachers gone? Are we doomed to fade out, and woe to the young world?

For a child, I think learning a language totally different from his own is more useful in some sense (ie, Chinese or Japanese or Russian (yes it is Indo-European but it has a very elaborate grammar and pronunciation system)). They are much more difficult to pick up as an adult than Spanish, French, Italian.

Schools, parents and students often expend a considerable amount of energy trying to decide which language is the "best" language to learn. The answer in my opinion is ANY lcanguage in addition to your native tongue is a good language to learn. It doesn't matter which one. First, once you go through the langauge-learning experience learning any language becomes easier. Second, the process opens your eyes, mind and heart to a different way of thinking and viewing the world so the language choice itself is almost insignificant. Study a language that is interesting to you. Schools should start programs that they can do well for a sequence of several years. There's no such thing as a "bad" language to learn!

Italian is also spoken like it is written. All kids should learn another language. In Europe many people are bi-lingual. They start learning another language in the 2nd grade, then they pick up another in middle school. The more languages the better.

Spanish is the easiest language to learn. The main reason it is easy, is because you pronounce the words the same way you write them. Besides, Spanish is the most spoken language in this country after English. However, students should have different choices because in America we have people that speak other languages, and would like their children to learn their language.

Living here in California we see a very diverse group of children in the public schools and my experience over the past 25 years tells me that the best way is bilingual & children need to learn the heritage language (home) first so that they always have a strong connection to their extended family....I am a strong advocate for biliteracy....children should learn to fully read, write, calculate, & of course become proficient orally as well. I would say that it is very important for biingual children to learn a third language, whether the language is Asian or Middle Eastern in origin ....we need global communication expertise!

English!
The questions asks "what is the most practical language ..."
Considering what we often see, English needs to be much better learned!

I chose Spanish because except for English, that is the predominant first language spoken in the area I live. (California)

It doesn't matter too much which language a student learns first after his/her native one.
Learning the first foreign language is always the most difficult, because one has to learn both the language itself and how to learn a language. After that, subsequent languages can be picked up much more easily. My own experience was that after extensive formal instruction in French and minimal formal instruction in German, I picked up five other languages on my own, two of which I speak pretty well now, and from one of which I published a book translation into English.