I believe that knowing some bits of history in your target language can help you learn the language. I believe that this historical knowledge gives you some what of an insider perspective into the culture and past of the language and it will enable you to relate and see a purpose in pursuing the language. I feel as though this will not help immensily however any help is good help.
The reason I don't see this as a tremendous help to a language learner is that the history has no value to the language. What I mean by the previous sentence is that the history does not translate into vocab for instance and if the knowledge makes you learn historical terms they are hardly practical in modern society.
It might be the youth in me that sees the boring lectures about history that I will never need to know or even care about. I see a small benefit when it comes to cultural knowledge but it should be kept to a minimum as mentioned before. I might just be stubborn on this topic. My views are pretty simple. I feel that history if taught in a language class should only be used in conjunction with vocab and grammar that will be practical in a modern setting.
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