Comparing The Four Myths Of Bilingualism

What do we know about the effects bilingualism has on cognitive development? Our world is becoming progressively bilingual; in the US 21% of school age children between the ages of 5-17 years old can speak other than English at home and this number is expected to increase in the coming years. On top of social reasons, the positive effects to the cognitive development of the brain when introduced to a second language are of many. The age of acquisition is vital due to the plasticity of the brain, which according to the critical period hypothesis, begins to level after five years of age. In addition to plasticity, bilingual speakers are more capable of focusing their attention to solve complex problems compared to monolingual speakers.

There are many myths about bilingualism having negative effects. One of those myths are that babies are hopelessly confused by exposure to two languages. However, studies have proven that learning more than one language as an infant is actually very beneficial and not difficult to do. According to Judith F. Kroll, babies develop the ability to discriminate the languages that they listen to and are more open to learning a new language. A study by Ferran Pons and other colleagues, revealed how bilingual children show an earlier attentional shift to the mouth. This is due to the fact that bilingual infants rely more on the perceptual salient of audiovisual speech cues in order to to construct two different language systems. Furthermore, another

One of the most major myths out there is that your child will feel confused all the time if they grow up around multiple languages. Many people wrongly believe that a baby will not be able to tell the differences between the languages that are being spoken to them.

We learned in our text that the development of language is a complicated process that involves phonemes, morphemes, syntactic development among several other factors (Siegler, DeLoache, Eisenberg & Saffran, 2014, p. 218). Proper and effective development of these language skills has been shown to have a critical learning period that enables successful fluency of a language; this period usually occurs between the ages of 5 and puberty (Siegler et al., 2014, p. 220). I believe that this critical period is the backbone of the argument against bilingual education. Proponents of this argument believe that the sooner a child is immersed in the new language, the better off they will be with regards to mechanics and use of that language.

The study demonstrated that bilinguals have an advantage in verbal tasks that require sensitivity to structural features of language. This study extends the scope of Ben-Zeev (1977) and Nation and McLaughlin (1986), which focused on syntactic structure, to the domain of phonological structure. Findings from this study suggest that early bilingual experience may enable children to more readily form an abstract representation of phonological patterns. Thus the researchers’ concluded that bilingual children, regardless of whether they actively used a second language at home or simply had exposure to it, had advantage over their monolingual peers in learning the phonological patterns of the new

To become bilingual, must you lose a piece of your identity? Or can the cultures of language coexist in a person? In the essays by Martin Espada and Richard Rodriguez, the ability to maintain identity as a bilingual speaker is challenged. According to Espada, Spanish should be permitted everywhere to prevent losing a piece of one’s identity. However, Rodriguez believes that a piece of your identity must be sacrificed in order to be accepted into a new culture. For others, such as myself, there is a happy compromise; bilingualism should be encouraged and supported in public to communicate and spread understanding.

Byers-Heinlein, K., Fennell, C.T. and Werker, J.F (2013) conducted an experimental research study with infants, ranged from 12 months old and 14 month olds, to test how monolingual infants compare to bilingual infants when they are advancing their associative word learning on an exact same time table. Because bilingual infants are exposed to two groups of audible sounds and written vocabulary, some theorists argue that this causes a constraint on how quickly bilingual infants

Since more parents began to enroll their child in early childhood programs, information has raised awareness in early education, and how children can learn better at a young age, this including another language. Research has shown cognitive advantages by a child exposing, mastery and control of two or more complex linguistic systems by the age of three. As written on the parent handout found in Parents as Teachers called: Why bilingualism is important, they used an example of preschool children. They showed the children a picture of a moon; the child responded by replying "the moon" or "La Lune." depending on the language they had asked the child. After this question, they told the bilingual child the moon now is called the sun, during the experimental session they children showed better mental flexibility following the instructions stated by the researcher (171). For example, the example displays the flexibility of the child 's brain, which can distinguish between languages, but it

Language is the main form of communication for humans, who begin learning language from a young age. With such a diverse world, many people speak more than one language. However, is there a difference between the attention strategies and processing between monolingual and bilingual born speakers? How early do these differences appear? Research suggests bilingual infants express greater attention strategies and processing compared to monolingual infants. This paper will examine studies indicating that there are significant differences between the cognitive development of monolingual and bilingual infants.

Learning a language involves comprehension about the properties of that language. Infants need to learn the phoneme collection of the language, words, and syntactic information among a wide range of segments. A potential test confronted by bilingual infants is the need to separate the languages they are presented to. An inability to segregate may bring troubles in figuring out the phonetic codes of the two

It is important to recognize the neurological differences amongst monolingual and bilingual individuals. In the research community, many studies have been conducted to investigate the way both groups process language. Cross-linguistic development anatomically changes the structure of the brain that results in an enlarged

First of all, bilingual education has shown to be able to increase the attention span of students. For years it had been believed that, when learning two languages, students found themselves to become increasingly distracted and confused, unaware of which language to use in what moment. Today, however, scientists can see that that is far from the case. In fact, if a student

Bilingualism, or the ability to understand and produce two or more languages, is an increasingly common ability in our increasingly diverse world. In the United States alone, there has been a 6% increase in the number of bilingual people in the country from 1990 to 2010, as observed by Hyon Shin and Robert Kaminski (2010). Opinions on the cognitive effects of being bi- or multilingual have changed drastically over the past several decades as well. Not very long ago, it was thought that speaking multiple languages would detract from an individual's cognitive abilities, as well as limiting their vocabularies and competence in either language. Particularly in the case of children, some people tried not to expose their children to more than one language because they thought it would result in language impairments and deficits, leading to poor results in school. However, today there is a growing branch of thought that there are in fact great cognitive benefits to bilingualism, particularly in the area of executive functions.

The human brain is capable of the most remarkable abilities. It doesn't just manage the human body, but it also allows us to communicate by processing, interpreting, and understanding language. Human beings use language as the main source of communication, it allows an individual to express her/himself with greater precision. Each country has their own language, and with language comes different accents and dialects. Speaking one language alone is enough for the brain to develop, as that language is being constantly used. When it comes to speaking two languages, that's when the brain is strengthened, the individual is more intelligent and is able to acquire knowledge more easily. The use of two languages is described by the phenomenon of bilingualism.The effects of bilingualism are linked to the functional neuroplasticity — the ability of the brain to modify its structure and function with experience. This neuroplastic effect leads to changes in personality in which a bilinguist is capable of not just switching languages but switching personalities as well. One can argue that it takes more than being bilingual to change brain activity and function, but most would agree that the benefits of bilingualism outweigh the drawbacks. Advanced technology has shown that bilingualism has improved cognitive control, changed brain activity over time to strengthen its neurons, and protect against age-related diseases. A major recent discovery over the effects of bilingualism is a

Researchers are continuously investigating methods of advancing human development. Many studies have explored the world of bilingualism and found a few surprising results. The skill of knowing two or more languages has been linked to a variety of cognitive benefits. Knowing more than one language has been proven to impact more than just the linguistic system of cognitive development. This essay will review the positive effects bilinguals experience through early and middle childhood along with adulthood. In addition, with a few of my personal believes and experiences.