Jeffery Kluger's The Power Of A Bilingual Brain

The positives of bilingual education have been recognised on a global scale for years. These benefits include: enabling minority cultures to maintain and develop their traditions, self-esteem and identity; improving intercultural communication between groups within and outside the society; enriching individuals intellectually, educationally and culturally and thus allowing ‘intergenerational communication, providing cognitive advantages, enhancing employment and career prospects and contributing to general wellbeing (Simpson 2009, p.3).’ Thus, in its broadest sense, bicultural education is the teaching of two ways of life (Harris, 1978).

Craig Donegan’s article “Debate Over Bilingualism” states, after World War One, “15 states declared English the basic language for teaching” (62). Many states forbid usage of any language but English in the schools. Until the 1960’s when Donegan relates, “Congress passed immigration reforms that resulted in a flood of immigrants from Latin America, the Caribbean and Asia” (62). Schools found with the inflation of non-English speaking students, they arranged to make changes to accommodate these students. On the other side of the debate, will be Mrs. Morales in a National Public Radio interview hosted by Neary Lynn and Douglas Ward in the article “Should all students be bilingual?” While Naomi Dillon in her article, “Language Test” takes both sides of the debate.

When completing the reading Chapter 6: Linguistic Diversity in U.S Classrooms the chapter was focused on the impact education can have in students’ learning more specifically language. Despite the hostility, bilingual education has ultimately proved to be an effective program for students. Still, teachers should take on the notion of additive bilingualism which is a situation where a second language is learnt by an individual or a group without detracting from the development of the first language. The reading emphasizes that a second language adds to, rather than replaces the first language. Students should embrace their first language as being bilingual is an advantage. As a pre-service teacher his reading informs me to give students the

The continued growth of speakers of languages other than English is reflected in the rapidly increasing students in U.S. schools for whom English is a second language. Data from the National Center for Education Statistics (2005) show that the number of school-age children who spoke a language other than English reached almost 10 million in 2004. Such a dramatic increase continually challenges educators to provide effective language programs with quality instruction for students who are culturally and linguistically diverse. Some educators choose to view these challenges as opportunities by offering a dual bilingual program as an educational option for meeting the needs of monolingual speakers.

Overall, bilingual education should remain in the school system to save cultures, benefit a student’s emotional and physical needs, and economically improve America. In the past, America served as a welcome to all immigrants, so the same principles this country was founded on must endure. Without this program, foreign students will struggle and may fall into adding onto the unemployment rates. While having many options available, bilingual education will cause America to grow economically and culturally, just as the

It is true that in the last 150 years alone, bilingual education has come a long way and has been changed presumably for the better. Though, despite all of the good that has come from this evolution of education, there is still much more to be done. Bilingual education has quite a bit of improvement to be made in order to better benefit ELL students and help guide them through acculturation, rather than force them to assimilate to American society and bear the weight of racism and discriminatory

Many parents want their children to be enrolled in bilingual education programs so that they may receive the knowledge of the English language while at the same time keep their current and be active with their cultural heritage. Bilingual education is another avenue that needs to be explored by more school districts across the nation because children should learn that there are other forms of communication. High schools require their students to take a foreign language before graduating, so why is this form of bilingual education accepted; yet an elementary bilingual program is under constant criticism? Bilingual people are rewarded in today's society by the higher wages and better positions. The scorn of the bilingual education programs that

In this literature review I will be discussing studies that are in favor, not in favor, and neutral on bilingual education.

In 1967, a senator in Texas named Ralph Yarborough introduced the Bilingual Education Act. Through this act, the federal government was to provide funds to schools to have bilingual educational programs. The act primarily focused on Spanish speaking children, but later was amended to benefit other children as well (Glavin). Several states in the United States opposed bilingual education—and in 2002, Initiative 31 was on the Colorado ballot. Initiative or Amendment 31, required schools to be taught only in English (figure 1). Parents were given the option to request bilingual education, but it would be extremely difficult for it to be accepted, due to schools having the right to deny their request. Instead, non-English speakers would be placed in an English immersion program. In this program, students would be given a year to learn English and later move to a normal classroom (“Amendment 31”). On November 5, 2002, the initiative was rejected by 55 percent (Benz 1). Considering the rejection of the initiative, Colorado began adapting programs to assist English language learners (ELLs). Nonetheless, dual-language education remains highly controversial. While bilingual education has many positive outcomes, we cannot ignore the fact that it is not 100 percent effective. Not every child learns the same; therefore, bilingual education does not provide equal opportunities for everyone. Instead of completely throwing bilingual education out the window, we should turn to alternatives

In the history of the United States, we have always embraced the remarkable mix of cultures and languages that come to us from all over the world. One area in which this remains true is education. Bilingual education finds its roots as early as the 17th century, when the first English settlement of Virginia was established, and Polish settlers arrived (Goldenberg, Wagner). “From its colonial beginnings, bilingual education in the United States has existed in one form or another to the present day, with a brief interruption during and right after World War I in the wake of virulent anti-German sentiment and a more general nativist opposition to the use of non-English languages” (Goldenberg, Wagner). The persistence of this method of learning is quite telling as to its effects; if they were not beneficial, the method would no

More young americans nowadays are being raised in homes speaking non-English, but these students are falling behind in schools where there is not a bilingual program available. According to the U.S. Department of Education, in schools without a bilingual education program, 71% of English speakers are at or above the basic requirements for fourth grade reading while merely 30% of non-English speakers reach this level. 35% of English and 8% of non-English speakers reach proficient reading levels while only 9% of English and 1% of non-English speakers perform at advanced levels. It’s evident that the availability of a bilingual program is crucial to the success of an individual who needs the resources that can be given to them through the use of bilingual education. The percentages of the non-English speaking students previously mentioned could undoubtedly be comparable to those percentages of the English speaking students if the education they were being provided with was cohesive to their comfortability, and the material being taught was in a language they could better understand.

From a young age I could remember my grandmother scolding my mother for not teaching me to speak Spanish fluently. I always questioned the importance of being bilingual, like how would this every help me in a world where English is becoming the native tongue. Before I stumbled across the research done on bilingualism I had very little to none background knowledge on bilingualism. I thought the only outcome of being bilingual or multilingual is you get to socialize with other people from other backgrounds and maybe have more opportunities to a more variety of jobs. Needs less to say I greatly underestimated the importance bilingualism has on the mind, in school and in life itself. After reading tremendous amount of research, I have a better insight, on how bilingualism can change one’s life and more importantly the change it has on the structure of the mind. I have discovered how the mind of someone who is bilingual works, also the impacts bilingualism has on the mind and most importantly how bilingualism can essentially pave a way to success in education and learning.

Educators from several different school districts in Texas, the state with one of the highest Hispanic student enrollments in the country, sought out to provide an answer to this issue. Gallo, Garcia, Pinuelas and Youngs agree that the definition of bilingual education is very similar to Slavin’s. They stated that bilingual education “is a process, one which educates students to be effective in a second language while maintaining and nurturing their first language” (2008). Not only did these researchers seek the problems of bilingual education using 3 separate Texas schools as their basis of the study, but they also came up with a very plausible curriculum that could be implemented in the state to allow bilingual education to be more effective.

Bilingualism is the ability by individuals to use two linguistic systems languages. Children acquire bilingualism in their early years when they are regularly exposed to adults who speak two different languages such as German and French or English and Spanish. Research shows that the majority of people in the world today are bilingual, or multilingual (those who comprehend more than two languages), compared to monolingual (individuals who have learned only one language). While many policy makers and researchers fear that learning and living with two or more languages inhibits the learners, recent research shows that being bilingual or multilingual positively affects cognitive abilities. The ability to learn one language while using another increases the likelihood that the individual’s brain will have better task switching and attention capacities than the brain of a monolingual person. Bilingual children have a better ability to adjust to environmental changes. Likewise, bilingual adults experience less cognitive decline as they advance in age. Bilingualism is positively correlated to concept formation, classification, creativity, and analogical reasoning. This paper hopes to explain the common debated question as to whether or not bilingualism affects cognitive development, and if so, to what extent.

“The Bilingual Advantage” is a very real thing according to scientists who perform research in the field of neurology, neurolinguistics, psycholinguistics and language sciences, but by all mean do not feel as if you have been wasting your life away not having learned a second language -- not all is lost. Having heard that with each language one learns, the next becomes easier, I have always thought that learning languages does something incredibly beneficial for the brain. Informed by philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s quote, “the limits of my language mean the limits of my world,” Maria Konnikova writes in The New Yorker (2015), “The words that we have at our disposal affect what we see—and the more words there are, the better our perception. When we learn to speak a different language, we learn to see a bigger world.” Putting that phenomenon in to more scientific terms, scientists at the Academy of Finland (2009) say “there have been a number of international studies on the subject, which indicate that the ability to use more than one language brings an individual a considerable advantage.” Research on the subject seems to indicate that in fact there are plenty of benefits of speaking multiple languages, specifically relating to working memory and thus executive function, spawning the phrase “the bilingual advantage,” however there are also some drawbacks.