Language Development And Its Effects On Bilingual Children

By expanding ourselves past the comfort of the native tongue, we are able to create connections with other people. When learning another language, we may start to understand not only the language itself, but also comprehend new cultures, ways of thinking, and other people. From the very beginning of deciding to become a teacher, I knew I wanted to expand my ways of thinking so I positively benefit students of all cultures and language. I believe language learning allows people to view the world in different ways by becoming positively influenced by other cultures, people, and different ways of thinking. However, after deciding to become an ESL teacher, I truly believe that bilingual education is needed to help students develop and maintain high levels of proficiency and literacy in both their L1 and L2, while learning in the content areas. This is why I personally believe it is better for children to be raised bilingual instead of learning a second language later in life. One reason for this is that even though I was born in America, my parents wanted me to learn their language, which was Polish. Now, I am fully appreciative of the fact that my parents taught me Polish and placed me in a Saturday school where I was being taught both English and Polish. If I was taught Polish later in life, I think I would not use it to this day because I would not have made personal connections with the languages, as I was able to by being raised bilingual. There are many benefits of being raised bilingual instead of learning a second language later in life. It is important to understand that it takes on average 4-7 years to become academically fluent in a language; by raising a child bilingually, the children are able to use both languages more efficiently earlier than those students who learn a second language later in life. Since the child has been bilingual for a longer time, there are educational benefits commonly found. Bilingual children tend to have a higher concentration and are better at working through distractions while doing their schoolwork. Bilingual children also perform higher on average on tests that involve multi-tasking, creative thinking, or problem solving (Marian & Shook, 2012).

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.

In my opinion bilingualism plays a major role in the educational development of children. This is because research has shown that children who are fluent in their home language are more successful in learning a second language. Furthermore, being bilingual offers greater sensitivity to language, more flexibility in thinking and better ear for listening. It also improves a child’s understanding for the native language. Moreover, knowledge of other languages increases a career of opportunities offering several job options.

Language is an important part of our lives. I remember when I arrived to USA I could speak a little English. I went to school to improve my language, reading and writing skills; even now I am learning my second language, without English I cannot survive in this new environment. Now I am raising my own kids and I want them to have this important skill, this privilege of knowing a second language, language of their parents and grandparents. By looking at studies of bilingual children, research shows how important it is for a child to learn a second language. Raising a bilingual child is a benefit because it improves social skills, academic proficiency, introduces child to a different culture, and prepares for the future.

367 families who seem to adopt similar sorts of strategies (e.g., OPOL, or One Parent

Specifically, I would email people in my classes and ask on Facebook for people who are University of Maryland students who were either raised bilingual from an early age or raised speaking only English, in addition to being willing to anonymously disclose their standardized test scores and college GPAs. I would then provide them with a link to a very short and simple survey asking them about their test scores and GPAs, clearly illustrating my interest in finding a correlation between early childhood bilingual proficiency and academic performance later in life. The end of the survey would have a brief thank you note in exchange for their time and effort contributions, in addition to my contact email in case they have any

Babies and young children pick up languages easily. They can learn how to speak just by listening to adults. When babies learn two languages they do it just as quickly as it would take them to learn one language. Bilingual babies could tell the difference between two words at the same time. Their brains were trained to do this because they had been exposed to two languages at home. Being bilingual makes the brain more flexible and strengths your ability. It is easy to learn a language before age 7.

Mother is bilingual, her thought patterns seem to be adequate and she appears to be well kept in appearance. Although she was leaving children home unattended, she was willing and accepting of guidance which can be assumed that she was not comfortable with the situation either but felt as though she had no other resources. Lorenzo seems to be capable and cognitively aware for his age, he does as instructed by his mother and follows directions given to him adequately for a child of his age. Lia also seems to be developmentally appropriate for her age, she responds and reacts appropriately and listens to verbal cures.

Generally speaking, language development is never a static process; it is rather a process that is forever evolving. One can compare this to the physical development of a child, in the first three years the developments are incredibly rapid. There are a number of factors that possibly affect the speed of development of a bilingual child, they

According to Ethnologue (Grimes, 1996) cited in Purwo, K. (2000), there are 6703 languages in the world. The distribution of those languages is in sequence Asia 2,165 or 32%, Africa 2,011 or 30%, the pacific 1,302 19%, The Americas 1,000 or 15% and Europe 225 or 3% . Asia becomes the continent with the most living languages in the world. Those languages are distributed in each country, and particularly, Indonesia is the second most living languages in the world, after Papua Nugini. Indonesia according to Grimes (1992) cited in Purwo, k. (2000) is reported to have 706 languages while Papua newgunie has 867 languages. Mostly, the 700s languages in Indonesia is in the eastern Indonesia in which Silzer and Heikkinen (1991) in Purwo, K. (2000) reports that 240 of the languages are in Irian Jaya.

It's scientifically comproved that kids whose parents expose them to speak two different languages during childhood, tend to show better response to brain activities diverging from monolingual kids. One article written by one of the most recognized colleges in the United states said that it happens due to the fact that kids' right brain side is more receptive to new information in a period that goes from the age of 6 months to 5 years. Kids that are stimulated to speak two different languages since a very early age have more precise mental skills due to the fact that their brains is constantly working to deal with all the information received all the time. One interesting fact about bilingual kids is called " code switch" which is a natural

Children learn at their own pace. They can develop language skills at a different rate than a monolingual child. Children learning two languages at the same time can have a smaller vocabulary in one or both languages, compared to children learn only one language. However, when both languages are taken into consideration, bilingual children tend to have the same number of words as monolinguals. Remember that these differences usually temporary. By the time most children entered school bilingual, develop their vocabulary caught up with monolingual children. An important variable for the learning of bilingual is consistency in how children are exposed to two languages throughout their childhood. You may choose to provide a consistency in many different ways. For families living in the community whose first language is not supported, it is important to

The need of least biased assessment approaches for bilingual children has been a growing concern for speech-language pathologists (SLPs) the last few years. Many times, bilingual children are assessed on the same standards as those of English monolingual speakers. Both children have very distinct backgrounds and the rate at which one learns English is very different from the other. English monolinguals grasp the language at a much quicker rate as opposed to bilinguals who must learn two different language rules and apply them in the correct context of the situation. The lack of least biased assessment approaches combined with the difficulty of balancing two languages for bilinguals calls upon misdiagnosing children. When bilingual children

Due to the increased migration and globalization, the shift in linguistic demographics and the advent of multiculturalism sparked researchers’ interest to investigate the cognitive mechanism behind bilingualism. Whether bilingualism has significant imprint on the development is still premature to conclude with absolute certainty. However, with rich theoretical background, growing number of empirical evidence supports the undeniable perk of bilingualism in various realms of cognitive development. Despite the on-going debate over the benefit of bilingualism, bilingualism became an emerging topic among researchers and scholars like Ellen Bialystok, Stephanie Carlson, and Albert Costa have been conducting research exploring the mechanism of bilingualism and executive functions. After all, Vygotsky also argued that bilingualism may have positive impact on human mind (Vygotsky, 1962).

Bilingualism refers to speaking two languages fluently, where one is a native language and the other is a secondary language either learned through family, school or by other means. It is not true that introducing a new language to children will affect their language development and delay. Instead, it has the benefits of improving cognitive and literacy skills, which means that children will become smarter when they are bilingual. Nonetheless, the languages should be spoken constantly and need an equal amount of exposure to the children. If not, the children’s brain will be damaged. This will cause lack of confidence if one language is exposed more than other. Furthermore, speaking two languages improves the development of the brain structure. In the present day, I believe that every individual child is either bilingual or monolingual. It is because many families moved to a foreign land where the language is different, so their children have no choice but to learn a new language. In addition, the children can also be exposed to a new language in numerous ways. For example, they can be taught by watching TV shows, cartoons in a different language from their mother tongue. In my opinion, children will learn a new language faster when they watch cartoons. It is because the children will copy what they see on the TV, and absorb the information into their brain. Furthermore, children can learn a language through play. When children play with adults and other children, they will