The Advantage Of Bilingualism

Bilingualism is the ability to communicate in two different languages. Bilingual education is the use of two different languages in classroom instruction. According to the Encyclopedia of Children’s Health, and many other researchers, “languages are learned the easiest during a child’s youngest years. Therefore, when a child is growing up in a bilingual home or is receiving bilingual education, can easily speak both languages. Children who grow up in a household where two languages are spoken, usually acquire both languages simultaneously. Although their ability quality and skill of each language may be somewhat slower than a child that is

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.

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

Kids that learn a second language at an earlier age tend to have the ability to multitask with ease. In a video called The benefits of a bilingual brain - Mia Nacamulli, she explains how although being bilingual would not make you smarter it does keep your brain healthy and more active and

While some may think that this is not certain studies have proven otherwise. In The Power of a Bilingual Brain, Jeffery Kluger states that, “Research is increasingly showing that the brains of people who know two or more languages….. Multilingual people, studies show, are better at reasoning, at multitasking, at grasping and reconciling conflicting ideas.”(1) Clearly, a bilingual education places students a step ahead not only in their education careers but, as well as in their daily life’s outside school. Jeffery Kluger discusses how a bilingual brain is not necessarily smarter brain, but is a more flexible and practical brain. Evidently, demonstrating to us one of the many benefits of a bilingual

This nation is a place where different cultures come together and learn to coexist. From native America, Latinos, Asians and probably other nations that are not well known; they all have something in common which they all are bilinguals. Authors Cisneros, Agosin, Dumas and Tan clearly illustrate that being bilingual has both advantages and disadvantages.

Being bilingual will not only help you communicate with others but also give you many different opportunities. Being bilingual is just not about speaking another language but also learning the culture that comes with it. From the new language you will learn about other traditions, music, food, and overall the way others speak and express themselves. Another thing you can acquire from being bilingual is the chance of getting a better job and develop professionally better. Studies also show that bilinguals express themselves better and that it’s better to start learning a second language at an early age. There is doubts about teaching a children a second language because some people believe that if they teach them a second language at an early age it can cause confusion in the child, and they will end up not being able to learn either one correctly. This information has not yet been proven what studies have shown is the complete opposite which is that a bilingual person has a higher possibility of being successful than a monolingual.

People have a way to being intelligent when knowing two languages because they are able to understand certain things more. According to The National Center on Cultural and Linguistic Responsiveness, “brains are very active and flexible when being bilingual” (2016, para. 2). Bilingual can start at any age but some have started to understand both languages at a younger age. They have a higher chance to develop both languages if starting from a younger age because they can understand the language as time goes by. There are shows that show kids at a young age about the different languages such as the TV show Dora. The show Dora shows kids the Spanish language and usually repeats the words more than once in Spanish which makes children usually want to repeat it as well and that is when they start to progress the language.

Bilingualism is a person’s ability to speak two or more languages fluently. Initially it was believed that bilingualism had negative effects on an individual’s intelligence and speech and it was thought that the knowledge of multiple languages would complicate one’s thought processing rather than improve its functioning. This theory

The social advantages of being fluent in more than one language are obvious: the more languages you speak, the more people you can communicate with. Another purported advantage of multilingualism is enhanced “executive function.” The term executive function is used to describe the advanced cognitive functions that define human mental abilities such as exercising self-control, attending to one specific stimulus, switching attention between stimuli, and planning future actions (Yong, 2016). There are numerous studies that support this cognitive benefit. One such study is “Bilingualism, Aging, and Cognitive Control: Evidence from the Simon Task” (Bialystok, Craik, Klein & Viswanathan, 2004). The researchers in this study attempt to evaluate whether

As the title suggests, “Speaking in Tongues: The Many Benefits of Bilingualism” is an article that examines the advantages of bilingualism. Due to the nature of the world, a great number of people have acquired the ability to speak more than one language. The author explores the benefits such an ability offers, arguing that bilingual children develop social, linguistic and cognitive skillsets that not only provides a chance to explore different cultures, but raises a child’s awareness of how language functions. The author also weighs on the cognitive aspect; applying the works of Ellen Bialystok to their ( the author’s ) argument. In the author’s view, bilingual children are better at dealing with conflicting cues and assessing information.

Bilingualism can also receive cognitive benefit. There are researches have shown that bilingualism is associated with cognitive advantages (Bialystok, 2007; Kovacs & Mehler, 2009). Bilingual children are more advance to meta-linguistic awareness, which is the ability to understand the structure and nature of language (Peterson, 2015). Studies have revealed that expose in bilingual environment and hearing a language from multiple speakers are beneficial

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.

1. Bilingual education has many advantages to children at a young age. As elementary students learn the concepts of a second language they are able to understand concepts better than individuals who only speak one language. The significance of learning two languages at an early age is that children’s minds are able to produce cognitive benefits, such as having more linguistic tools towards thinking, creativity, and flexible in problem solving. Bilingualism helps children minds become cognitively superior, which as a result provides protection at old age from cognitive declines. It is better for children to obtain a second language at an early age, because it easier for them to absorb the information.

“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.