The Disadvantages Of The Bilingual Advantage

Speaking a second language can prevent dementia and Alzheimer’s. Being bilingual can improve someone’s skills and brain function. It can also increase your brain size and connectivity. If someone knows more than one language it can help protect their brain against aging and it can help if a second language is learned at a young age. Learning a second language can help people in many ways but the most important thing for people to learn a language is to better their health.

Having the ability to speak more than one language influences one’ life deeply. Speaking two or more languages can affect someone from being infants to old age. Bhattacharjee continues with, “The bilingual experience appears to influence the brain from infancy to old age (and there

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

“Cognitive functions can be defined as cerebral activities that lead to knowledge, encompass reasoning, memory, attention, and language that leads directly to the attainment of information and, thus, knowledge” (What are cognitive functions). Many students at Doulos are unaware of the benefits of knowing two languages. Ironically students also don’t know that their own brain and its skills are improving because of their second language. Doulos teaches classes throughout the whole day in both English and Spanish. Students are regularly changing between languages and their brain is always active with both languages. “This constant practice strengthens the control mechanisms and changes the associated brain regions” (Marian, Viorica, and Anthony Shook). People who are bilingual are capable of switching between tasks more efficiently. “For example, when bilinguals have to switch from categorizing objects by color (red or green) to categorizing them by shape, they do so more rapidly than monolingual people, reflecting better cognitive control when changing strategies on the fly” (Marian, Viorica, and Anthony Shook). Students’ cognitive and sensory process skills are more developed due to being bilingual (Marian, Viorica, and Anthony Shook). These improvements allow students to better process and understand information in different environments, thus leading to better

For language development, there is a popular debate on whether there is an advantage to being a bilingual individual. There is a large amount of evidence that supports both sides of the argument. In terms of bilingual advantage, various studies focus on how bilingual or multilingual individuals outperform individuals on executive control tasks that are either linguistic of non-linguistic in nature. The advantages stem from greater foundations of executive function, such as cognitive flexibility and inhibitory control, in bilinguals than in non-bilinguals. Young and older bilingual individuals show a cognitive advantage because they outperform non-bilingual individuals during executive function tasks for enhanced attentional control, conflict

In the article entitled “The Benefits of Being Bilingual‏”, Dr. Mercola discusses the gained brain benefits from being bilingual and other factors that can improve your neurological system. She started by showing the fact that although the majority of people in the States are monolingual, most people worldwide are bilingual, then she states the apparent advantages of bilingualism. Nevertheless, Mercola highlights on the brain perks of bilingualism. People believed that being bilingual or multilingual was a drawback, conversely studies have shown that bilingualism is considered as a mental exercise which leads to a more proficient working brain throughout aging. She displays that studies comparing bilinguals to monolinguals have shown that bilinguals enjoy more mental flexibility with enhanced cognitive abilities, as well as better

Music has elements which tie in with other school subjects such as math and history. When first learning music and the counting for each note, it can represent simple fractions that is learned in third grade math. Students can learn the different genres of music and the history behind what they love. In addition to the early exposure of basic education, music can also expand one’s knowledge in other subjects. Listening and learning music can stimulate parts of the brain that the simple reading, writing, and mathematics classes can’t. It has been said before that listening to classical music can stimulate certain neurons in the brain, which improves test scores. Overall, music can be beneficial to all aspects of

I found an artcle on hufflingtonpost that talks about the benefits of being bilingual. The article states that people who speak multiply laguages have a higher level of mental flexibility than people who only speak one language. In the past bilnguals were looked down on. When you're swichting languages all the time, it strengthens your mental muscle and your executive function becomes enrached. There was an experiement performed on both spanish and english speakers to see if both lagunages were active in their minds at all time. At first the subjects 512 sentences in either english or spanish, switch between the two every two sentence. They had to read cognates out load in red as quicky as possible. The results show bilnguals rarely said a

Most would say that these effects are merely knowing two languages, but bilingualism has many more positive brain effects than that. Recent studies have shown the teens fluent in more than one language have more access to their total brain functions. These findings have proved that our senses help to shape our brains. It is also factually proven that being brought up in a bilingual environment has aided in improving multitasking skills. With that, children able to speak two languages are also better at focusing their attention on one thing for longer periods of time, without becoming as easily

Bilingualism is similar to juggling and playing video games in which it is intense and can be sustained over a long period of time like driving taxis. However, individuals who are bilingual were forced to be bilingual because of life circumstances and not because of interest. Studies have shown that the effect of bilingual education on cognition is mainly through the executive control. Bilingual individuals have an enhanced executive control and it can be seen throughout their life. Studies on this executive control has shown that bilingual individuals outperform the monolingual individuals. Behavioral studies and imaging studies have found that bilingual individuals have both languages active at all times.

Author of this journal article, Judith F. Kroll, a distinguished psychologist who focuses on language acquisition, tries to refute many of the myths revolving around multilingualism within humans. The human brain is an incredible organ and has far more plasticity that we know, and Kroll states that “Contrary to the view that the brain evolved to speak one language only, the evidence suggests that two or more languages coexist in the same brain networks, each language activating the other even when only one of the languages is in use” (Kroll). Kroll is claiming that learning a foreign language helps one’s brain work harder and keeps it active for longer periods of time, disproving the claim of how more than one language can negatively impact your brain and speech. Kroll’s primary form of support in this article is in the form of logical appeal where he uses many studies about the difference between bilingual, and non-bilingual adults and how their cognitive decline occurs at different rates. The following quote states that learning a second language can be beneficial and help prevent cognitive decline such as

Speaking two languages rather than just one has obvious practical benefits in an increasingly globalized world. But in recent years, scientists have begun to show that the advantages of bilingualism are even more fundamental than being able to converse with a wider range of people. It can have a profound effect on your brain, improving skills not related to language and even shielding against dementia in old age.

The author of the article tries to say that a bilingual experience can have an important effect in people’s lives because when living between two languages or more a person has the opportunity to communicate with people from another country, to discover their culture, the ways they express their feelings and diffrent meanings of the words. Bilingualism shows a new and innovative perspective of the live and offers the possibility to chose the best way to express feelings, thoughts and emotions. Furthermore bilingualism allows to discover new concepts, cultural and social traditions.

Today, bilingual education used in many countries for variety of social and educational purposes. It is the actual problem of this century. Because, the world is changing and according to the requirements of time, the human mind adjusts to new discoveries, to new tops. The relevance of training to bilingual manner as a basic component in-depth language education is defined, first of all, a general global trend towards integration in the economic, cultural and political spheres, in the sphere of education determines the trend towards integration of subject knowledge, focus on the knowledge of a coherent picture of the world. Modernization in the field of school education is associated with high quality education, development of new technologies, new perspectives, expanding the horizons of students. Now, special attention is paid to creating conditions to develop the creative potential of the student and to empower in-depth education. Training based on bilingual program is important, because it provides

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.