The Advantages and Limitations of Bilingualism

The purpose of this essay is to analyze the benefits of being bilingual for a person’s cognitive development. Unlike the understanding of bilingualism during the early 20 century, where nationalistic policymakers and researchers considered bilingualism interference and hindrance of the cognitive function that negatively affected learners’ development, ample evidence has been provided on its benefits. The evidence suggests that bilingualism interference pushes the brain to resolve an internal conflict, which results in cognitive development compared to monolinguals. In a 2012 study by Barac and Bialystok, they studied Spanish-English bilinguals, Chinese-English bilinguals, French-English bilinguals, and English monolinguals to investigate the bilingual influence on cognitive development. Barac and Bialystok found that all the bilingual groups exceeded monolinguals’ performance on executive tasks.

Further, collective evidence from other studies suggests that bilingualism improves the executive function of the brain. Since the brain executive function involves directing attention processes, it means that bilinguals portray a higher mastering in solving problems, making decisions, planning, among other activities requiring attention like remembering. Primarily, bilingualism heightens the ability to monitor the surroundings as it requires keeping track of changes. For example, a bilingual might have to use two languages interchangeably. When it comes to flexible thinking ability, bilinguals exhibit a high sense of creativity as their competence diversifies their thinking of new and different ideologies acquired through another language. Despite language barriers that may be experienced, such as dialect, bilingualism increases the opportunities for superiority in terms of linguistic, academic, and cognitive performance. This could be based on the awareness that a bilingual acquires as they learn an additional language and assimilate the acquired knowledge and ideas with what they already know.

In appreciation of the various advantages of communicative competence of bilingualism, bilingualism increases the communicative abilities of the individuals. As bilinguals learn the new language, there is a significant transfer of phonological features, particularly in the existence of phonological entry commonalities. Such transfer is beneficial in learning as it enhances the linguistic competence of bilinguals in other languages also, bilingualism broader the exposure context of distinct literacy resources across linguistic barriers. Through bilingualism, it helps in the orientation of the brain in that it stimulates communicative and linguistic awareness, equally improving communication abilities. This is evident in Barac and Bialystok’ s study as they examine how education, language, and cultural background enhance linguistic development among bilinguals.

Additionally, bilingualism has been associated with cognitive conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease. As mentioned earlier, on the benefits of bilingualism on executive control systems, this cognitive activity drops with healthy aging. With the idea that stimulating mental practices hinder cognitive decline, they continue to benefit the brain as individuals age. However, bilingualism delivers constant pressure on the brain executive control in managing attention to the different languages, which means that this continuous mental practice enhances the cognitive reserve. Based on this logic, it means that bilinguals can deal with the onset of Alzheimer’s disease effectively compared to their monolingual counterparts. In consideration of cognitive performance across the lifespan of an individual, with infants continuing to old age, people spending their lives, bilingual individuals reveal significant differences.

In the classroom context, bilingualism exhibits high academic performance. Often, bilinguals can have a stereoscopic view of the world from different language and cultural perspectives. Such capacities enhance flexibility in learning and thinking. The knowledge of two languages or more enables an individual to grasp Information as it facilitates interaction with the learning experiences. On numerous occasions, bilinguals find themselves in constant reference to vocabulary books and the dictionary as they try to master new words, phrases, and understand the meaning as well. As a result, this improves their ability to learn and recall vocabulary better compared to monolingual students. Bilingualism enables a learner to have a broader context of opportunities to understand language and transfer knowledge, consequently making it easy for them to learn cognates across languages. Also, learning a new language requires mastery of concepts and rules. Through bilingualism, it benefits students in the American classroom by providing them with a wide range of different strategies equipping them with requisite skills to handle rules and concepts that control language and culture, among other aspects relating to bilingualism. Correspondingly, bilingual learners portray a high sense of self-control, which has been numerously used as an indicator of instruction in school.

As the debate about bilingualism is centered on language and significantly involves culture, bilingualism has helped in fostering students’ authentic cultural identities. For instance, heritage language students’ identities are assured to change as they learn languages to adjust to the dominant culture of American schools. Often, events of cultural identity play a significant role in the general equation for educational equality in the sense that it influences how people perceive and respond to others, which in one way or the other shapes self-identity. With various issues surrounding bilingualism such as ethnicity and race, learning a new language does not mean loss of cultural identity or acquisition of the cultures of the new language since one retains identification with their native culture. By challenging the arguments concerning the necessity of minority assimilation in the American culture, bilingualism furthers the objectives of social justice and students’ self-determination hence maintaining authentic cultural identities. In other cases, bilingualism enhances the recognition and respect of culture and language that guarantees the ability to develop a sense of biculturalism. Along with this sense of biculturalism, the students can make broader and better choices.

To conclude, various benefits of being bilingual are discussed in this essay. Based on various studies, there have been different benefits of bilingualism compared to monolingual counterparts. For instance, as mentioned earlier, bilingualism bas delivered higher academic achievement, cognitive developments, as well as the delaying of Alzheimer’s disease.

Works Cited

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