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Benefits of Being Bilingual Essay | Long and Short Essays on Benefits of Being Bilingual for Students and Children

October 1, 2021 by Prasanna

Benefits of Being Bilingual: Language evolution has taken place over the years in different parts of the world. Languages have changed and developed through social needs. To communicate with different groups for trade, travel, and other reasons people have started using more than one language. Many countries also have more than one official language. There are some prominent benefits of being bilingual as revealed through various research and analysis. Let’s discuss some of the cognitive benefits of being bilingual.

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Long Essay on Benefits of Being Bilingual

Develop Brain Power

Learning a second language other than a native language develops a person’s learning aptitude and helps in a great way to keep the brain alert and healthy. It can improve creativity, problem-solving skills, attention control, and confidence. Learning other languages from an early stage can help improve a child’s educational development, social and emotional skills that have positive effects for many years to come. It is also found that people who are conversant with more than one language can process information more efficiently and easily.

Improve Cultural Awareness

Being bilingual gives an individual an opportunity to get exposed to diverse cultures, ideas, and perspectives by way of learning and communication. The children who are born and brought up in different countries get to learn different languages besides the home language. The benefits of being bilingual can be seen in children as they acknowledge the value of other cultures and heritage.

Enhance Social Life

Knowing a second language gives the ability for more social interactions and enhances social skills. The benefits of being bilingual are to connect with a wider range of people; express and interact with more confidence in social situations. This skill often makes you more presentable and attractive while building meaningful relationships. Learning a country’s language when traveling to that country gives a more immersive and authentic experience. It would be easier to communicate with the local language and make more friends. Bilingual skills help individuals to adjust with others from varying cultures and backgrounds. Through this communication skill, one can be more perceptive of others, and be more empathetic.

Better Job Opportunities

One of the benefits of being bilingual is new career and job opportunities. Companies with international offices and client bases consider bilingualism an added advantage. Multilingual consumers constitute a major part of the commercial force and represent a significant opportunity for business. So there are demands for employees who can speak other languages and navigate different cultural expectations. Fields like travel and tourism, healthcare, journalism, and national security give priority to candidates with bilingual language skills.

Improve Learning Aptitude

Researchers established the fact that bilingual adults learn a third language better than monolingual adults. Learning a different language helps one to develop better attention and interest towards other languages in general. The improved understanding of how language works, coupled with the experience already gained, makes it all the easier to learn a third or fourth language. Bilingual experience may help to follow a new language more clearly leading to better learning. The benefits of being bilingual may be rooted in the ability to focus on information while reducing interference from the languages already known.

There are valuable benefits associated with the skill of being bilingual, be it individual or social. It gives the ability to explore a diverse culture, people, and customs. It is really fascinating to interact with someone with whom you might otherwise never be able to communicate. The behavioral changes and social advantages observed are major benefits of being bilingual. It highlights the need to consider how bilingualism shapes the activity and attitude of people in a positive manner.

Short Essay on Benefits of Being Bilingual

Introduction

Language evolution has taken place gradually with advancements of civilization and languages change and develop over time. Different groups of people would have found themselves speaking different languages due to social influence. Learning a second language expands a person’s social circle, improves confidence, and enables them to connect with a growing diverse population of the multilingual community.

Studies have found that being bilingual can improve the ability to focus attention and perform tasks effectively. Bilingual children become more successful in problem-solving and can have a creative approach. Learning a new language helps in a great way to keep the mind focused and sharp.

Bilingual skill can help to interact with different people and understand another culture including music, film, and literature. This means there are more opportunities to make friends, explore different hobbies, and improve social skills. Bilingual people tend to be more open to communication as they can interact through both languages.

Considering the benefits of being bilingual, the educational curriculums in many schools include a compulsory third language to be taught to children. There are private coaching facilities available also to provide learning on a second language. The knowledge of more than one language has several benefits in the long run because of diverse job opportunities. Being in a country without knowing the local language creates a lot of problems, whereas if you can communicate with that language it becomes more convenient to handle any situation. Even one can work as an interpreter to help others to communicate and get appreciation in return which is self-motivating.

Conclusion on Benefits of Being Bilingual

The benefits of being bilingual can be observed through the awareness and the ability to recognize language as a means of building connections and relationships. It brings confidence and motivation to one’s personality which is one of the most important benefits of being bilingual.

FAQ’s on Benefits of Being Bilingual

Question 1. What are the job opportunities for a bilingual person?

Answer: There are job opportunities in the travel and tourism industry, healthcare, Journalism, Teaching, MNCs, and Embassies, etc.

Question 2. Should a foreign language be a part of the educational curriculum for children?

Answer: Yes, learning a foreign language is very important at the school level so that students can capture it quickly and enhance their knowledge about other cultures and heritage.

Question 3. How does bilingualism help people traveling to another country?

Answer: Traveling becomes more convenient and enjoyable when there is no language barrier. With the knowledge of a foreign language, it becomes easier to process information about a new place.

Question 4. What percentages of people speak two languages across the world?

Answer: Around the world, nearly 60%-70% of people speak at least two languages.

Question 5. How do bilingual skills help to improve social life?

Answer: Being bilingual one can get exposed to other cultures and be able to interact in social surroundings building more relationships.

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The Benefits of Being Bilingual

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The Benefits of Being Bilingual was originally published on Idealist Careers .

Bilingualism, or the ability to speak two or more languages fluently, can be a huge asset for job seekers. As a 2017 report by New American Economy discovered, the need for bilingual workers in the United States more than doubled in the previous five years. This trend is projected to increase, especially for Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, and Arabic speakers.

But even if you don’t speak one of these languages—or don’t use a second language on the job at all—bilingualism makes you a more adaptable thinker, according to a report by the Language Institute . Quick and flexible thinkers with broad perspectives will benefit any employer.

Here are some of the benefits of being bilingual, from the job hunt to personal and professional development.

The benefits of being bilingual in social-impact careers

The New American Economy report also reveals bilingual jobs are common in fields with a high degree of person-to-person interaction. Employers in fields like education, health care, and social work actively seek bilingual workers. Dozens of languages may be represented among students at a school, clients at a housing or health facility, and residents of a neighborhood—especially in urban areas. A staff member who can serve as an interpreter or translator is invaluable. Language skills are also applicable in many advocacy jobs; immigration lawyers, for instance, often need to communicate with clients who may not speak English.

So where can your language skills be best put to use? The most in-demand bilingual skill depends on where you live. In a place where many people speak a certain language—be it Spanish in Miami, French in Louisiana, or Vietnamese in the Bay Area of California—many jobs strongly encourage bilingual candidates.

Benefits of being bilingual beyond language

Your bilingual skill set can give you an edge whether you speak your second language in the workplace or not. Knowing two languages makes your brain more flexible ; switching between two sets of grammar rules, vocabulary, tones, and nuances is a lot of work! In fact, even if you’re only speaking one language, your brain activates both language systems and requires you to focus on one—making you a natural at complex mental tasks.

This adaptability can make you quicker at thinking on your feet, better at workplace problem solving, and a whiz at multitasking. When it comes to working with people, bilingual thinkers can be more adept at “reading” and communicating with others.

Bilingualism versus biculturalism

Linguistic fluency comes in many varieties. If you learned a second language in school, you’ve probably mastered reading, speaking, and listening. But if you spoke two languages at home or learned a second language specific to your ethnic background, you may also be bicultural—someone with insider knowledge of two different cultures. This includes the dominant culture of the country you’re in; for example, the English-speaking culture in many areas of the United States.

Each culture has its own rituals, values, and behaviors that go far beyond language. A bicultural candidate will be able to navigate between the complex aspects of both cultures. While this perspective is key when working with diverse cultural groups, it also gives you a skill you can apply in any job—the ability to understand and combine multiple perspectives at once, known as integrative complexity. Your aptitudes count as a bonus in many ways, from interpersonal skills like mediation and conflict resolution to brainstorming big ideas for an organizational mission.

Promote your skills

If you’re bilingual, remember that you’re a standout candidate! Mention your second language on your resume , even if you don’t consider yourself fully fluent. A little ability can be just the boost you need to bring something extra to the table.

In an interview , you can emphasize your:

• Ability to understand diverse perspectives;
• Creativity and inventiveness;
• Problem-solving expertise;
• Skill at different modes of communication; and
• Any other benefits you think bilingualism has given you, since each person’s experience will be different.

Ready to start searching? Check out job, internship, and volunteer opportunities requiring or encouraging a specific second language skill .

Essay on Bilingualism

Students are often asked to write an essay on Bilingualism in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Bilingualism

What is bilingualism.

Bilingualism is when a person can speak two languages. This skill can be gained early in life, like a child growing up in a house where two languages are spoken. It can also be learned later, like a student studying a second language in school.

Benefits of Bilingualism

Being bilingual has many good points. It can make your brain stronger and more flexible. It can also make it easier to understand and learn about other cultures. Plus, being able to speak two languages can help you get jobs in the future.

Challenges of Bilingualism

Learning two languages can be hard. It takes time and practice. Sometimes, people who speak two languages can mix them up. But with patience and hard work, these challenges can be overcome.

Bilingualism in Society

In many places around the world, being bilingual is normal. In these places, people use two languages to live, work, and play. This shows how important and useful bilingualism can be in our lives.

250 Words Essay on Bilingualism

Benefits of being bilingual.

Being bilingual has many benefits. It makes the brain strong and flexible. This is because switching between two languages is a mental workout for the brain. It also helps in connecting with different people and understanding different cultures.

Challenges in Bilingualism

Learning two languages can be hard. It takes time and practice to become fluent in two languages. Sometimes, it can also be confusing to switch between languages.

How to Become Bilingual?

To become bilingual, one can start learning a new language at a young age. Schools, online courses, and language clubs offer classes. Practicing speaking, reading, and writing in the new language every day can also help.

Bilingualism is a valuable skill. It helps in brain development, understanding cultures, and connecting with people. Though it can be challenging, with regular practice, anyone can become bilingual.

500 Words Essay on Bilingualism

Bilingualism is a term that describes a person’s ability to speak two languages. It’s like having two tools in your toolbox instead of one. When a person can speak, read, and write in two languages, we say that person is bilingual. Some people learn two languages when they are very young, maybe because their parents speak different languages. Others learn a second language at school or as an adult.

Bilingual people can also find it easier to learn more languages. If you already know two languages, picking up a third or even a fourth can be easier. This is because you already understand how languages work.

Bilingualism and Culture

Language is a big part of culture. By learning and understanding another language, you can also learn about another culture. This can make you more open-minded and understanding of people who are different from you. It can also help you feel connected to more people around the world.

Also, if you don’t use one of your languages often, you might forget some of it. This is why it’s important to practice both languages regularly.

In conclusion, being bilingual can be a great skill. It can help your brain, make it easier to learn more languages, and help you understand other cultures. But it can also be hard and require a lot of practice. Whether you’re born into a bilingual family or decide to learn a second language, it’s a journey that can open up a world of opportunities.

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

Happy studying!

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The Advantages of Being Bilingual

Language is one of the defining characteristics of humans. It is an interplay between culture, geography, and biology and is the one thing capable of connecting billions of people. At the time of writing, there are over 6,000 languages spoken across the globe, with English, Mandarin, Hindu, and Spanish being among the most widely spoken .

With such a massive diversity in spoken languages, it quickly becomes apparent why speaking multiple languages can be so advantageous. Geopolitics, education, and businesses rely heavily on efficient communication and minimal instances of misunderstandings. Think of how often simple linguistic misunderstandings cause large disputes and errors, both at the individual and collective level, and you can see why being bilingual is crucial for social activities. Below are some of the advantages of being bilingual

Communication is the key to understanding

One of the best advantages of being bilingual is that it will open up a new avenue for creating connections with others. The United States, for example, is home to 350 languages alone. As a result, it is seen as a melting pot for cultures, but unfortunately, tensions can arise within the country’s smaller communities simply due to language barriers. Having a sizable portion of the population fluent in at least one other language creates bridges between these communities, leading to fewer points of contention.

Teachers are some of the people best positioned to take on the task of fostering new generations of bilingual students. Schools across the U.S. already have foreign language courses integrated into their graduation requirements, but continued education in language studies is often recommended to obtain fluency. For those who never took a foreign language course in school or who wish to piggyback on what they’ve already learned, an online language tutor is arguably the best method toward fluency. There is also an assortment of self-paced online courses and smartphone apps that can supplement this knowledge.

Seeing as English is the most widely spoken language globally, it’s no surprise that it is rigorously instilled into students living in countries outside of the U.S. Learning English gives these students highly sought-after career opportunities in tourism and work abroad. That said, fluent English speakers also have a chance to make money teaching English to students who live in countries where English is not the native language.

Many companies often emphasize hiring people who are fluent in other languages. Knowing multiple languages will increase your odds of being hired, particularly in customer-facing roles. To tap into additional markets, hiring bilingual employees is strategic for businesses to have workers that can communicate with non-native language speaking demographics.

As a traveler, learning the language of the countries you visit opens up a more comprehensive lens into the culture, which has many benefits. For instance, learning Spanish and traveling across Latin America will give you a window into the deeper nuances of specific subcultures. It’ll also make it easier to navigate these countries, lessen the chances of falling for scams, allow getting better deals on consumer goods, and make befriending the locals easier.

All of this is to say that there is a clear incentive for bilingualism among different cultures to bypass language barriers and create a more interconnected, global society.

Exercising your mental faculties

Beyond the unifying nature of language, becoming bilingual has proven cognitive benefits for those who take on the effort. These benefits can be subtle, but ultimately bilingualism can make you a better reader, problem-solver, and general learner.

Whether or not you learned a second language as a child or later in life, studies have shown that being bilingual can help stave off cognitive decline in old age. What’s more, knowing how to switch between two languages has been shown to increase memory and creativity.

Having the ability to read in another language gives bilingual people access to more knowledge resources. For example, novels, news reports, and scientific studies written in another language are now accessible to bilingual people. In addition, increased use of these language skills is continually honed as new words and semantic nuances are discovered within these texts. And in terms of reading news reports, bilingual people can glean more profound insight into events happening across the world, thus making them more worldly people.

And finally, having already mastered another language, especially as a child, gives bilingual people the advantage of learning other skills. Language is a set of systems, much like any other system such as computing languages, scientific disciplines, and music.

So, not only does being bilingual increase your career opportunities, but it also grants learners cognitive abilities that can be applied to just about any other task that living in modern society requires. Moreover, by fostering bilingualism in as many people as possible, the world can become a much more unified and productive place to thrive within.

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The Cognitive Benefits of Being Bilingual

Editor’s note:.

Today, more of the world’s population is bilingual or multilingual than monolingual. In addition to facilitating cross-cultural communication, this trend also positively affects cognitive abilities. Researchers have shown that the bilingual brain can have better attention and task-switching capacities than the monolingual brain, thanks to its developed ability to inhibit one language while using another. In addition, bilingualism has positive effects at both ends of the age spectrum: Bilingual children as young as seven months can better adjust to environmental changes, while bilingual seniors can experience less cognitive decline .

We are surrounded by language during nearly every waking moment of our lives. We use language to communicate our thoughts and feelings, to connect with others and identify with our culture, and to understand the world around us. And for many people, this rich linguistic environment involves not just one language but two or more. In fact, the majority of the world’s population is bilingual or multilingual. In a survey conducted by the European Commission in 2006, 56 percent of respondents reported being able to speak in a language other than their mother tongue. In many countries that percentage is even higher—for instance, 99 percent of Luxembourgers and 95 percent of Latvians speak more than one language. 1 Even in the United States, which is widely considered to be monolingual, one-fifth of those over the age of five reported speaking a language other than English at home in 2007, an increase of 140 percent since 1980. 2 Millions of Americans use a language other than English in their everyday lives outside of the home, when they are at work or in the classroom. Europe and the United States are not alone, either. The Associated Press reports that up to 66 percent of the world’s children are raised bilingual. 3 Over the past few decades, technological advances have allowed researchers to peer deeper into the brain to investigate how bilingualism interacts with and changes the cognitive and neurological systems.

Cognitive Consequences of Bilingualism

Research has overwhelmingly shown that when a bilingual person uses one language, the other is active at the same time. When a person hears a word, he or she doesn’t hear the entire word all at once: the sounds arrive in sequential order. Long before the word is finished, the brain’s language system begins to guess what that word might be by activating lots of words that match the signal. If you hear “can,” you will likely activate words like “candy” and “candle” as well, at least during the earlier stages of word recognition. For bilingual people, this activation is not limited to a single language; auditory input activates corresponding words regardless of the language to which they belong. 4

Some of the most compelling evidence for language co-activation comes from studying eye movements. We tend to look at things that we are thinking, talking, or hearing about. 5 A Russian-English bilingual person asked to “pick up a marker” from a set of objects would look more at a stamp than someone who doesn’t know Russian, because the Russian word for “stamp,” “ marka ,” sounds like the English word he or she heard, “marker.” 4 In cases like this, language co-activation occurs because what the listener hears could map onto words in either language. Furthermore, language co-activation is so automatic that people consider words in both languages even without overt similarity. For example, when Chinese-English bilingual people judge how alike two English words are in meaning, their brain responses are affected by whether or not the Chinese translations of those words are written similarly. 6 Even though the task does not require the bilingual people to engage their Chinese, they do so anyway.

Having to deal with this persistent linguistic competition can result in language difficulties. For instance, knowing more than one language can cause speakers to name pictures more slowly 7 and can increase tip-of-the-tongue states (where you’re unable to fully conjure a word, but can remember specific details about it, like what letter it starts with). 8 As a result, the constant juggling of two languages creates a need to control how much a person accesses a language at any given time. From a communicative standpoint, this is an important skill—understanding a message in one language can be difficult if your other language always interferes. Likewise, if a bilingual person frequently switches between languages when speaking, it can confuse the listener, especially if that listener knows only one of the speaker’s languages.

To maintain the relative balance between two languages, the bilingual brain relies on executive functions, a regulatory system of general cognitive abilities that includes processes such as attention and inhibition. Because both of a bilingual person’s language systems are always active and competing, that person uses these control mechanisms every time she or he speaks or listens. This constant practice strengthens the control mechanisms and changes the associated brain regions. 9 – 12

Bilingual people often perform better on tasks that require conflict management. In the classic Stroop task , people see a word and are asked to name the color of the word’s font. When the color and the word match (i.e., the word “red” printed in red), people correctly name the color more quickly than when the color and the word don’t match (i.e., the word “red” printed in blue). This occurs because the word itself (“red”) and its font color (blue) conflict. The cognitive system must employ additional resources to ignore the irrelevant word and focus on the relevant color. The ability to ignore competing perceptual information and focus on the relevant aspects of the input is called inhibitory control. Bilingual people often perform better than monolingual people at tasks that tap into inhibitory control ability. Bilingual people are also better than monolingual people at switching between two tasks; for example, when bilinguals have to switch from categorizing objects by color (red or green) to categorizing them by shape (circle or triangle), they do so more rapidly than monolingual people, 13 reflecting better cognitive control when changing strategies on the fly.

Changes in Neurological Processing and Structure

Studies suggest that bilingual advantages in executive function are not limited to the brain’s language networks. 9 Researchers have used brain imaging techniques like functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate which brain regions are active when bilingual people perform tasks in which they are forced to alternate between their two languages. For instance, when bilingual people have to switch between naming pictures in Spanish and naming them in English, they show increased activation in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), a brain region associated with cognitive skills like attention and inhibition. 14 Along with the DLPFC, language switching has been found to involve such structures as the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), bilateral supermarginal gyri, and left inferior frontal gyrus (left-IFG), regions that are also involved in cognitive control. 9 The left-IFG in particular, often considered the language production center of the brain, appears to be involved in both linguistic 15 and non-linguistic cognitive control. 16

The neurological roots of the bilingual advantage extend to subcortical brain areas more traditionally associated with sensory processing. When monolingual and bilingual adolescents listen to simple speech sounds (e.g., the syllable “da”) without any intervening background noise, they show highly similar brain stem responses to the auditory information. When researchers play the same sound to both groups in the presence of background noise, the bilingual listeners’ neural response is considerably larger, reflecting better encoding of the sound’s fundamental frequency, 17 a feature of sound closely related to pitch perception. To put it another way, in bilingual people, blood flow (a marker for neuronal activity) is greater in the brain stem in response to the sound. Intriguingly, this boost in sound encoding appears to be related to advantages in auditory attention. The cognitive control required to manage multiple languages appears to have broad effects on neurological function, fine-tuning both cognitive control mechanisms and sensory processes.

Beyond differences in neuronal activation, bilingualism seems to affect the brain’s structure as well. Higher proficiency in a second language, as well as earlier acquisition of that language, correlates with higher gray matter volume in the left inferior parietal cortex. 18 Researchers have associated damage to this area with uncontrolled language switching, 19 suggesting that it may play an important role in managing the balance between two languages. Likewise, researchers have found white matter volume changes in bilingual children 20 and older adults. 21 It appears that bilingual experience not only changes the way neurological structures process information, but also may alter the neurological structures themselves.

Improvements in Learning

Being bilingual can have tangible practical benefits. The improvements in cognitive and sensory processing driven by bilingual experience may help a bilingual person to better process information in the environment, leading to a clearer signal for learning. This kind of improved attention to detail may help explain why bilingual adults learn a third language better than monolingual adults learn a second language. 22 The bilingual language-learning advantage may be rooted in the ability to focus on information about the new language while reducing interference from the languages they already know. 23 This ability would allow bilingual people to more easily access newly learned words, leading to larger gains in vocabulary than those experienced by monolingual people who aren’t as skilled at inhibiting competing information.

Furthermore, the benefits associated with bilingual experience seem to start quite early—researchers have shown bilingualism to positively influence attention and conflict management in infants as young as seven months. In one study, researchers taught babies growing up in monolingual or bilingual homes that when they heard a tinkling sound, a puppet appeared on one side of a screen. Halfway through the study, the puppet began appearing on the opposite side of the screen. In order to get a reward, the infants had to adjust the rule they’d learned; only the bilingual babies were able to successfully learn the new rule. 24 This suggests that even for very young children, navigating a multilingual environment imparts advantages that transfer beyond language.

Protecting Against Age-Related Decline

The cognitive and neurological benefits of bilingualism also extend into older adulthood. Bilingualism appears to provide a means of fending off a natural decline of cognitive function and maintaining what is called “cognitive reserve.” 9 , 25 Cognitive reserve refers to the efficient utilization of brain networks to enhance brain function during aging. Bilingual experience may contribute to this reserve by keeping the cognitive mechanisms sharp and helping to recruit alternate brain networks to compensate for those that become damaged during aging. Older bilingual people enjoy improved memory 26 and executive control 9 relative to older monolingual people, which can lead to real-world health benefits.

In addition to staving off the decline that often comes with aging, bilingualism can also protect against illnesses that hasten this decline, like Alzheimer’s disease. In a study of more than 200 bilingual and monolingual patients with Alzheimer’s disease, bilingual patients reported showing initial symptoms of the disease at about 77.7 years of age—5.1 years later than the monolingual average of 72.6. Likewise, bilingual patients were diagnosed 4.3 years later than the monolingual patients (80.8 years of age and 76.5 years of age, respectively). 25 In a follow-up study, researchers compared the brains of bilingual and monolingual patients matched on the severity of Alzheimer’s symptoms. Surprisingly, the brains of bilingual people showed a significantly higher degree of physical atrophy in regions commonly associated with Alzheimer’s disease. 27 In other words, the bilingual people had more physical signs of disease than their monolingual counterparts, yet performed on par behaviorally, even though their degree of brain atrophy suggested that their symptoms should be much worse. If the brain is an engine, bilingualism may help to improve its mileage, allowing it to go farther on the same amount of fuel.

The cognitive and neurological benefits of bilingualism extend from early childhood to old age as the brain more efficiently processes information and staves off cognitive decline. What’s more, the attention and aging benefits discussed above aren’t exclusive to people who were raised bilingual; they are also seen in people who learn a second language later in life. 25 , 28 The enriched cognitive control that comes along with bilingual experience represents just one of the advantages that bilingual people enjoy. Despite certain linguistic limitations that have been observed in bilinguals (e.g., increased naming difficulty 7 ), bilingualism has been associated with improved metalinguistic awareness (the ability to recognize language as a system that can be manipulated and explored), as well as with better memory, visual-spatial skills, and even creativity. 29 Furthermore, beyond these cognitive and neurological advantages, there are also valuable social benefits that come from being bilingual, among them the ability to explore a culture through its native tongue or talk to someone with whom you might otherwise never be able to communicate. The cognitive, neural, and social advantages observed in bilingual people highlight the need to consider how bilingualism shapes the activity and the architecture of the brain, and ultimately how language is represented in the human mind, especially since the majority of speakers in the world experience life through more than one language.

Article available online at http://www.dana.org/news/cerebrum/detail.aspx?id=39638

Benefits of being Bilingual

Explore the cognitive, social, and professional benefits of being bilingual. Discuss how bilingualism enhances brain function, improves multitasking skills, and offers broader cultural understanding. Include the advantages in the global job market and personal growth. Use scientific research and personal testimonies to substantiate the benefits. More free essay examples are accessible at PapersOwl about Communication.

How it works

Bilingual is defined as, “using or capable of using two languages with nearly equal or equal facility” (Rathus, 2017). Bilingualism is continually being studied with some research suggesting it negatively impacts a human’s cognitive development while others show it to have a positive influence throughout one’s lifespan. Exploring the advantages and disadvantages of bilingualism on a person’s development can greatly influence how the future interacts and perceives one another.

Bilingualism can be classified into different categories. The age at which a person is introduced to a new language and the location of their interaction with that language change the type of bilingual he or she is.

Was a person introduced to a new language during infancy, adolescence, or late adulthood, and were they introduced to this language at home or in their community? A bilingual can be classified as early or late, referring to the “age of exposure” (Shenasaei,2014). An early bilingual is one that has acquired their second language before reaching adolescents. On the other hand, a late bilingual has learned their second language after the critical period, being in adolescence or adulthood. The critical period is between 18-24 months and lasts until puberty. These years are has shown to be when children are the most receptive to language (Ruthas, 2017). It is during these early years that prevention of head injury is so crucial. Every person has a desire to interact with those around them and does this through listening, language, gestures, and expressions. What we choose to teach or learn has a great impact on the way we interact with our community.

Raising a bilingual child versus a monolingual child can be difficult and comes with its advantages and disadvantages. Most of the world today is bilingual and encouraged to speak and learn multiple languages. A study in 2015 showed that up to 60 million Americans spoke a second language other than English (Rathus, 2017). This number is constantly growing, implying that bilingualism is on a continuum where one end is one language and the other is multiple languages. Many years ago it was believed that learning a second language would delay cognitive development, causing “mental retardation” (Bialystok, 2015). A study by Elizabeth Peal and Wallace Lambert chose monolingual French children and bilingual French and English children to perform a series of tests. They predicted that children from both groups would have an equivalent score when tested on nonverbal intelligence and bilingual children would have a lower score on verbal tests. The experiment proved Peal and Lambert wrong. Bilingual children scored above monolingual children on a majority of the tests including those that were nonverbal. This experiment showed that bilingual children were able to adapt and show flexible cognitive abilities which they developed while learning to switch between language one and language two (Bialystok, 2015).

The difference between monolingual and bilingual children can be apparent as early as 7 months of age (Bialystok, 2015). This finding shows a correlation with the importance of facial features to infants. Around this age, they are extremely aware of their environment and their attention is focused on their surroundings. During the 7th month, the infant is going through secondary circular reactions which is one of the sensorimotor stages of Piaget’s cognitive development theory. Infants are beginning to find the similarity between objects and their environment, they are finding that repeated actions have an effect on their surroundings. Cognitive maturation is rapid during infancy and easy to see. An infant’s memory improves drastically quickly and as they get older are more capable of “encoding information, retrieving information already stored, or both” (Ruthas, 2017). During a study by Werker and colleagues infants were presented with a silent video of a face reading in one language. When the infants adapted the video the language was switched and the reading continued. This study showed that bilingual infants noticed the change of language by facial cues alone while monolingual infants did not. This study proposed that “bilingual experiences change the way that attention is directed to the environment.” (Bialystok, 2015).

Other than attempting to introduce a child to a second language during the critical period there are other techniques that aid in a child’s learning. There is a report suggesting that genes have a large influence, up to 50%, on a child’s language learning (Pearson, 2008). A parent’s behavior such as how much they say, who they say it to, how something is said, and what is said influences a child’s ability to grasp the new language. A parent should talk to their child a lot, constant communication is important, not only is a child learning what you’re saying by listening, but they are watching your facial expressions, body language, and movement of the mouth while being spoken to. Parents need to give the children an opportunity to converse, which leaves a lot of listening for the parent or teacher. Listening gives the child a chance to practice. Children need many hours of exposure as well as live interaction with the language to engage and want to explore it. Introducing two languages at birth tends to have a higher success rate of an individual being fluent in both as opposed to waiting to introduce a second language.

Although presenting a second language during the critical period is ideal sometimes that is not a possibility and a new language is introduced or chosen to learn at a later age. A first language is usually learned “naturally and without instruction through loving interaction with their caregivers” therefore choosing to speak another language or choosing to teach one comes with planning (Pearson, 2008). 

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Benefits of Being Bilingual

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• Bilingual people can communicate with a wider range of people within families and communities, across generations, and in other social contexts.
• Being able to read and write in more than one language opens up new literatures, traditions, and ideas to bilingual students.
• Being bilingual, and being exposed to two languages and cultures, often fosters greater tolerance for other cultural groups.
• Knowing two languages makes it easier to learn additional languages.
• When bilingual learners also become biliterate (that is, able to read and write well in two languages), they are known to achieve extremely well in education, often better than their monolingual peers.

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Home / Essay Samples / Science / Bilingualism / Benefits of Being Bilingual or How Multilingualism Changes Life

Benefits of Being Bilingual or How Multilingualism Changes Life

• Category: Science
• Topic: Bilingualism , Second Language

Pages: 2 (839 words)

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Introduction

• Jess Astrid (2018, Jul 10). What Are Some Differences Between Those Who Are Monolingual, and Those Bilingual Multilingual Cognitively Speaking. Retrieved from https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-differences-between-those-who-are-monolingual-and-those-bilingual-multilingual-cognitively-speaking
• Kathleen Stein-smith. The Multilingual Advantage: Foreign Language as a Social Skill in Globalized World. (2017, March 3). Retrieved from https://www.ijhssnet.com/journals/Vol_7_No_3_March_2017/6.pdf
• Mark Bassett, 10 Benefits of Being Bilingual. (2019, January 14). Retrieved from https://unuhi.com/10-benefits-of-being-bilingual/
• Viorica Marian, Anthony Shook. (2012, October 31). The Cognitive Benefits of Being Bilingual. Retrieved from https://www.dana.org/article/the-cognitive-benefits-of-being-bilingual/

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