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Bilingual Analysis

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The effects of bilingualism on children’s cognitive development have received considerable attention in recent years. Bilinguals’ ability to use two or more languages was initially considered as a disadvantage in the 1960s, because exposing individuals to two or more different languages can be potentially confusing for language learners (Dreifus, 2011). However, this belief was later challenged by Peal and Lambert (1962), who showed that English-French bilingual children outperformed their French-speaking monolingual peers on both verbal and nonverbal intelligence tests. Contrary to the conventional view that bilinguals would display mental confusion and retardation, Peal and Lambert (1962) argued that bilinguals have a greater mental flexibility, …show more content…

Bilingual children tend to respond faster and more accurately than monolingual children in both congruent and incongruent trials (). Although there is a bilingual advantage in interference suppression, findings on response inhibition (the ability to control impulses) is not a consistent, with some studies showing equivalent performances in monolinguals and bilinguals …show more content…

In addition, these effects of bilingualism not only extend to cognitive flexibility, but also working memory (). The dimensional change card sort task (DCCS), developed by Zelazo, Frye, and Rapus (1996), is commonly used to measure cognitive flexibility. In this task, children need to sort a set of cards depicting stimuli by one dimension (e.g., color), then resorted the cards by the other (e.g., shape). Young children often have great difficulty in the second sorting because successful performance requires children to inhibit the first rule, shift attention to the new rule, and hold the current rule in mind. When this task was replicated with bilingual and monolingual children aged between 4 and 5 years, the bilingual children performed more successfully in switching to the new role than monolingual children did ().
However, the bilingual advantage of working memory has not been consistently reported, with some showing no difference between monolinguals and bilinguals and others showing that bilinguals outperform monolinguals (). And it is worth noting that this bilingual advantage in working memory is more evident when the task contains high levels of executive function demands

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In “Se Habla Espanol,” Tanya Barrientos elaborates on her personal experience growing up in the United States. In the first couple decades of her life, Barrientos distanced herself from her cultural roots fearing that she would be judge and belittle. It was essential for Barrientos to fit in with the American society. Barrientos formats the short story where she is speaking from firsthand experience.

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1259 Words | 6 Pages

Bialystok reported, “In a study comparing monolinguals, bilinguals, and speech-sign bilinguals, advantages in executive control on a nonverbal flanker task were found only for the verbal bilinguals.” In other words, Bialystok and Craik have found that two or more languages spoken on a regular basis have a positive effect on our brain. Studies also revealed bilingualism defers the onset of dementia by four years as well as enhanced executive control in tasks. Bialystok and Craik appear to be a proponent of bilingualism being a benefit, grounded on the selected reports they presented. I rated this article a 13 on the C.R.A.A.P test.

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367 Words | 2 Pages

In his essay about being a bilingual student, Richard Rodriguez makes the claim that a family’s language is intimate. As an intimate language it is unfit for use in school or in public and that attempts to do so demonstrate a misunderstanding of the purposes of school and the intimacy of a family’s language. To create this argument, Rodriguez recounts numerous parts of his childhood to serve as examples to support his claim. Rodriguez uses some of his examples to state that English is a public language. In one segment of his essay, he explicitly says that English is the language of society when he says “for it is now the sound that of my society,” (Rodriguez 12) his society being Americans.

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445 Words | 2 Pages

In the essay, "Aria: Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood", Richard Rodriguez explains his opinion on bilingual education based on his own childhood experience. He provides reasons why it would be retrogressive to permit the non-English speaking children use their family language as the language in school. In defending his positions, he provides three ideas to support his position: • The use of family language impedes child’s social growth. Insistence on using Spanish language at home made Rodriguez and his older sister and brother to be socially disadvantaged at school.

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139 Words | 1 Pages

In the essay “Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood” (1981), Richard Rodriguez, an experienced writer, expressed that “…it is not possible to for a child – any child – ever to use his family’s language in school” and began expressing his past experiences with bilingualism (510). Rodriguez recollects his feelings toward the accents he has listened to throughout his childhood, his “disabling confusion” from gaining fluency in English and Spanish, and the intimacy passing between sounds and words (519). By implementing his personal experiences, he entices his reader into reading actively in order to express how confusing, yet beneficial bilingualism can be. Rodriguez’s audience is focused to those who can relate when using more than one language

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397 Words | 2 Pages

The variety of terms used to refer to Bilingual Paraprofessionals explains the lack of a universal definition for this job. Most definitions, however, focus on the roles that paraprofessionals play, namely, assisting professionals in schools (e.g., teachers, speech language pathologists, counselors) and providing services to children or their parents under the supervision of certificated personnel. Bilingual paraprofessionals are usually hired to provide educational services in more than one language, usually English and another language; help students in public or private schools, either in general or special education; and assist with students who may or may not have disabilities. The National Resource Center for Paraprofessionals (NRCP) in its seventh report, The Employment and Preparation of Paraeducators: The State of the Art- 2003, highlighted the difficulties of collecting data regarding the exact number of paraprofessionals working nationwide. The report estimated the number of paraprofessionals to be more than 525,000 in the year 2000.

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1005 Words | 5 Pages

Adults who attempt to learn a new language can understand the logic of the new language but can’t fully master jargons, diction, and exceptions to grammar rules. Researchers discovered that when adults mastered two languages in childhood, both languages were located in the same areas of the brain with no influence on the cortex. Bilingual adults keep the two languages unconnected, starting one and temporarily stopping the other when speaking to an individual who only speaks one

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1081 Words | 5 Pages

The article 'Mother Tongue ' by author Amy Tan is about the variations in the English language the author uses in her life. She describes her English when giving a speech to a other people, English she uses when speaking to her mother, and English she uses in her writing. She tells of difficulties faced by both her mother and herself from these many differences. Amy 's goal in this article is to show that a person does not have to speak proper English to be seen as smart or intelligent.

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750 Words | 3 Pages

The more language knowledge significantly helps towards your career as you know. Bilinguals have the privilege of get their information from a wider variety of resources. Also, it has great educational benefit to kids. Many studies suggest that bilingual children tend to have a higher concentration and are better at working through distraction while doing their school work. Research has shown that bilinguals score higher on average on tests involving creative thinking or problem solving.

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1138 Words | 5 Pages

If students begin their bilingual education as early as kindergarten, they are more likely to successfully acquire a second language. Children are like sponges and soak up information easily. Research conducted by Dr. Patricia Kuhl at the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences at the University of Washington shows that by 8-12 months, if babies are exposed to a second language, they retain the ability to distinguish those foreign sounds. Moreover, through the age of 7 or 8, children are able to learn to speak a second language with fluent grammar and without an accent.

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478 Words | 2 Pages

Sir Benjamin Franklin wrote a letter to his friend Madame Brillon titled “The Whistle”. In the letter, he uses a parable of a whistle to bring forth his idealism. Benjamin believed that one should not indulge in luxuries or be a miser, but rather one should follow a middle path and think before he pays too much for his whistle. The entire letter is focused on the theme of going overboard to get what you want. Benjamin believed that one should not overpay for his wants but rather one should be focused on doing good.

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2123 Words | 9 Pages

Today, bilingual education used in many countries for a variety of social and educational purposes. It is become 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. Large-scale changes in all spheres of human activity: the globalization of the economy and politics, the information explosion, the rapid development of communication defined new requirements for the quality of education. First of all, a general global trend towards integration in the sphere of education determines the trend towards integration of subject knowledge.

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1333 Words | 6 Pages

The questionable and ambiguous nature surrounding the notion that children play an active role in acquiring language has been debated by many theorists of different perspectives. These three perspectives include the learning view, the nativist view and the interactionist view. In this essay I will discuss each perspective with reference to psychological theories and research that relates to each view. The learning perspective of language acquisition suggests that children acquire language through imitation and reinforcement (Skinner, 1957). The ideology behind this view claims that children develop language by repeating utterances that have been praised by their parent, therefore gaining a larger vocabulary and understanding of phrases over

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1064 Words | 5 Pages

Being bilingual has got many advantages. It has been debated that bilingualism has multiple advantages such as cognitive, cultural, academic benefits as well. Cognitive benefit reveals that being bilingual help to facilitate human brain. People who are bilingual have two language systems which are working simultaneously. These systems don’t create hindrance in individual’s performance and ensure brain’s functioning of both cognitive aspects (Bialystok, 1999).

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3783 Words | 16 Pages

The notion of bilingualism is frequently connected to the idea of code-switching since a person should have ability to speak using two or more than one variety. Researchers have made countless studies describing bilingualism as they create awareness in different ways. To begin with is Bloomfield (1933) who defined bilingualism as having the “native- like control of two languages”. However, Haugen (1953) pinpointed that bilingualism is the ability of a speaker to communicate and understand an additional variety. This is to mean that the concept of bilingualism exist only when an individual of a certain variety has the capability to communicate effectively in an additional variety.

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