Bilingualism Vs Monolingual

Introduction

Bilingualism means knowing two different languages at a single time. Bilingualism is growing as the world becomes increasingly more diverse. It exists in almost all countries in the world, in all diverse classes of society and in all diverse age groups. Recent studies have indicated that the majority of the world’s population is bilingual. It was estimated that between half and two-thirds of the world’s population is bilingual. The fact that a large percentage of the world’s population is bilingual is because there may be no realistic way to be monolingual (Macrory, 2006). Therefore, as the number of bilingual students increases in classrooms around the world, educators at all system levels and across diverse settings

2). Are Bilinguals Less Intelligent Than Monolinguals? There is no link between bilingualism and general intelligence. In 1996s, a study found out that bilinguals have a cognitive handicap. In 1970, another study found out that bilinguals are more intelligent than monolinguals. Both of these studies have been found to be marred by failing to take social and cultural issues and effects into account (Grosjean, 1982). The fact appears that bilinguals are neither more nor less intelligent than their monolinguals. Nevertheless, having two languages give bilingual children some advantages in several domains particularly in the tasks that involve cognitive flexibility and the control of attention. For example, bilinguals are excellent at paying attention, taking off irrelevant information and selecting between several solutions to a problem. In contrast, bilinguals do not have an advantage over monolinguals in terms of the tasks that depend on the way information is represented. For example, bilinguals are not that excellent at encoding problems, accessing relevant information or drawing logical inferences (Bialystok,

This report discussed this question “Do Bilinguals Achieve Better Than Monolinguals” in terms of the academic intelligence, enhanced cognitive control and improvement of learning. What has been found is that bilinguals are excellent at paying attention, taking off irrelevant information and selecting between several solutions to a problem. Moreover, they have higher consciousness of the language they speak, greater ability to focus on the form of language itself, abstracting away from meaning. They also have the ability to focus on information related to the new language they learn which would help them in accessing more new words and leading to larger gains in vocabulary than those experienced by