Bilingualism as an Attribute
by Valentina Acua
During the decade of the 90s, at least six million kids between 5 and 17 years
old, in the United States, where exposed to a language that was not English at
home and also they were able to speak it. As this number is supposed to keep
rising through the next decades, pediatricians and experts on languages
development have started to study this phenomenon in order to become
familiar with it and being able to provide right answers to parents insecurities
about this topic (Fierro-Cobas & Chan, 2001). Some studies that have been
carried during the past years, demonstrate that being bilingual does not have
important disadvantages to worry about, but it does have significantly
advantages for children, such as a faster cognitive development, better
capacity for problem solving and they might show an accelerated progress of
literacy skills.
In first place, kids that start learning two languages simultaneously or the
second one after L1 is mastered, start to develop a better metacognition
capability. Bialystok, in her book Bilingualism in Development (2001),
establishes that in order to be capable of successfully acquiring both languages
and understanding the different structures and meanings, the speech
processing requires different strategies; which might depend, for example, in
the morphology and word order that is used in each language. Consequently,
children use different cognitive operations to understand and learn the
language. Choi, quoted by Bialystok (1997), concludes that since the beginning
of linguistic development, there is really close interaction between childrens
cognition and the influence of language input. Then, it is said that the cognitive
development of the child is directly affected by the acquirement of a language
or, in this case, the process of learning two different languages.
Secondly, as bilingual children develop better cognitive skills, they are able to
solve problems in a better way, or even faster than monolinguals. Bialystok and
Majumder (1998) developed a study which aim was to compare three linguistic
groups
on
problem
solving
tasks;
these
groups
were
compound
by
monolinguals, bilinguals and partial-bilinguals. The tasks involved challenges
that measured control of attention and analysis of knowledge, processes that
were previously proved to develop differently between monolinguals and
bilinguals. Both group of bilinguals performance was much better on nonlinguistics tasks involving control of attention than monolinguals. These results
show that bilinguals can take their linguistic abilities into the non-linguistic
area. Then, Bialystok also proposes that bilingual kids have a huge advantage
when it comes to control attention into specific information and to avoid the
one that might stand out and be confusing, leading to the wrong answer. This
skill is not related to language, but it is developed by the different cognitive
processes that these kids develop when learning two languages. Some of the
strategies that they get to increase are forming categories or understanding
differences between appearance and functional reality.
In third place, Bylistoks research (2008) states that sometimes children could
develop literacy capabilities even faster and better than monolinguals.
According to Harding-Esch & Philip (2003), learning two languages when kids
are just starting to grow up, might result in a slower development of both
languages skills, than in the case of those who are just learning to speak in one
language. The may get confuse in some situations and start using both
languages, either mixing words or structures. Nonetheless, this situation is
easily fixable through practice and as time goes on. Indeed, if there is a close
relationship between the languages that is being acquired, some literature
skills are worked out more quickly than monolinguals. For example, if a kid is
learning to languages that share a similar writing system, they should have a
better progress in learning to read. On the other hand, if the languages do not
share a similar system, learners are not going to show advantages, but neither
will they have any extra difficulty in comparison to monolinguals.
In conclusion, one of the most important aspects in the second language
acquisition is the environment where the child is every day. These mean that
natural exposure and need it is important. In the case of kids whose parents
have two different mother tongues, parents should speak both languages in
order to avoid exclusion. There is no need for parents to feel insecure about
their children learning two different languages, even if it occurs simultaneously
or they start to learn the second language once the first one is mastered,
because kids should not present problems at learning development. Becoming
bilingual, or even multilingual, opens up a whole new world for the child, it
gives him new capabilities and a much better development of literacy and even
social skills.
REFERENCES
Bialystok, E. & Majumder, S. (1998). The relationship between
bilingualism and the development of cognitive processes in problem
solving. Applied Psycholinguistics.
Bialystok, E. (2001). Bilingualism in development: Language, literacy,
and cognition. Cambridge University Press.
Bialystok, E. (2008). Second-Language Acquisition and Bilingualism at an
Early Age and the Impact on Early Cognitive Development. Encyclopedia
on Early Childhood Development. York University, Canada.
Fierro-Cobas, V. & Chan, E. (2001). Language development in bilingual
children: A primer for Pediatricians. Contemporary Pediatrics.
Harding-Esch, E. & Philip, R. (2003). The Bilingual Family: A Handbook for
Parents. 2nd edn. Cambridge University Press.
