Yet all research points to the exact opposite–not only that, but bilingual students pick up certain pre-reading skills faster than their monolingual classmates. In fact, bilingualism is associated with many other cognitive benefits like stronger multitasking skills, creativity, and working memory.
Being multilingual or bilingual often helps children learn at school because it helps them with problem-solving, multitasking, creativity and flexible thinking.
According to scientific studies, bilingual children are better able to focus, plan, prioritize and make decisions. As children get older they tend to score higher on cognitive tests and possess more effective communication skills. Many studies have also found that bilingualism can also help prevent dementia in old age.
7 Bilingual children are also able to make new friends and create strong relationships using their second language—an important skill in our increasingly diverse society. Research has found that babies raised in bilingual households show better self-control,8 a key indicator of school success.
Academic Advantage
Bilingual children may also have an advantage in school, including with literacy. "Studies have shown that when a child learns a second language," says Denzer, "they show accelerated progress when learning to read compared with monolingual peers."
The Disadvantages:
Children enjoying a bilingual environment run the risk of being isolated by the host society or of being teased by their peers when speaking in the foreign language. This teasing can have a detrimental effect on the self-esteem of the child.
Research overwhelmingly supports teaching second languages early, because as we know it's harder to learn a second language as we get older. But when kids are very young — from birth to about three years old — they are very ripe for receiving new information.
Early research on bilingualism, conducted before the 1960s, however, linked bilingualism with lower IQ scores, cognitive deficiencies and even mental retardation. These studies reported that monolingual children were up to three years ahead of bilingual children in both verbal and non-verbal intelligence.
Learning two languages in childhood does not cause confusion or language delay. The idea that two languages causes language delays in children has been a long-standing myth in the United States. However, research has dispelled this myth.
The researchers found that bilingual children performed better than monolingual children in working memory tasks. Indeed, the more complex the tasks the better their performance.
Babies and children form neural connections at a rapid pace, which makes learning new languages easier. As the brain develops, it becomes more specialized and reinforces the neural pathways that are regularly used. This is why those who learn a language at a very young age have the accent of a native speaker.
Increased cognitive function
The following are just a few of the cognitive advantages to bilingual education: Increased ability to solve problems, think creatively and recognize patterns. Improved academic performance. Enhanced linguistic awareness and understanding of an individual's native language.
The present study provides evidence from 12 programs attesting to the effectiveness of bilingual education. In several instances, student achievement in English has risen to or above national norms, while the students have additionally acquired skills in their native language.
The good news is young children all around the world can and do acquire two languages simultaneously. In fact, in many parts of the world, being bilingual is the norm rather than an exception. It is now understood that the constant need to shift attention between languages leads to several cognitive advantages.
“When your brain processes language, it's not one place in the brain that processes language,” Marian says. “It's a network that's spread across all areas of the brain.” Because of that, bilingual brains have more pathways connecting different words, concepts and memories across different languages.
For example, relative to a bilingual, a trilingual has to remember even more words and has to inhibit even more languages. To adapt to this increase in cognitive demands, trilinguals may develop a larger cognitive supply (i.e., greater advantages) than bilinguals.
Some children raised bilingual do take a little longer to start talking than those raised in monolingual households. The delay is temporary, however, and according to experts, it's not a general rule.
What we know is that children can learn multiple languages at once, and the benefits of being bilingual are endless. Learning multiple languages from birth is not a new phenomenon either. In fact, raising multilingual children is more common than most people think.
They concluded that the ability to learn a new language, at least grammatically, is strongest until the age of 18 after which there is a precipitous decline. To become completely fluent, however, learning should start before the age of 10.
Late bilingualism – refers to bilingualism when the second language is learned after the age of 6 or 7; especially when it is learned in adolescence or adulthood.
Critics of the system believe that it delays the development of proficiency in English and can have an adverse impact on successful assimilation into American society.
Criticism of bilingual education has grown as parents and numerous objective analyses have shown it was ineffective, kept students too long in Spanish-only classes, and slowed the learning of English and assimilation into American society.