[8] In school and beyond, bilingual students are equipped with many unique strengths. For example, bilingual students usually have stronger working memories and attention spans. [9] These skills alone can lead to both academic and behavioral gains as well as a stronger learning environment in your classroom.
Bilingualism, or the ability to speak two or more languages, has been found to have a significant impact on academic achievement. Numerous studies have shown that bilingualism can improve cognitive skills, enhance problem-solving abilities, and increase academic performance in a variety of subjects.
Bilingual and multilingual people have been shown to be better communicators. Bilingual brains are used to understanding ideas and values in more than one language. With this in mind, it's no surprise that studies have shown bilingual students are not only better learners but also more effective communicators.
Bilinguals outperform monolinguals in their reading and writing abilities, and they are more successful in learning additional languages. They are also credited with enhanced mental flexibility.
Summary: Speaking more than one language does not improve a person's general mental ability. However, while there is no cognitive advantage to being bilingual, there are broader social and lifestyle benefits that come from speaking multiple languages.
“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.
Learning another language is one of the most effective and practical ways to increase intelligence, keep your mind sharp, and buffer your brain against aging.
A study conducted at the University of Granada and the University of York in Toronto, Canada, has revealed that bilingual children develop a better working memory -which holds, processes and updates information over short periods of time- than monolingual children.
The Disadvantages:
Children raised bilingually run the risk of not mastering either language, and subsequently having difficulties in successful completion of a formal education.
Research has found that babies raised in bilingual households show better self-control,8 a key indicator of school success. Bilingual and biliterate individuals have the opportunity to participate in the global community in more ways, get information from more places, and learn more about people from other cultures.
Bilingual people enjoy advantages: they have enriched cognitive control, it's likely that they have improved metalinguistic awareness, as well as better memory, visual-spatial skills and even creativity. There are also social benefits from being bilingual.
Being multilingual or bilingual often helps children learn at school because it helps them with problem-solving, multitasking, creativity and flexible thinking. These children can also have good focus.
"We also find that bilinguals appear to learn the new language more quickly than monolinguals," says lead author Sarah Grey, PhD, an assistant professor in the department of modern languages and literatures at Fordham University.
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.
Bilingualism causes language delay. FALSE. While a bilingual child's vocabulary in each individual language may be smaller than average, his total vocabulary (from both languages) will be at least the same size as a monolingual child (10, 15).
Basically, every child is different, but bilingual children, in general, learned slightly slower in regards to vocabulary. Children who learned two languages from two different people, in two different settings were more successful in learning language.
The most recent major study on language learning and age was conducted by researchers at Harvard and MIT. It concluded that starting to learn a new language before age 10 will give a learner the best chance of achieving proficiency similar to that of a native speaker. Why before 10 years old?
Learning a second language can protect against Alzheimer's as well. Recent brain studies have shown that bilingual people's brains function better and for longer after developing the disease.
Bilingual children's vocabulary sizes in each language separately were consistently smaller than their monolingual peers but only Latino bilingual children had smaller total vocabularies than monolingual children. Bilingual children's vocabulary sizes were similar to each other.
And studies are just starting to pinpoint a few brain regions that are extra-large or extra-efficient in people who excel at languages. For others, though, it's more a matter of being determined and motivated enough to put in the hours and hard work necessary to learn new ways of communicating.
Whether you've noticed it or not, research suggests yes, our personalities can shift depending on the language we are speaking. Your attitude to a language and the cultural values you place on it play a part in how you label your personality when speaking that language, say experts at Stockholm University.
Second-language learning also changes the brain's structure
Because of their roles involved in learning, the relevant brain regions become strengthened – this is reflected in the increase of volume in grey and white matter.