BBI 3208/BILINGUALISM

TRISEM 7/2009
Executive B.A (English)

What is Bilingualism? Bilingualism is the ability to communicate naturally and

fluently in more than one language in all areas of life. Bilingual speakers can be either

children or adults. Children who have learned their two languages at the same time in early

childhood and as a result of family bilingualism are called simultaneous bilinguals.

Sequential or consecutive bilinguals refers to adults who have learned one language later then

the other as a result of living in a new country or formally learning a second language at a

school or university. Bilingualism is complex and it is present in about every country, in all

societal classes, and in all age of groups. Research indicates that there are distinctive

cognitive advantages of being bilingual. However studies have shown that bilingualism have

negative effects on cognitive progress too.

Growing up as a bilingual can be a tremendous blessing and the benefits of being able

to speak and understand in more than one language. More than 150 major researches have

revealed and confirmed. Definite advantages of Bilingualism in cognitive areas. The areas are

cognitive flexibility, metalinguistic awareness, communicative sensitivity, field

independence, delaying age related diseases and common underlying proficiency.

Research by Peel and Lambert’s (1962) on French – Canadian children in Canada,

found that bilingual children tend to outperform their monolingual peers in key cognitive

tasks. As a results, bilingual are formed to developed cognitive flexibility, a more diversity

intelligence. There are two key areas related to cognitive flexibility. Divergent thinking is one

of the areas which is often measured by providing a person with a starting point for thought

and asking them to generate a whole series of permissible solutions. For instance, imagine

you have a tin can or a brick, how many ways could you use it? Bilingual regularly score

higher as they think at more uses than monolinguals. They have two or more words for each
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object and idea, and different meaning are sometimes attach to words by the two

languages. Two proof this statement we ourselves a small –scale research among school

children on the amount of vocabularies they knew about an object. We also made a video clip

of children telling all the words they knew about the object. The other area is convergent

thinking which is measured by a test that provides a number of pieces of reformation where a

person must synthesize to get the correct answer. Consequently, both children and adults

have greater ability to create new concepts and they are more creative and imaginative.

Bilinguals realise how many ways can one describe a thing, they tend to play with language,

thus increase their creativity .Besides bilinguals have better performance in mathematics and

logic skills. Research from around the world shows that bilingual people tend to do better in

IQ tests compare with monolingual people of the same social-economic class. Therefore

bilinguals have superior academic performances.

The iceberg analogy refers to the interdependence of concepts, skills and linguistic

knowledge found in a central processing system. The cognitive skills established in the
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mother or first language will transfer across language. This mean that the level of competence

a child attains at a certain point in a second language is larger dependent on the level of

competence already achieved in their first language. Most people are unaware of a central

processing system in the brain integrate them and as a result, knowing and developing are

language actually helps to develop. This is presented usually as two researches represented

the two languages which develop and share. Underneath the water line, a common underlying

proficiency or operating system. Although first language and second language are outwardly

distinct but is supported by shared concepts and knowledge derived from learning and

experience and cognitive ability of the learners. The deeper levels of cognitive processing

such as synthesis, analysis and evaluation are necessary to academic progress. Children and

adult have no difficulties achieving bilingual proficiency of the threshold of cognitive

proficiency is achieved. Cummins and many researcher supported that bilingualism enhance

metalinguistic and development in proficiency in the second language.

On the other hand, bilingual children and adults have better metalinguistic awareness

which is the ability to identify and describe characteristics and features of language, in terms

of how they are integrated into the wider language system. In effect, metalinguistic awareness

is knowledge about language. It can be demonstrated at the level of phonological awareness

(sound units),word awareness and syntactic (grammatical) awareness. Bilingual students have

greater metalinguistic awareness because in working with more than one language

simultaneously, they need to have a greater awareness of how each language works and how

the two languages are similar and crucially different. This in return requires them to think

about the language they choose to use. Generally, bilinguals obtain better semantic

development and classification skills.

Another obvious cognitive advantage of bilingualism is the communicative

sensitivity. Communicative sensivity relates to participants’ levels of awareness about what is

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going on in any particular language interaction. Bilingual people especially adults are more

communicatively aware because they used to think about which language to use in which

situation and to which person .This means they are more sensitive to the needs of listeners. In

addition they also pick up clues and cues about when to switch languages. As a results code

switching provides added mental flexibility in solving cognitive tasks. This code-switching

obviously can be seen in the video clip of our small=scaled research among school children.

The research literature suggests that thus may give a bilingual person increased sensivity to

the social nature and communicative functions of language.

Another research by Cummins and Gulutean (1974) suggests that bilingual adults and

children enhanced greater ability and verbal originality. They have better communicative skill

and thus their self esteem is increased. Various studies in last two decades have shown that

the influence of bilingualism on word awareness leading to better reading skills. So, children

tend to be a better story teller.

Field independence is the visual ability to see an overall pattern as well as its

component parts. As children grow to maturity, they become more field independent. They

master better visual –spatial skills. They also enhanced a greater development of abstract

understanding and greater ability to process sensory information.

All these cognitive abilities enable bilingual children and adults to perceive situation

or stimulus more analytically. They can focus on the key parts of a problem and select the

crucial ways of solution. These analytical skills are applied in language, communication

thinking and usual perception and give bilingual learners advantages in divergent and creative

thinking as well as in analysis.

`Bilingualism enhances attention and cognitive control in children and adults. These

give children advantages in school. They are better at focusing on a task while tuning out
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destruction .On the other hand ,adults are found to have well functioning working memory

which benefits them to a wider choices of job .Bilinguals who manage two languages helps

the brain sharpen and retain its ability to focus while ignoring irrelevant information .

New research into neurobiology of bilingualism found that bilingualism particularly

in early childhood enhances ability to concentrate but protect against the onset of dementia

and other age-related cognitive decline. Cognitive reserve created by bilingualism is theorize

by scientist as speaking two languages may increase blood and oxygen flow to the brain and

keep nerve connections healthy, therefore dementia is being ward off. More recently,

scientists have discovered that bilingual adults have denser grey matter in the inferior parietal

cortex, in the brain’s language dominant left hemisphere. This means bilinguals are more
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intelligent.
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Earlier studies have provided support for the negative effects of bilingualism on

cognitive development. Darcy (1953) concluded from review of relevant studies that

bilinguals suffer from a language handicap when measured by verbal tests of intelligence. It

was proposed that bilinguals never reached comparable levels of linguistic proficiency as did

monolinguals.

Children who learn two languages simultaneously may initially acquire language

more slowly than monolingual children and relative to bilingual children who learned one

language and add a second one later during school time (sequential bilinguals). (Collier 1995:

Hamayan and Damico 1991).Research also suggests a disparity in the development of the

kind of language proficiency necessary for higher order , cognitive and academic linguistic

skills. As an example, cognitive academic language proficiency (CALP) versus more

conversational proficiency necessary for day to day social interactions (Cummins 1979,

corson 1995).

Children can typically acquire conversational proficiency in a subsequent non-

dominant language within two years; however they tend to take much longer to acquire

higher order language proficiency (Collier1995; Cummins 1981; Klesmer 1994).

Another disadvantage of bilingualism is vocabulary size. Two researches have been

conducted in regards vocabulary size among monolingual and bilingual speakers among

children and adults. According to Pearson Fernandez Collar 1993, preschool bilingual

children’s vocabulary scores are often lower than monolingual children in either language

.He also found that the more time the children spent interacting in a language ,the greater

their vocabulary in that language. These results suggest that there may be some limits on

children’s vocabulary size in the first few pages of life.

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The delay in language acquisition is in the acquisition of past tense verbs for bilingual

children between the age of 4-6 years. The bilingual children use fewer correct past tense

forms and they are particularly noticeable with irregular past tense forms. The bilingual

children made more errors by adding –ed to irregular verbs, like gooded or runned.

Monolingual also make the same kind of errors but in the earlier development. This delay due

to the fact that they hear less of each language than a monolingual speaker and practice using

verbs less often as well.

Bilingual children have smaller receptive (Bialystok and Feng 2008) and productive

(Nicoladis and Giovanni 2000) vocabularies compared with monolingual counterparts.

Receptive-willing to listen to or accept new ideas or suggestions and the extent to which a

person can understand and / or read the language.. Young or older bilinguals are also

disadvantaged in verbal fluency tests with a great bilingual disadvantage on semantic than on

letter fluency ( Gollan et al.2002, Rosselli et al 2000)

Bilingual people usually are either better at one language or worse at the other, or they

might not be able to fully grasp both. For example, let’s say a person knows English and

Chinese. He may be more comfortable reading English newspapers and take more time with

Chinese newspaper.

Being bilingual may be cognitively advantageous. There are four cognitive areas

which a bilingual children and adult masters in. They are cognitive flexibility, metalinguistic

awareness, communicative sensitivity and field independence. In addition, bilingualism also

delays the onset of age-related dementia including Alzheimer's disease by up to 4 years.

Research and studies have proven benefits of bilingualism. Deaf and Lambert (1962)

concluded that bilingual adult and children tend to be more intelligent compare to

monolinguals. He also wrote “It is impossible to state from the present study whether the
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more intelligent child became bilingual or whether bilingualism added his intellectual

development”

However, studies report that bilingualism has a negative impact on language

development and also associated with delays in lexical acquisition and a smaller vocabulary

than that of monolingual. Darrey (1983) concluded that bilinguals suffer from a language

handicap when measured by verbal tests of intelligence.

In conclusion, bilingual children and adults have shown slight advantages than

monolinguals. It is also clear that bilingualism have more advantages than disadvantages in

terms of cognitive development. Whether bilingualism will be an asset to us depends on the

value of the society in which we are attributes to the language we know.