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Berenice Colorado

Professor Crystal Bazaldua

English 1301–54L

October 21, 2020

Theory of writing - The awesomeness if being bilingual!!!

Spanish or English, French or Portuguese? Why not all of them! As a bicultural person I

can say that being bilingual is awesome and something that everyone should try. Why should

you try it? you might ask. Through research I have found four awesome sources that show how

multilingual education had helped many historical/famous people from the past and present to be

more successful in their careers. In this essay I will share what I have found with the intention to

hopefully influence people, of all ages, to try this amazing thing we call bilingualism.

I arrived as a 3rd grader to the United States and I can say that learning a different

language seemed impossible but now, I look back and honestly is a lot easier that it seems. Yes,

a different language means a different culture, a different world, and a different type of social

life. That might seem a little intimidating, but once you learn a new language and can

communicate with more people you feel like you own the world. In “The Benefits of being

bilingual” it’s mentioned how people believed that learning two languages at the same time was

not good for the children because it could “hinder a child’s intellectual development” and one

can obstruct the other making the person bad at both, which is why it was not enforced as much

in schools ” (Univision) . However, now they have found that it has “beneficial side effects” such

as making our cognitive muscles stronger, making us smarter and our brain stronger in the

process” (Univision). In my experience as a bilingual student I can say that this can in a way be
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shown in my success as a student. I would not say I am the smartest person in the world, but I

believe that being bilingual has helped me reach goals that I didn’t think possible when I first got

here to the U.S. When I moved her to the Valley, I was only 8 years old and learning a new

language was a challenge and preparing for those STAAR tests even more. I loved math for the

simple fact of being one of the subjects that I was able to understand without having to know

English. Little by little though I was able to adapt to the new culture and started to understand

people when they would tell me something in English. Little did I know that bilingual people are

most know for “better adapting to changing stimuli…especially at a young age” (Univision). I

was able to adapt to the new language in about a year and a half. Then my teachers in 5th grade

told me that was going to get moved to level 4 (the group of students that had the highest

grades). According to the video, it has been discovered that bilingual people have wider

vocabulary and have more accessibility to words that they are looking for when it comes to

communicating. At this point in time I was not fluent in English yet but was able to use my

bilingual education to understand most of what was taught to me and was able to relate it to what

I knew in order to be successful academically. Being bilingual gives many advantages and with

all this research it shows that being bilingual does make in a way smarter because of the effect it

has in your brain to make it stronger. Fun fact, research has shown that “dementia set in 4 years

later in bilinguals than in people that speak only one language” another showed that there is a 2.8

increase in hourly wages (Univision). Trying a new langue can never hurt!

One of the questions that came up as I did my research was does being bilingual make

you a better writer? As I did research, I was able to find a blog from a professor “Word Jazz,”

where his focus/questioned was “is there any causal link between individual bilingualism and

linguistics creativity.” In his first entry he present examples like Anaïs Nin who was a
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Cuban/French Novelist and Diarist whose first language was Spanish but “wrote her famous

journals in French and then English. She was able to write books out of her native language and

be successful. Bilingual people are more open and more capable to have different point of views

to grasp from when writing a book. Like I mentioned earlier, more than one language means…

more than one culture… meaning more experiences and perspectives to share. Nin once wrote

about Henry Miller: “There are words in other tongues I must use when I talk about you. In my

own, I think of: ardiente, salvaje, hombre” (Word Jazz). She used these words because in this

language they had more meaning behind them. They were words that she grew up with as a

Cuban and had more meaning when it came to the relationship, she had with him. Because of her

bilingualism she was able to give her works “mas sabor” and more of a “profundo” meaning.

Another example presented in the blog is Junot Díaz an “author of The Brief Wondrous Life of

Oscar Wao, was born in the Dominican Republic but raised in New Jersey. His novel, rich with

Spanish-English code-switching” (Word Jazz). He would use some Spanish words in his texts to

be able to give that taste of what he really wanted to say. There has been some “scientific

evidence, from research in psychology and linguistics, to suggest that there really is a positive

correlation between bilingualism and creativity” (Word Jazz)

“a researcher at the University of Haifa compared the creative thinking abilities of

bilingual Russian-Hebrew children in both Hebrew-language and dual-language Kindergartens in

Israel, against those of monolingual Hebrew-speaking children (Leikin, 2012). The children,

from similar socio-economic backgrounds, were tested at the start of Kindergarten and then,

again, one year later. The researcher found that there was no significant difference between the

divergent thinking of the three sets of students in the first round of tests. However, when the tests

were repeated, the bilingual students in the dual-language programme performed significantly
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better (in terms of flexibility and novelty) compared to the monolingual group, suggesting that

regular exposure to two languages at school did enhance creative thinking.”

After this experiment all researchers came to an “agreement that there is positive

correlation between bilingualism and creative thinking.” Why? In my own experience as a

bilingual I can say that being bilingual gives you more experiences from different cultures and

perspectives that help you communicate better in terms of figurative language that you can use to

write for a wider audience. “One theory is simply that bilinguals benefit from a wider range of

experiences than monolinguals because they operate in more than one language and, often,

within more than one culture. As a result, they have access to a wider range of ideas, which they

can combine to form new and novel ones” (Word Jazz). Lera Boroditsky in her TED Talk

mentioned how she was able to test some people that only spoke German and some that spoke

English to see their reactions when they say different shades of the same color. Her founding

were that those that had different names for the different shades of the same color would have

like a surprise reaction when a different shade was presented to them, however, the people that

would have the same name for that specific color no matter the shade didn’t have a reaction at

all. This shows how depending on the culture you grew up and the language that you know does

change the way that you interpret a specific thing. Even as simple as color change can be

interpreted in a different way depending on the language you know. Another thing was how

gender assigned to things varied in different languages like in English the sun is masculine

therefore it’s given masculine words such as “strong” when its being described. However, in

German its classified as feminine and when described words like “beautiful” are used to give it

more of that meaning. All these examples provided support to the idea that the perspective we

have varies according to the language we speak. Many of the times people according to their
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experiences and language interpret a quote in a different way according to what they have been

through. This helps us be able to use different quotes and ideas when it comes to writing because

we have more options to choose from when it comes to trying to use figurative language because

we can understand and interpret things from different perspectives. This helps us be more

creative with words and the way we think or see things. In general, being bilingual is like having

“two souls” meaning that you can relate to more than one culture or point of view and can see

different sides of the idea presented (Boroditsky). This makes you more creative because you

have more place from where to get ideas from to write about.

Lastly, trying a different language never hurts in the contrary I think that trying it helps a

lot. Famous people such as Shakira, Natalie Portman, Penelope Cruz, and Kobe Bryant who are

and were known for being bilingual and using this to be more successful in their careers. Shakira

because of her multilingual ability “she’s managed to sell hundreds of millions of records

worldwide” because of all the doors that were opened to her for all the languages that she speaks.

She can communicate to a lot of different people which has helped her be able to spread her

work worldwide (Babble). In general, being bilingual or multilingual opens doors and helps you

to be able to relate a lot more things. Everyone should have these advantages and the best part is

that everyone can by simply committing themselves to learning a new language. There is a lot of

apps out there like Babble and Duolingo that can help you achieve it is just a matter of

commitment. Try it!

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Work Cited

Jazz, Word. “From William Shakespeare to Amy Tan: Do Bilinguals Make Better Writers? (1).”

Word Jazz, 5 Mar. 2016, wordjazz.blog/2016/03/05/from-william-shakespeare-to-amy-

tan-do-bilinguals-make-better-writers-1.

Koyfman, Steph. “9 Famous Bilingual People Who Are More Successful Thanks To Language.”

Babbel Magazine, 27 Dec. 2018, www.babbel.com/en/magazine/famous-bilingual-

people.

TED, and Lera Boroditsky. “How Language Shapes the Way We Think | Lera Boroditsky.”

YouTube, uploaded by TED, 2 May 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?

v=RKK7wGAYP6k.

Univision Noticias. “The Benefits of Being Bilingual - Univision Noticias.” YouTube, uploaded

by Univision Noticias Cristina Costantini, 1 May 2013, www.youtube.com/watch?

time_continue=1&v=ZANBvuS_iDU&feature=emb_logo.