Advantages of bilingualism

Much ado about something

Back in the day in communist Bulgaria, almost everyone spent their summer vacations on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast. International travel was uncommon and very difficult to achieve (i.e., generally not allowed). We traveled within our country, with some rare exceptions. And there weren’t any obvious reasons for learning new languages.

The summer when I was three-years-old, my parents and I went to a beach town called Albena. We were extremely lucky to secure a two-week accommodation at a “resting station,” as the communal vacation homes were called. The three-story utilitarian building functioned as an all-inclusive resort without the luxury and pampering.

All three of us stayed in one tiny room, with three twin beds with metal springs. We had three meals at the canteen with choice of two main courses or no choice at all. Aside from going to the beach every day, there weren’t many other entertainment options at the resting station. There was a small library/reading room, a movie night twice a week, and a common TV room. The small TV set broadcasted only two channels, and one of them was available only in the evenings. There was no need for strife over the nonexistent remote control. I realize now that our holiday wasn’t luxurious, even though it felt special to us (well, if you didn’t care much about good food and romantic getaways). But it was peaceful and truly restful. And we weren’t picky.

One day while I was digging in the sand by the water, a little girl with golden hair that was almost translucent, joined me in the digging. She began talking, but the sounds she made did not make sense to me. When I finally said something back to her, she stopped and looked at me with a puzzled frown. Then she smiled and got back to her energetic digging and incessant talking. I still could not understand a word she was saying, but I knew that she wanted to play with me. And I knew when she wanted to go into the water and when she wanted ice-cream. I laughed at what she found funny, and I was hungry when she was hungry too. 

This is how I befriended Aika, a little girl about my age, who was from East Germany. We played together on the beach for the rest of our stay. Later, my father told me that he marvelled at observing the two of us. We kept speaking our own languages without care, embarrassment, or confusion. And at some point, I had run to my father and had demanded that he teach me to speak like Aika. It was about ten years later that I took my first class in German.

So, am I smarter as a result of the languages I had learned along the way? Or was I already smart enough at the age of three to realize the benefits of learning a new language? After all, I had figured out that speaking the same language as Aika would be useful. And this brings me to the advantages of learning a new language.

Cognitive advantages of bilingualism

Undoubtedly, there are benefits to learning a new language, just like there are benefits to participating in any activity that engages our brains or opens the door to a new culture. Learning a new language does not only exercise our brains. It also enriches our worldview, either through reading literature in the new language, visiting countries where the language is spoken, or interacting with people who are its native speakers. But let’s get one thing straight. Learning a new language does not make people smarter.

This is a common misconception, propagated by the news media because it makes for sensational headlines. Who doesn’t want to be smarter and, by association, more successful and nimbler at adapting to new settings? But while learning new languages could confer many advantages, making people smarter is not one of them.

Research has revealed multiple advantages of being bilingual or multilingual. Many of these advantages are tightly connected to skills that are commonly required in academic settings, such as schools.

Benefits of bilingualism for vocabulary learning

Bilingual children, when compared to monolingual peers:

• Develop earlier and greater awareness of the arbitrariness of language. Bilingual children realize that words are not necessarily connected to their meanings. What we call ‘a table’ in English is called der Tisch in German, and la mesa in Spanish. And there is no reason as to the labels used in each language. You may also notice that the gender is different across the three languages. The word ‘table’ has no gender in English, but it is masculine in German and feminine in Spanish. There is nothing logical that connects the words in each language to the concept of table. 

• Related to the previous point, bilingual children are able to separate earlier the word meaning from its sounds. We arbitrarily assign words to their concepts. The only exceptions are instances of onomatopoeia. These are words that are supposed to mimic the actual sounds such as “drip drip” or “tweet tweet” or “woof woof”. 

• Bilinguals are able to more quickly extract word meanings from language contexts. They are more likely to encounter words with unknown meanings. It possibly forces them to rely more heavily on the context to understand them.

These earlier developed realizations make bilingual children more efficient word learners. They are more flexible and willing to accept the labels that we give to various objects or actions in different languages.

Benefits of bilingualism for academic preparation

• Bilinguals tend to have greater social sensitivity. It is the ability to take on someone else’s perspective, also known as theory of mind. Bilingual children are more receptive and comfortable when people say things differently. They are used to the experience of people around them speaking different languages. As a result, they can adapt to the language needs of their conversational partners. And it makes them better communicators in general.

• Have greater metalinguistic awareness, which is the awareness not only of what is meant, but how it is said. Metalinguistic awareness allows us to manipulate the sounds of a language. Through it we can invent word meanings and reformat grammatical structures. In a way, we can play with language, use it as an object for manipulation and exploration. Greater levels of metalinguistic awareness usually tend to help people learn additional languages. It also helps children when learning to read and write (more on bilingualism and biliteracy in my next post).

• Exhibit enhanced executive functions. Executive functions are any goal-directed behaviors (such as planning, memory, focusing of attention) in which we engage daily. For more on the definition and examples of executive functions see my earlier post. The bulk of the research on bilingual advantages to date has focused on the executive functions.

• Have greater adeptness at divergent thinking, which is related to creativity and imagination, and convergent thinking, which is related to the ability to analyze data or synthesize information.

School teachers highly value and promote the skills listed in the last four points. Therefore, children who are really good at them are also likely to do well in school.

• On the other end of the life-span, older adults who are active bilinguals tend to experience the onset of Alzheimer’s or dementia later than their monolingual peers. Let’s be very clear. Bilingualism does not prevent these conditions, but it delays the emergence of their symptoms, in some cases by a few years, which is not a small feat in itself.

Yes, bilingualism does confer benefits, especially in the area of cognition, as outlined above. Cognition encompasses our abilities to think, to analyze information, to learn from experience, among others. They are mental capacities that are controlled by our brains. But they are also activities that lead to structural and functional changes in our brains. And let’s agree, it’s fascinating!

Caveats

Yet, there are some inevitable caveats that are likely to temper your enthusiasm, although I hope they don’t deter you or your children from learning new languages.

1. Some researchers have challenged the cognitive advantages of bilinguals, especially in the most heavily studied area of executive functions. It has become obvious that many researchers are failing to find evidence for these benefits where others have reported their existence. Scientists are now divided and passionate debates have ensued—all necessary steps toward any meaningful progress. But our confidence in these advantages has weakened.
2. Moreover, we now know that the same cognitive advantages could result from other enriching activities, such as physical exercise and musical training. Regular and moderate physical activity, or experience with music, both as vocalists or instrumentalists, heighten the same executive functions as does bilingualism. So, now you have a choice as to what appeals to you the most. If you don’t enjoy learning new languages, but you enjoy music, join that choir and don’t fret about failing Spanish. Or if you excel at sports, keep rowing and rest assured that it is giving you a similar boost to your brain as are the Slovenian classes your neighbour is taking online. In other words, these cognitive benefits are not the sole property of bilingualism.
3. The cognitive advantages of bilingualism tend to be present only at particular ages, namely in young childhood and late adulthood.  These are typically times in our lives when we are not functioning up to our full brain capacity. Notably during young adulthood, when our brains are at peak performance, researchers have failed to report advantages of bilingualism. Taken together, these findings suggest that perhaps the benefits of bilingualism are fairly weak. They are most obvious in individuals who are not functioning at full mental capacity, such as young children whose brains are still developing, and older adults who are experiencing cognitive decline. 
4. Finally, experiments on bilinguals are conducted in researchers’ labs, which provide a controlled, albeit simulated, environment. Research participants engage in tasks that are artificial and mechanical. They usually involve pressing buttons on computer keyboards, or sorting blocks of various shapes and colours. Neither the environment nor the activities resemble anything that we do in real life. Therefore, research has shown that bilingual individuals tend to press the buttons faster, and sort the blocks more accurately. But it has not shown us how these so called “advantages” trickle into the daily lives of these people.  In other words, if a bilingual child is faster and more accurate at the tests in the lab, is he also better prepared to get a job or to succeed in university? If she is able to separate the sounds of words from their meanings, is she also better in math or in reading comprehension? As of yet, we do not know the answers to these questions. But for any advantages of bilingualism to truly matter, they should be reflected in real life. And I have not seen convincing research evidence of that yet.

Please don’t misunderstand me.  These caveats are not arguments against bilingualism or against learning new languages. I truly believe in the benefits of speaking more than one language. As a native speaker of an obscure language, I am very aware of what I would have lost if I did not learn to speak additional languages. As an immigrant to North America, I truly appreciate the linguistic diversity which surrounds us — the freedom to speak my own language, and for my friends to speak theirs. But we also need to be realistic about what we could expect from learning a new language. 

Social advantages of bilingualism

In addition to the cognitive benefits, there is a myriad of social benefits that come along with speaking more than one language. Moreover, these social benefits tend to last throughout our whole lives. Sports or music training cannot replace them. And most significantly, they are clearly evident in real-life settings.

• Bilinguals tend to have greater cultural competence. Speaking two, or more languages, allows them to experience living in two or more worlds. And these worlds encompass:
  • geography, where we travel to the area where the language is spoken and explore the location;
  • history, which allows us to learn about the past of the people who speak the language and what events shaped their reality today;
  • anthropology, how the culture developed and what makes it unique among other contemporary cultures;
  • fine arts and traditions; etc., etc., etc.
• Children who grow up in bilingual families develop identities that are tightly connected to each language. Ultimately, they are better able to establish relationships with their families. When talking to his grandparents in their native language, a child can learn about the family’s extended past.
• And of course, when a person speaks more languages, there are inevitably more opportunities in front of her, whether financial or professional, local or global. 

Languages are like keys that open doors to brilliant new worlds. When we have an opportunity to learn a language, let’s learn it for the right reasons. In most cases these reasons would fall on the social side, rather than on the cognitive side.

I did not learn German because I thought it would make me better at planning or remembering. I learned it because I had fond memories of a young friend who spoke it. One of my children did not learn hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓, a First Nations’ language indigenous to the area where we live, because it would increase his creativity or analytical abilities. He learned it because it allowed him to connect more closely to the history and culture of the people who lived here first. Olivia, from my earlier post, is not learning English and Mandarin because it would make her smarter. She really does not have a choice. But in addition to the obvious benefits of speaking English, she will benefit tremendously by speaking Mandarin to her grandparents back in China. And she would be able to understand and appreciate their lived experiences.

The more languages we speak, the more people we can befriend. We can understand their thoughts and emotions. We can relate to their desires and goals. And most significantly, we can appreciate their points of view. We’d all benefit in the end!

(Summary on Instagram)