research paper about bilingualism

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The Cognitive Benefits of Being Bilingual

Editor’s note:.

Today, more of the world’s population is bilingual or multilingual than monolingual. In addition to facilitating cross-cultural communication, this trend also positively affects cognitive abilities. Researchers have shown that the bilingual brain can have better attention and task-switching capacities than the monolingual brain, thanks to its developed ability to inhibit one language while using another. In addition, bilingualism has positive effects at both ends of the age spectrum: Bilingual children as young as seven months can better adjust to environmental changes, while bilingual seniors can experience less cognitive decline .

We are surrounded by language during nearly every waking moment of our lives. We use language to communicate our thoughts and feelings, to connect with others and identify with our culture, and to understand the world around us. And for many people, this rich linguistic environment involves not just one language but two or more. In fact, the majority of the world’s population is bilingual or multilingual. In a survey conducted by the European Commission in 2006, 56 percent of respondents reported being able to speak in a language other than their mother tongue. In many countries that percentage is even higher—for instance, 99 percent of Luxembourgers and 95 percent of Latvians speak more than one language. 1 Even in the United States, which is widely considered to be monolingual, one-fifth of those over the age of five reported speaking a language other than English at home in 2007, an increase of 140 percent since 1980. 2 Millions of Americans use a language other than English in their everyday lives outside of the home, when they are at work or in the classroom. Europe and the United States are not alone, either. The Associated Press reports that up to 66 percent of the world’s children are raised bilingual. 3 Over the past few decades, technological advances have allowed researchers to peer deeper into the brain to investigate how bilingualism interacts with and changes the cognitive and neurological systems.

Cognitive Consequences of Bilingualism

Research has overwhelmingly shown that when a bilingual person uses one language, the other is active at the same time. When a person hears a word, he or she doesn’t hear the entire word all at once: the sounds arrive in sequential order. Long before the word is finished, the brain’s language system begins to guess what that word might be by activating lots of words that match the signal. If you hear “can,” you will likely activate words like “candy” and “candle” as well, at least during the earlier stages of word recognition. For bilingual people, this activation is not limited to a single language; auditory input activates corresponding words regardless of the language to which they belong. 4

Some of the most compelling evidence for language co-activation comes from studying eye movements. We tend to look at things that we are thinking, talking, or hearing about. 5 A Russian-English bilingual person asked to “pick up a marker” from a set of objects would look more at a stamp than someone who doesn’t know Russian, because the Russian word for “stamp,” “ marka ,” sounds like the English word he or she heard, “marker.” 4 In cases like this, language co-activation occurs because what the listener hears could map onto words in either language. Furthermore, language co-activation is so automatic that people consider words in both languages even without overt similarity. For example, when Chinese-English bilingual people judge how alike two English words are in meaning, their brain responses are affected by whether or not the Chinese translations of those words are written similarly. 6 Even though the task does not require the bilingual people to engage their Chinese, they do so anyway.

Having to deal with this persistent linguistic competition can result in language difficulties. For instance, knowing more than one language can cause speakers to name pictures more slowly 7 and can increase tip-of-the-tongue states (where you’re unable to fully conjure a word, but can remember specific details about it, like what letter it starts with). 8 As a result, the constant juggling of two languages creates a need to control how much a person accesses a language at any given time. From a communicative standpoint, this is an important skill—understanding a message in one language can be difficult if your other language always interferes. Likewise, if a bilingual person frequently switches between languages when speaking, it can confuse the listener, especially if that listener knows only one of the speaker’s languages.

To maintain the relative balance between two languages, the bilingual brain relies on executive functions, a regulatory system of general cognitive abilities that includes processes such as attention and inhibition. Because both of a bilingual person’s language systems are always active and competing, that person uses these control mechanisms every time she or he speaks or listens. This constant practice strengthens the control mechanisms and changes the associated brain regions. 9 – 12

Bilingual people often perform better on tasks that require conflict management. In the classic Stroop task , people see a word and are asked to name the color of the word’s font. When the color and the word match (i.e., the word “red” printed in red), people correctly name the color more quickly than when the color and the word don’t match (i.e., the word “red” printed in blue). This occurs because the word itself (“red”) and its font color (blue) conflict. The cognitive system must employ additional resources to ignore the irrelevant word and focus on the relevant color. The ability to ignore competing perceptual information and focus on the relevant aspects of the input is called inhibitory control. Bilingual people often perform better than monolingual people at tasks that tap into inhibitory control ability. Bilingual people are also better than monolingual people at switching between two tasks; for example, when bilinguals have to switch from categorizing objects by color (red or green) to categorizing them by shape (circle or triangle), they do so more rapidly than monolingual people, 13 reflecting better cognitive control when changing strategies on the fly.

Changes in Neurological Processing and Structure

Studies suggest that bilingual advantages in executive function are not limited to the brain’s language networks. 9 Researchers have used brain imaging techniques like functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate which brain regions are active when bilingual people perform tasks in which they are forced to alternate between their two languages. For instance, when bilingual people have to switch between naming pictures in Spanish and naming them in English, they show increased activation in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), a brain region associated with cognitive skills like attention and inhibition. 14 Along with the DLPFC, language switching has been found to involve such structures as the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), bilateral supermarginal gyri, and left inferior frontal gyrus (left-IFG), regions that are also involved in cognitive control. 9 The left-IFG in particular, often considered the language production center of the brain, appears to be involved in both linguistic 15 and non-linguistic cognitive control. 16

The neurological roots of the bilingual advantage extend to subcortical brain areas more traditionally associated with sensory processing. When monolingual and bilingual adolescents listen to simple speech sounds (e.g., the syllable “da”) without any intervening background noise, they show highly similar brain stem responses to the auditory information. When researchers play the same sound to both groups in the presence of background noise, the bilingual listeners’ neural response is considerably larger, reflecting better encoding of the sound’s fundamental frequency, 17 a feature of sound closely related to pitch perception. To put it another way, in bilingual people, blood flow (a marker for neuronal activity) is greater in the brain stem in response to the sound. Intriguingly, this boost in sound encoding appears to be related to advantages in auditory attention. The cognitive control required to manage multiple languages appears to have broad effects on neurological function, fine-tuning both cognitive control mechanisms and sensory processes.

Beyond differences in neuronal activation, bilingualism seems to affect the brain’s structure as well. Higher proficiency in a second language, as well as earlier acquisition of that language, correlates with higher gray matter volume in the left inferior parietal cortex. 18 Researchers have associated damage to this area with uncontrolled language switching, 19 suggesting that it may play an important role in managing the balance between two languages. Likewise, researchers have found white matter volume changes in bilingual children 20 and older adults. 21 It appears that bilingual experience not only changes the way neurological structures process information, but also may alter the neurological structures themselves.

Improvements in Learning

Being bilingual can have tangible practical benefits. The improvements in cognitive and sensory processing driven by bilingual experience may help a bilingual person to better process information in the environment, leading to a clearer signal for learning. This kind of improved attention to detail may help explain why bilingual adults learn a third language better than monolingual adults learn a second language. 22 The bilingual language-learning advantage may be rooted in the ability to focus on information about the new language while reducing interference from the languages they already know. 23 This ability would allow bilingual people to more easily access newly learned words, leading to larger gains in vocabulary than those experienced by monolingual people who aren’t as skilled at inhibiting competing information.

Furthermore, the benefits associated with bilingual experience seem to start quite early—researchers have shown bilingualism to positively influence attention and conflict management in infants as young as seven months. In one study, researchers taught babies growing up in monolingual or bilingual homes that when they heard a tinkling sound, a puppet appeared on one side of a screen. Halfway through the study, the puppet began appearing on the opposite side of the screen. In order to get a reward, the infants had to adjust the rule they’d learned; only the bilingual babies were able to successfully learn the new rule. 24 This suggests that even for very young children, navigating a multilingual environment imparts advantages that transfer beyond language.

Protecting Against Age-Related Decline

The cognitive and neurological benefits of bilingualism also extend into older adulthood. Bilingualism appears to provide a means of fending off a natural decline of cognitive function and maintaining what is called “cognitive reserve.” 9 , 25 Cognitive reserve refers to the efficient utilization of brain networks to enhance brain function during aging. Bilingual experience may contribute to this reserve by keeping the cognitive mechanisms sharp and helping to recruit alternate brain networks to compensate for those that become damaged during aging. Older bilingual people enjoy improved memory 26 and executive control 9 relative to older monolingual people, which can lead to real-world health benefits.

In addition to staving off the decline that often comes with aging, bilingualism can also protect against illnesses that hasten this decline, like Alzheimer’s disease. In a study of more than 200 bilingual and monolingual patients with Alzheimer’s disease, bilingual patients reported showing initial symptoms of the disease at about 77.7 years of age—5.1 years later than the monolingual average of 72.6. Likewise, bilingual patients were diagnosed 4.3 years later than the monolingual patients (80.8 years of age and 76.5 years of age, respectively). 25 In a follow-up study, researchers compared the brains of bilingual and monolingual patients matched on the severity of Alzheimer’s symptoms. Surprisingly, the brains of bilingual people showed a significantly higher degree of physical atrophy in regions commonly associated with Alzheimer’s disease. 27 In other words, the bilingual people had more physical signs of disease than their monolingual counterparts, yet performed on par behaviorally, even though their degree of brain atrophy suggested that their symptoms should be much worse. If the brain is an engine, bilingualism may help to improve its mileage, allowing it to go farther on the same amount of fuel.

The cognitive and neurological benefits of bilingualism extend from early childhood to old age as the brain more efficiently processes information and staves off cognitive decline. What’s more, the attention and aging benefits discussed above aren’t exclusive to people who were raised bilingual; they are also seen in people who learn a second language later in life. 25 , 28 The enriched cognitive control that comes along with bilingual experience represents just one of the advantages that bilingual people enjoy. Despite certain linguistic limitations that have been observed in bilinguals (e.g., increased naming difficulty 7 ), bilingualism has been associated with improved metalinguistic awareness (the ability to recognize language as a system that can be manipulated and explored), as well as with better memory, visual-spatial skills, and even creativity. 29 Furthermore, beyond these cognitive and neurological advantages, there are also valuable social benefits that come from being bilingual, among them the ability to explore a culture through its native tongue or talk to someone with whom you might otherwise never be able to communicate. The cognitive, neural, and social advantages observed in bilingual people highlight the need to consider how bilingualism shapes the activity and the architecture of the brain, and ultimately how language is represented in the human mind, especially since the majority of speakers in the world experience life through more than one language.

Article available online at http://www.dana.org/news/cerebrum/detail.aspx?id=39638

EDITORIAL article

Editorial: perspectives on the “bilingual advantage”: challenges and opportunities.

• 1 Department of Psychology, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, United Kingdom
• 2 Institute of Education, University College London, London, United Kingdom

Editorial on the Research Topic Perspectives on the “Bilingual Advantage”: Challenges and Opportunities

When we ask our students or members of the general public the question Is being bilingual/multilingual an advantage? The answer, invariably, is yes. The reasons provided are intuitively sensible and leave little room for disagreement. Multilingual speakers can communicate with different people, they understand different cultures, they have more job opportunities, they can travel the world with more confidence, and so forth.

However, when we formulate the question in a different way, Is being bilingual/multilingual an advantage for cognitive development? Answers are not as straightforward. Some are concerned that second language learning may delay language acquisition in early stages of life, others think that children should focus more on one language to avoid mental confusion. In some cases, and this is probably the most disturbing situation, education professionals advise parents from different cultures to raise their children as monolinguals, advocating that this is more likely to lead to good academic achievement (e.g., Festman et al., 2017 ). This opinion almost certainly derives in part from early evidence (e.g., Saer, 1923 ) for a mental delay in bilingual children compared to monolingual peers on a range of tests measuring intelligence quotient (IQ).

The more recent work of pioneer scientists (e.g., Peal and Lambert, 1962 ; Bialystok and Ellen, 1991 ), incorporating more rigorous and systematic paradigms and procedures, has underpinned a now widely-held consensus among researchers in the field, that multilanguage learning is not detrimental for cognitive development. Nevertheless, while few—if any—scientists now hold the position that multilanguage acquisition underpins a cognitive disadvantage , there is ongoing vigorous debate about whether there are distinct cognitive advantages associated with multilingualism that cannot be explained by other candidate explanatory variables. Understanding the cognitive sequelae of bilingualism presents many hurdles that will require continued intense effort.

Collectively, the 17 articles contained herein, reflect the current state of the field, with well-defended positions on opposing sides of current debate. Altogether, 44 leading scientists in the field of multilingualism have contributed with commentaries, meta-analyses, methodological advice, and empirical research. We are most grateful to them, to the independent reviewers and to Frontiers for providing the means to make this happen.

Yu and Schwieter begin this collection with a conceptual analysis of the significance of language mode in bilingual cognition, that is, the degree of co-activation of the two languages at any one time ( Grosjean, 1998 , 2010 ). They encourage more robust and systematic consideration of language mode in future studies due to its potential modulatory effect on language activation and also, therefore, on the likely cognitive benefits associated with bilingualism. In a short review, these authors provide a convincing case that the failure to assess and control language mode may, at least in part, explain the contradictory findings reported in the literature. The controversy about whether, and the extent to which, bilingualism confers cognitive benefits is also tackled by Takahesu Tabori et al. in their timely methodological review which, in particular, addresses sample characteristics. They argue that most published studies provide insufficient information on language experience/background, social context of language use and decry the paucity of longitudinal designs which, they argue, offer a greater degree of experimental control. They encourage work toward more widely agreed criteria for terms such as “native language,” “first language,” “second language,” etc., and argue against over-simplification, most obvious in the long-standing dichotomised categorization of monolingual vs. bilingual and bilingual advantage vs. no advantage. Several of the studies in this collection demonstrate a shift to more nuanced and precise conceptualization of bilingual cognition, and this, of course, is to be welcomed and encouraged.

In her excellent review, Incera , considers timing of processing in the bilingual mind as a tool for understanding how bilingual and monolingual cognition may diverge. She offers a range of recommendations for future attempts at resolving conflicting findings, and researchers would do well to act on them. Of these, inclusion of time-sensitive measures and baseline conditions, consideration of bilingualism as a continuous variable and a focus on group by condition interactions over main effects of bilingualism are, in our view, most likely to lead to sustained theoretical advances in this area. Hernandez et al. outline a neuroemergentist approach which, they argue, may also offer a more ambitious and plausible framing of the complex ways in which bilingualism may interact with development of domain-general cognitive control.

Schroeder tackles the possibility that bilingual children have an advantage in theory of mind, presenting a meta-analysis of 16 studies. Small to medium positive effects of bilingualism were observed (contingent on the analysis), indicating that second language learning may have modest implications for the development of social competence, although well-grounded explanations for this association are currently lacking.

Five studies address the impact of multi-language experience on cognitive control in infants or children. Mercure et al. explored attention to still faces in monolingual infants, unimodal bilingual infants (i.e., learning two spoken languages) and bimodal bilingual infants of Deaf mothers (learning British Sign Language and spoken English). Equivalent attention capture and maintenance by face stimuli was observed in monolinguals and bimodal bilinguals, but unimodal bilinguals showed comparatively faster attention capture and maintenance, raising implications of multilanguage learning for social communication during infancy. Poarch provides a replication study with findings partly consistent with the central claim of the bilingual advantage theory, that controlling multiple languages in daily life confers genuine benefits in domain-general cognitive control. Specifically, equivalent performance among monolingual and bilingual children was observed on the Simon task, but the bilinguals demonstrated a significant advantage on the flanker task, indicating that these tasks may recruit partly distinct mechanisms of cognitive control that are differentially sensitive to language environment and may also follow different developmental trajectories. Struys et al. also employed the Simon and flanker tasks in a comparison of performance among younger and older monolingual and bilingual Dutch-French children. They report equivalent performance across language groups but, crucially, there was marked variation in the actual strategies employed to resolve conflict in the tasks. This finding is consistent with recent (currently unpublished) work from our lab which indicates significant differences in the neural networks recruited among bilingual and monolingual participants when resolving conflict despite the absence of any group effects at the behavioral level.

Janus and Bialystok consider the reported association between executive function and emotion regulation, arguing that bilingual advantages in executive control may, intuitively, also underpin performance benefits in emotional contexts. However, in their study of emotional face N-back task performance in monolingual and bilingual children, there were no group differences in the overall effect of emotional valence on reaction time (despite better accuracy in bilinguals). Czapka et al. present a novel and intriguing study of real word and non-word spelling in monolingual and bilingual third grade (~9 year-old) primary school children in Germany, providing compelling evidence that monolinguals at this age are better able to deploy higher level cognitive control during spelling, most likely due to superior knowledge of the German language. For bilinguals, German lexicon size was a better predictor of spelling ability than executive function. These findings reinforce the importance of adopting a fine-grained, developmentally informed approach to charting interactions between multi-language learning and cognitive development, without which we are unlikely to resolve the contradictory claims and entrenched positions so prevalent in the recent literature.

Seven studies examine bilingual processing in adults, each of which focuses on a key issue in current debate. Naeem et al. address the potential importance of an alternative explanatory variable: socioeconomic status (SES). Employing demonstrably low and high SES monolingual and bilingual participants, these authors found evidence (from Simon task performance) that bilingualism may promote a speed of processing advantage, but only in those with low SES. Furthermore, there was no evidence for a bilingual advantage in executive planning ability (based on Tower of London performance), with monolinguals showing a disproportionate advantage. Van der Linden et al. explore interference suppression, response inhibition, and short-term memory performance in professional simultaneous interpreters. To the extent that bilingual cognitive advantages are associated with the requirement to manage and control simultaneously active languages in daily life, the authors argue that a comparison of such highly skilled bilinguals against monolinguals should increase the likelihood of detecting a bilingual advantage, if it exists. In fact, the two groups performed similarly on all measures (flanker, Simon, and digit span tasks), a finding reinforced in a second experiment which incorporated an additional group of second language teachers. Despite anecdotal evidence for an STM advantage over monolinguals among interpreters, this evidence is clearly difficult to reconcile with bilingual advantage theory. In their study on the effect of language similarity on the association between linguistic performance and executive function, Oschwald et al. found very limited evidence for benefits in executive function associated with the increased demands of managing more dissimilar languages. These results, therefore, also offer evidence against the claim that managing cross-language interference promotes or enhances executive function. Evidence presented by Borragan et al. provides a possible explanation for lack of transfer from control of language interference to non-verbal executive function. These authors examine performance in highly proficient but unbalanced bilinguals on a multilingual rapid picture naming task incorporating multiple inhibitory demands. Findings are most consistent with the existence of functionally independent inhibitory mechanisms associated with language processing which may not be recruited in non-verbal tasks.

Further evidence against the existence of a genuine bilingual advantage, either in attentional control or response inhibition is presented by Paap et al . In this study, no effects attributable to bilingualism were observed on the tasks whether (i) participants were separated into monolingual or bilingual groups or (ii) degree of bilingualism was treated as a continuous variable, and Bayes factor analyses robustly supported the null hypothesis. The study by Goldsmith and Morton tests recent evidence by Grundy et al. (2017) that bilingual adults show smaller sequential congruency effects than monolingual adults, perhaps consistent with a bilingual efficiency advantage in the disengagement of attention from no longer relevant task stimuli. This new study, offered as a replication, showed statistically equivalent performance in both groups. However, Grundy and Bialystok have published a reply in Frontiers (available here), outlining that the study is not a direct replication but differs in several ways. Perhaps, most importantly, they point out that Goldsmith and Morton employ long rather than short response-to-stimulus intervals, and it is at short intervals that language group differences in the disengagement of attention can most readily be observed.

The possibility that bilingualism may offer protection against age-related cognitive deterioration and/or neural degeneration is an important issue in the literature. Rather than addressing vocabulary, syntax, or comprehension, Sundaray et al. take the novel approach of addressing non-literal language (pragmatic inference making) in young and older monolingual and bilingual participants. With the exception of conventional metaphors (for which an age-related deficit was observed only in monolinguals) no differences between language groups in processing pragmatic inferences were observed. Thus, the evidence here suggests a possible protective effect of bilingualism in comprehension of non-literal language, restricted to conventional metaphors.

There are many challenges in this line of research, but when there is challenge there should also be opportunity to advance knowledge. In collecting these articles within a single volume, we hope readers will take the opportunity to digest the full range of empirically supported inferences, and further develop a well-informed understanding of how (and the extent to which) the process of acquiring a second language confers domain general cognitive benefits.

Author Contributions

All authors listed have made a substantial, direct and intellectual contribution to the work, and approved it for publication.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Leverhulme Trust UK [RPG-2015-024]. A special thought goes to Prof. Annette Karmiloff-Smith who inspired our work.

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Keywords: multilingualism, cognitive control, executive functions, bilingual advantage, bilingualism

Citation: Bright P and Filippi R (2019) Editorial: Perspectives on the “Bilingual Advantage”: Challenges and Opportunities. Front. Psychol. 10:1346. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01346

Received: 26 April 2019; Accepted: 23 May 2019; Published: 06 June 2019.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2019 Bright and Filippi. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Peter Bright, peter.bright@anglia.ac.uk ; Roberto Filippi, r.filippi@ucl.ac.uk

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Cognitive Consequences of Bilingualism and Multilingualism: Cross-Linguistic Influences

• Published: 12 April 2021
• Volume 50 , pages 313–316, ( 2021 )

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Bilingualism and multilingualism are common in almost all communities worldwide today. Research studies on the psycholinguistics of bilingualism and multilingualism in East Asia region has developed tremendously in the past 20 years. Along with the new methodologies, innovative approaches, and the development of those state-of-the-art technologies (Altarriba and Heredia (eds) in An introduction to bilingualism: principles and processes, Routledge, 2018), a lot of new research findings on this line of research have been reported.

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Yip, M.C.W. Cognitive Consequences of Bilingualism and Multilingualism: Cross-Linguistic Influences. J Psycholinguist Res 50 , 313–316 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-021-09779-y

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Article contents

Bilingualism and multilingualism from a socio-psychological perspective.

• Tej K. Bhatia Tej K. Bhatia Department of Linguistics, Syracuse University
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.82
• Published online: 28 June 2017

Bilingualism/multilingualism is a natural phenomenon worldwide. Unwittingly, however, monolingualism has been used as a standard to characterize and define bilingualism/multilingualism in linguistic research. Such a conception led to a “fractional,” “irregular,” and “distorted” view of bilingualism, which is becoming rapidly outmoded in the light of multipronged, rapidly growing interdisciplinary research. This article presents a complex and holistic view of bilinguals and multilinguals on conceptual, theoretical, and pragmatic/applied grounds. In that process, it attempts to explain why bilinguals are not a mere composite of two monolinguals. If bilinguals were a clone of two monolinguals, the study of bilingualism would not merit any substantive consideration in order to come to grips with bilingualism; all one would have to do is focus on the study of a monolingual person. Interestingly, even the two bilinguals are not clones of each other, let alone bilinguals as a set of two monolinguals. This paper examines the multiple worlds of bilinguals in terms of their social life and social interaction. The intricate problem of defining and describing bilinguals is addressed; their process and end result of becoming bilinguals is explored alongside their verbal interactions and language organization in the brain. The role of social and political bilingualism is also explored as it interacts with individual bilingualism and global bilingualism (e.g., the issue of language endangerment and language death).

Other central concepts such as individuals’ bilingual language attitudes, language choices, and consequences are addressed, which set bilinguals apart from monolinguals. Language acquisition is as much an innate, biological, as social phenomenon; these two complementary dimensions receive consideration in this article along with the educational issues of school performance by bilinguals. Is bilingualism a blessing or a curse? The linguistic and cognitive consequences of individual, societal, and political bilingualism are examined.

• defining bilinguals
• conceptual view of bilingualism
• becoming bilingual
• social networks
• language organization of bilinguals
• the bilingual mind
• bilingual language choices
• language mixing
• code-mixing/switching
• bilingual identities
• consequences of bilingualism
• bilingual creativity
• and political bilingualism

1. Understanding Multilingualism in Context

In a world in which people are increasingly mobile and ethnically self-aware, living with not just a single but multiple identities, questions concerning bilingualism and multilingualism take on increasing importance from both scholarly and pragmatic points of view. Over the last two decades in which linguistic/ethnic communities that had previously been politically submerged, persecuted, and geographically isolated, have asserted themselves and provided scholars with new opportunities to study the phenomena of individual and societal bilingualism and multilingualism that had previously been practically closed to them. Advances in social media and technology (e.g., iPhones and Big Data Capabilities) have rendered new tools to study bilingualism in a more naturalistic setting. At the same time, these developments have posed new practical challenges in such areas as language acquisition, language identities, language attitudes, language education, language endangerment and loss, and language rights.

The investigation of bi- and multilingualism is a broad and complex field. Unless otherwise relevant on substantive grounds, the term “bilingualism” in this article is used as an all-inclusive term to embody both bilingualism and multilingualism.

2. Bilingualism as a Natural Global Phenomenon: Becoming Bilingual

Bilingualism is not entirely a recent development; for instance, it constituted a grassroots phenomenon in India and Africa since the pre-Christian era. Contrary to a widespread perception, particularly in some primarily monolingual countries—for instance, Japan or China—or native English-speaking countries, such as the United States, bilingualism or even multilingualism is not a rare or exceptional phenomenon in the modern world; it was and it is, in fact, more widespread and natural than monolingualism. The Ethnologue in the 16th edition ( 2009 , http://www.ethnologue.com/show_country.asp?name=lb ) estimates more than seven thousand languages (7,358) while the U.S. Department of States recognizes only 194 bilingual countries in the world. There are approximately 239 and 2,269 languages identified in Europe and Asia, respectively. According to Ethnologue , 94% of the world’s population employs approximately 5% of its language resources. Furthermore, many languages such as Hindi, Chinese, Arabic, Bengali, Punjabi, Spanish, and Portuguese are spoken in many countries around the globe. Such a linguistic situation necessitates people to live with bilingualism and/or multilingualism. For an in-depth analysis of global bilingualism, see Bhatia and Ritchie ( 2013 ).

3. Describing Bilingualism

Unlike monolingualism, childhood bilingualism is not the only source and stage of acquiring two or more languages. Bilingualism is a lifelong process involving a host of factors (e.g., marriage, immigration, and education), different processes (e.g., input conditions, input types, input modalities and age), and yielding differential end results in terms of differential stages of fossilization and learning curve (U-shape or nonlinear curve during their grammar and interactional development). For this reason, it does not come as a surprise that defining, describing, and categorizing a bilingual is not as simplistic as defining a monolingual person. In addition to individual bilingualism, social and political bilingualism adds yet other dimensions to understanding bilingualism. Naturally then, there is no universally agreed upon definition of a bilingual person.

Bilingual individuals are subjected to a wide variety of labels, scales, and dichotomies, which constitute a basis of debates over what is bilingualism and who is a bilingual. Before shedding light on the complexity of “individual” bilingualism, one should bear in mind that the notion of individual bilingualism is not devoid of social bilingualism, or an absence of a shared social or group grammar. The term “individual” bilingualism by no means refers to idiosyncratic aspects of bilinguals, which is outside the scope of this work.

Relying on a Chomskyan research paradigm, bilingualism is approached from the theoretical distinction of competence vs. performance (actual use). Equal competency and fluency in both languages—an absolute clone of two monolinguals without a trace of accent from either language—is one view of a bilingual person. This view can be characterized as the “maximal” view. Bloomfield’s definition of a bilingual with “a native-like control of two languages” attempts to embody the “maximal” viewpoint (Bloomfield, 1933 ). Other terms used to describe such individuals are “ambilinguals” or “true bilinguals.” Such bilinguals are rare, or what Valdes terms, “mythical bilingual” (Valdes, 2001 ). In contrast to maximal view, a “minimal” view contends that practically every one is a bilingual. “That is no one in the world (no adult, anyway) which does not know at least a few words in languages other than the maternal variety” (Edwards, 2004/2006 ). Diebold’s notion of “Incipient bilingualism”—that is, exposure to two languages—belongs to the minimal view of bilingualism (Diebold, 1964 ). While central to the minimalist viewpoint is the onset point of the process of becoming a bilingual, the main focus of the maximalist view is the end result, or termination point, of language acquisition. In other words, the issue of degree and the end state of second language acquisition is at the heart of defining the concept of bilingualism.

Other researchers such as Mackey, Weinreich, and Haugen define bilingualism to capture language use of bilinguals’ verbal behavior. For Haugen, bilingualism begins when the speakers of one language produce complete meaningful utterances in the second language (Haugen, 1953 ; Mackey, 2000 ; Weinrich, 1953 ). Mackey, on the other hand, defines bilingualism as an “alternate use of two or more languages” (Mackey, 2000 ). Observe that the main objective of the two definitions is to focus on language use rather the degree of language proficiency or equal competency in two languages.

The other notable types of bilingualism identified are as follows: Primary/Natural bilingualism in which bilingualism is acquired in a natural setting without any formal training; Balanced bilingualism that develops with minimal interference from both languages; Receptive or Passive bilingualism wherein there is understanding of written and/or spoken proficiency in second language but an inability to speak it; Productive bilingualism then entails an ability to understand and speak a second language; Semilingualism, or an inability to express in either language; and Bicultural bilingualism vs. Monocultural bilingualism. The other types of bilingualism, such as Simultaneous vs. Successive bilingualism (Wang, 2008 ), Additive vs. Subtractive bilingualism (Cummins, 2000 ), and Elite vs. Folk bilingualism (Skutnabb-Kangas, 1981 ), will be detailed later in this chapter. From this rich range of scales and dichotomies, it becomes readily self-evident that the complexity of bilingualism and severe limitation of the “fractional” view of bilingualism that bilinguals are two monolinguals in one brain. Each case of bilingualism is a product of different sets of circumstances and, as a result, no two bilinguals are the same. In other words, differences in the context of second language acquisition (natural, as in the case of children) and proficiency in spoken, written, reading, and listening skills in the second language, together with the consideration of culture, add further complexity to defining individual bilingualism.

3.1 Individual Bilingualism: A Profile

The profile of this author further highlights the problems and challenges of defining and describing a bilingual or multilingual person. The author, as an immigrant child growing up in India, acquired two languages by birth: Saraiki—also called Multani and Lahanda, spoken primarily in Pakistan—and Punjabi, which is spoken both in India and Pakistan. Growing up in the Hindi-speaking area, he learned the third language Hindi-Urdu primarily in schools; and his fourth language, English, primarily after puberty during his higher education in India and the United States. He cannot write or read in Saraiki but can read Punjabi in Gurmukhi script, and he cannot write with the same proficiency. He has native proficiency in speaking, listening, reading, and writing. A close analysis of his bilingualism reveals that no single label or category accounts for his multifaceted bilingualism/multilingualism. Interestingly, his self-assessment finds him linguistically least secured in his two languages, which he acquired at birth. Is he a semilingual without a mother tongue? No matter how challenging it is to come to grips with bilingualism and, consequently, develop a “holistic” view of bilingualism, it is clear that a bilingual person demonstrates many complex attributes rarely seen in a monolingual person. See Edwards ( 2004/2006 ) and Wei ( 2013 ) for more details. Most important, multiple languages serve as a vehicle to mark multiple identities (e.g., religious, regional, national, ethnic, etc.).

3.2 Social Bilingualism

While social bilingualism embodies linguistic dimensions of individual bilingualism, a host of social, attitudinal, educational, and historical aspects of bilingualism primarily determine the nature of social bilingualism. Social bilingualism refers to the interrelationship between linguistic and non-linguistic factors such as social evaluation/value judgements of bilingualism, which determine the nature of language contact, language maintenance and shift, and bilingual education among others. For instance, in some societies, bilingualism is valued and receives positive evaluation and is, thus, encouraged while in other societies bilingualism is seen as a negative and divisive force and is, thus, suppressed or even banned in public and educational arenas. Compare the pattern of intergenerational bilingualism in India and the United states, where it is well-known that second or third-generation immigrants in the United States lose their ethnic languages and turn monolinguals in English (Fishman, Nahirny, Hofman, & Hayden, 1966 ). Conversely, Bengali or Punjabi immigrants living in Delhi, generation after generation, do not become monolinguals in Hindi, the dominant language of Delhi. Similarly, elite bilingualism vs. folk bilingualism has historically prevailed in Europe, Asia, and other continents and has gained a new dimension in the rapidly evolving globalized society. As aristocratic society patronized bilingualism with French or Latin in Europe, bilingualism served as a source of elitism in South Asia in different ages of Persian and English. Folk bilingualism is often the byproduct of social dominance and imposition of a dominant group. While elite bilingualism is viewed as an asset, folk bilingualism is seen as problematic both in social and educational arenas (Skutnabb-Kangas, 1981 ). One of the outcomes of a stable elite and folk bilingualism is diglossia (e.g., Arabic, German, Greek, and Tamil) where both High (elite) and Low (colloquial) varieties of a language—or two languages with High and Low social distinctions—coexist (e.g., French and English diglossia after the Norman conquest (Ferguson, 1959 ). Diasporic language varieties have been examined by Clyne and Kipp ( 1999 ) and Bhatia ( 2016 ). Works by Baker and Jones ( 1998 ) show how bilinguals belong to communities of variable types due to accommodation (Sachdev & Giles, 2004/2006 ), indexicality (Eckert & Rickford, 2001 ), social meaning of language attitudes (Giles & Watson, 2013 ; Sachdev & Bhatia, 2013 ), community of practice, and even imagined communities.

3.3 Political Bilingualism

Political bilingualism refers to the language policies of a country. Unlike individual bilingualism, categories such as monolingual, bilingual, and multilingual nations do not reflect the actual linguistic situation in a particular country (Edwards, 1995 , 2004/2006 ; Romaine, 1989/1995 ). Canada, for instance, is officially recognized as a bilingual country. This means that Canada promotes bilingualism as a language policy of the country as well as in Canadian society as a whole. By no means does it imply that most speakers in Canada are bilinguals. In fact, monolingual countries may reflect a high degree of bilingualism. Multilingual countries such as South Africa, Switzerland, Finland and Canada often use one of the two approaches—“Personality” and “Territorial”—to ensure bilingualism. The Personality principle aims to preserve individual rights (Extra & Gorter, 2008 ; Mackey, 1967 ) while the Territorial principle ensures bilingualism or multilingual within a particular area to a variable degree, as in the case of Belgium. In India, where 23 languages are officially recognized, the government’s language policies are very receptive to multilingualism. The “three-language formula” is the official language policy of the country (Annamalai, 2001 ). In addition to learning Hindi and English, the co-national languages, school children can learn a third language spoken within or outside their state.

4. The Bilingual Mind: Language Organization, Language Choices, and Verbal Behavior

Unlike monolinguals, a decision to speak multiple languages requires a complex unconscious process on the part of bilinguals. Since a monolingual’s choice is restricted to only one language, the decision to choose a language is relatively simple involving, at most, the choice of an informal style over a formal style or vice versa. However, the degree and the scale of language choice are much more complicated for bilinguals since they need to choose not only between different styles but also between different languages. It is a widely held belief, at least in some monolingual speech communities, that the process of language choice for bilinguals is a random one that can lead to a serious misunderstanding and a communication failure between monolinguals and bi- and multilingual communities (see pitfalls of a sting operation by a monolingual FBI agent (Ritchie & Bhatia, 2013 )). Such a misconception of bilingual verbal behavior is also responsible for communication misunderstandings about social motivations of bilinguals’ language choices by monolinguals; for example, the deliberate exclusion or sinister motives on the part of bilinguals when their language choice is different from a monolingual’s language. A number of my international students have reported that on several occasions monolingual English speakers feel compelled to remind them that they are in America and they should be using English, rather than say Chinese or Arabic, with countrymen/women.

Now let us examine some determinants of language choice by bilinguals. Consider the case of this author’s verbal behavior and linguistic choices that he normally makes while interacting with his family during a dinner table conversation in India. He shares two languages with his sisters-in-law (Punjabi and Hindi) and four languages with his brothers (Saraiki, Punjabi, Hindi, and English). While talking about family matters or other informal topics, he uses Punjabi with his sisters-in-law but Saraiki with his brothers. If the topic involves ethnicity, then the entire family switches to Punjabi. Matters of educational and political importance are expressed in English and Hindi, respectively. These are unmarked language choices, which the author makes unconsciously and effortlessly with constant language switching depending on participants, speech events, situations, or other factors. Such a behavior is largely in agreement with the sociolinguistic Model of Markedness, which attempts to explain the sociolinguistic motivation of code-switching by considering language choice as a means of communicating desired group membership, or perceived group memberships, and interpersonal relationships (Pavlenko, 2005 ).

Speaking Sariki with brothers and Punjabi with sister-in-laws represent unconscious and unmarked choices. Any shift to a marked choice is, of course, possible on theoretical grounds; however, it can take a serious toll in terms of social relationships. The use of Hindi or English during a general family dinner conversation (i.e., a “marked” choice) will necessarily signal social distancing and fractured relations.

Languages choice is not as simple as it seems at first from the above example of family conversation. In some cases, it involves a complex process of negotiation. Talking with a Punjabi-Hindi-English trilingual waiter in an Indian restaurant, the choice of ethnic language, Punjabi, by a customer such as this author may seem to be a natural choice at first. Often, it is not the case if the waiter refuses to match the language choice of the customer and replies in English. The failure to negotiate a language in such cases takes an interesting turn of language mismatching before a common language of verbal exchange is finally agreed upon; often, it turns out to be a neutral and prestige language: English. See Ritchie and Bhatia ( 2013 ) for further details. When the unmarked choice is not clear, speakers tend to use code-switching in an exploratory way to determine language choice and thus restore a social balance.

During a speech event, language choice is not always static either. If the topic of conversation shifts from a casual topic to a formal topic such as education, a more suitable choice in this domain would be English; subsequently, a naturally switch to English will take place. In other words, “complementarity” language domains or language-specific domain allocation represent the salient characteristics of bilingual language choice. The differential domain allocation manifests itself in the use of “public” vs. “private” language by bilinguals, which is central to bilingual verbal repertoire (Ritchie & Bhatia, 2013 ). Often the role of expressing emotions or one’s private world is best played by the bilingual’s mother tongue rather than by the second or prestige/distant language. Research on bilingualism, emotions, and autobiographical memory accounts of bilinguals shows that an account of emotional events is qualitatively and quantitatively different when narrated in one’s mother tongue than in a distant second language (Devaele, 2010 ; Pavlenko, 2005 ). While the content of an event can be narrated equally well in either language, the emotional experience/pain is best described in the first language of the speaker. Particularly, bilingual parents use their first language for terms of endearment for their children. Their first language serves as the best vehicle for denoting emotions toward their children than any other language in their verbal repertoire. Taboo topics, on the other hand, favor the second or a distant language.

Any attempt to characterize the bilingual mind must account for the following three natural aspects of bilingual verbal behavior: (1) Depending upon the communicative circumstances, bilinguals swing between the monolingual and bilingual language modes; (2) Bilinguals have an ability to keep two or more languages separate whenever needed; and (3) More interestingly, they can also carry out an integration of two or more languages within a speech event.

4.1 Bilingual Language Modes

Bilinguals are like a sliding switch who can move between one or more language states/modes as required for the production, comprehension, and processing of verbal messages in a most cost-effective and efficient way. If bilinguals are placed in a predominantly monolingual setting, they are likely to activate only one language; while in a bilingual environment, they can easily shift into a bilingual mode to a differential degree. The activation or deactivation process is not time consuming. In a bilingual environment, this process usually does not require bilinguals to take more than a couple of milliseconds to swing into a bilingual language mode and revert back to a monolingual mode with the same time efficiency. However, under unexpected circumstances (e.g., caught off-guard by a white Canadian speaking an African language in Canada) or under emotional trauma or cultural shock, the activation takes considerable time. In the longitudinal study of his daughter, Hildegard, reported that Hildegard, while in Germany, came to tears at one point when she could not activate her mother tongue, English (Leopard, 1939–1950 ). The failure to ensure natural conditions responsible for the activation of bilingual language mode is a common methodological shortcoming of bilingual language testing, see Grosjean ( 2004 / 2006 , 2010 ). An in-depth review of processing cost involved in the language activation-deactivation process can be found in Meuter ( 2005 ). Do bilinguals turn on their bilingual mode, even if only one language is needed to perform a task? Recent research employing an electrophysiological and experimental approach shows that both languages compete for selection even if only one language is needed to perform a task (Martin, Dering, Thomas, & Thierry, 2009 ; Hoshino & Thierry, 2010 ). For more recent works on parallel language activation and language competition in speech planning and speech production, see Blumenfeld and Marian ( 2013 ). In other words, the potential of activation and deactivation of language modes—both monolingual and bilingual mode—hold an important key to bilingual’s language use.

4.2 Bilingual Language Separation and Language Integration

In addition to language activation or deactivation control phenomena, the other two salient characteristics of bilingual verbal behavior are bilinguals’ balanced competence and capacity to separate the two linguistic systems and to integrate them within a sentence or a speech event. Language mixing is a far more complex cognitive ability than language separation. Yet, it is also very natural to bilinguals. Therefore, it is not surprising to observe the emergence of mixed systems such as Hinglish, Spanglish, Germlish, and so on, around the globe. Consider the following utterances:

Such a two-faceted phenomenon is termed as code-mixing (as in 1 and 2) and code-switching (as in 3). Code-mixing (CM) refers to the use of various linguistic units—words, phrases, clauses, and sentences—primarily from two participating grammatical systems within a sentence. While CM is intra-sentential, code-switching (CS) is an inter-sentential phenomenon. CM is constrained by grammatical principles and is motivated by socio-psychological factors. CS, on the other hand, is subject to discourse principles and is also motivated by socio-psychological factors.

Any unified treatment of the bilingual mind has to account for the language separation (i.e., CS) and language integration (CM) aspects of bilingual verbal competence, capacity, use, and creativity. In that process, it needs to address the following four key questions, which are central to an understanding the universal and scientific basis for the linguistic creativity of bilinguals.

Is language mixing a random or a systematic phenomenon?

What motivates bilinguals to mix and alternate two languages?

What is the social evaluation of this mixing and alternation?

What is the difference between code-mixing or code-switching and other related phenomena?

I. Language mixing as a systematic phenomenon

Earlier research from the 1950s–1970s concluded that CM is either a random or an unsystematic phenomenon. It was either without subject to formal syntactic constraints or is subject only to “irregular mixture” (Labov, 1971 ). Such a view of CM/CS is obsolete since late the 20th century . Recent research shows that CM/CS is subject to formal, functional, and attitudinal factors. Studies of formal factors in the occurrence of CM attempt to tap the unconscious knowledge of bilinguals about the internal structure of code-mixed sentences. Formal syntactic constraints on the grammar of CM, such as The Free Morpheme Constraint (Sankoff & Poplack, 1981 ); The Closed Class Constraint (Joshi, 1985 ), within the Generative Grammar framework; and The Government Constraint and the Functional Head Constraint within the non-lexicalist generative framework, demonstrate the complexity of uncovering universal constraints on CM; for details, see Bhatia and Ritchie ( 2009 ). Recently, the search for explanations of cross-linguistic generalizations about the phenomenon of CM, specifically in terms of independently justified principles of language structure and use, has taken two distinct forms. One approach is formulated in terms of the theory of linguistic competence within the framework of Chomsky’s Minimalist Program (MacSwan, 2009 ). The other approach—as best exemplified by the Matrix Language Frame (MLF) model (Myers-Scotton & Jake, 2001 ) is grounded in the theory of sentence production, particularly that of Levelt ( 1989 ). Herring and colleagues test the strengths and weaknesses of both a Minimalist Program approach and the MLF approach on explanatory grounds based on switches between determiner and their noun complements drawn from Spanish-English and Welsh-English data (Herring, Deuchar, Couto, & Quintanilla, 2010 ). Their work lends partial support to the two approaches.

II. Motivations for language mixing

While research on the universal grammar of CM attempts to unlock the mystery of the systematic nature of CM on universal grounds, it does not attempt to answer Question (II), namely, the “why” aspect of CM. The challenge for linguistic research in the new millennium is to separate grammatical constraints from those motivated by, or triggered by, socio-pragmatic factors or competence. Socio-pragmatic studies of CM reveal the following four factors, which trigger CM/CS: (1) the social roles and relationships of the participants (e.g., dual/multiple identities; social class); (2) situational factors (discourse topic and language domain allocation); (3) message-intrinsic consideration; (4) language attitudes, including social dominance and linguistic security. See Ritchie and Bhatia ( 2013 ) and Myers-Scotton ( 1998 ) for further details. The most commonly accepted rule is that language mixing signals either a change or a perceived change by speaker in the socio-psychological context of a speech event. In essence, CM/CS is motivated by the consideration of “optimization,” and it serves as an indispensable tool for meeting creative and innovative needs of bilinguals (Bhatia, 2011 ). A novel approach provides further insights into a discourse-functional motivation of CM, namely, coding of less predictable, high information-content meanings in one language and more predictable, lower information-content meanings in another language (Myslin & Levy, 2015 ).

III. Social evaluation of language mixing

Now let us return to Question (III). From the discussion of Questions (I and II), it is self-evident that complexity and multifaceted creativity underlies CM/CS in bilingual communication. Surprisingly, though, the social evaluation of a mixed system is largely negative. Even more interestingly, bilinguals themselves do not have a positive view of language mixing. It is the widely held belief on the part of the “guardians” of language (including the media) and puritans that any form of language mixing is a sign of unsystematic or decadent form of communication. Bilinguals are often mocked for their “bad” and “irregular” linguistic behavior. They are often characterized as individuals who have difficulty expressing themselves. Other labels such as “lazy” and “careless” are also often bestowed upon them. Furthermore, the guardians of language often accused them of destroying their linguistic heritage. For these reasons, it is not surprising that even bilinguals themselves become apologetic about their verbal behavior. They blame mixing on “memory lapse,” among other things, and promise to correct their verbal behavior, vowing not to mix languages. In spite of this, they cannot resist language mixing!

Table 1 illustrates the anomaly between the scientific reality of language mixing and its social perception. Social perception translates into the negative evaluation of mixed speech.

Table 1. Language Mixing (CM/CS) Anomaly (Adapted from Bhatia & Ritchie, 2008 , p. 15).

Backlash to mixing is not just restricted to societies and bilinguals; even governments get on the bandwagon. Some countries, such as the newly freed countries of the ex-Soviet Union and France, regulate or even ban mixing either by appointing “language police” or by passing laws to wipe out the perceived negative effects of “bad language” in the public domain. Asia is not an exception in this regard. A case in point is a recent article by Tan ( 2002 ) reporting that the Government of Singapore has banned the movie Talk Cock because it uses a mixed variety of English, called Singlish. Linguistic prescriptivism clearly played a central role in the decision. In spite of the near-universal negative evaluation associated with CM/CS, the benefits rendered by language mixing by far outweigh its negative perception, which, in turn, compels the unconscious mind of bilinguals to mix and switch in order to yield results that cannot be rendered by a single/puritan language use; for a typology of bilingual linguistic creativity, and socio-psychological motivations, see Ritchie and Bhatia ( 2013 ).

IV. Language mixing and other related phenomena

Returning to the fourth question, it should be noted that CM/CS is quite distinct from linguistic borrowing. The primary function of linguistic borrowing is to fill a lexical gap in a borrower’s language (e.g., Internet, satellite). Furthermore, with borrowing, the structure of the host language remains undisturbed. However, CM requires complex integrity of two linguistic systems/grammar within a sentence, which may yield a new grammar. Other mixed systems, such as pidgin and creole languages, often fail to match the complexity and creativity of CM/CS. The distinction between code-mixing and code-switching is controversial for a number of reasons, particularly the integration of the participating grammar’s intrasententially details; see Bhatia and Ritchie ( 2009 ). Additionally, Deuchar and Stammers ( 2016 ) claim that code-switches and borrowings are distinct on the basis of frequency and degree of integration. Specifically, only the former are low in both frequency and integration. For details about contrasting and comparing different positions on this issue, see Myslin & Levy ( 2015 ); Poplack and Meechan ( 1998 ); and Lakshmanan, Balam, and Bhatia ( 2016 ). Furthermore, there is a debatable distinction between CM and Translanguaging (Garcia & Wei, 2014 ).

5. Bilingual Language Development: Nature vs. Nurture

Beyond innateness (e.g., nature, Biolinguistic and Neurological basis of language acquisition), social factors play a critical play in the language development of bilinguals. As pointed out earlier, describing and defining bilingualism is a formidable task. This is due to the fact that attaining bilingualism is a lifelong process; a complex array of conditions gives rise to the development of language among bilinguals. Based on the recommendation of educators, among others, bilingual families usually adopt a “One-Parent/One-Language” strategy with different combinations, such as language allocation based on time and space; for example, using one language in the morning and other in the evening or one language in the kitchen and another in the living room. This is done to maintain minority language. In spite of their obvious potential benefits for language maintenance, such strategies fall short in raising bilingual and bicultural children for a number of reasons, including imparting pragmatic and communicative competence and providing negative and positive evidence to children undergoing heritage language development with sociolinguistically real verbal interactional patterns (Bhatia & Ritchie, 1995 ). Therefore, De Houwer ( 2007 ) rightly points out that it is important for children to be receiving language input in the minority language from both parents at home. This also represents a common practice in non-Western societies in Asia (e.g., India) and Africa (e.g., Nigeria) where both parents, including members of the joint family minority languages, speak in their minority language.

While raising bilingual children does not pose any serious challenge for majority children (e.g., English-speaking children learning French in Canada), it is a different story for minority or heritage children. Sadly, a complex mix of political and social bilingualism leads heritage/minority parents, who themselves experience adverse discrimination in social and work settings, simply to prohibit the use of minority languages in family and educational environments. This practice, no matter how well intended, often results in negative school performance and emotional problems for minority children.

6. Simultaneous vs. Sequential Childhood Bilingualism

Broadly speaking, childhood bilingualism can manifest itself in two distinct patterns: (1) Simultaneous bilingualism and (2) Sequential bilingualism. A child being exposed to two languages to more or less to the same degree from birth onward is described as a simultaneous bilingual; conversely, a child being exposed to one language first followed by a second language, with the latter coming after the age of five, is referred to as sequential bilingual. Sequential bilingualism takes place either in schools or in peer groups and/or family settings. Surely, sequential bilingualism can persist throughout the adulthood. How is early bilingualism different from late bilingualism? Research on sequential and adult language acquisition shows that the pattern of sequential/successive language acquisition falls somewhere in the middle of the continuum between a simultaneous bilingual and an adult language learner.

7. Adult Bilingualism: UG and Native Language Dominance

Why is the task of learning a second language by adults more difficult and time consuming than by children? In spite of considerable motivation and effort, why do adults fall short of achieving native-like competency in their target language? Why do even very competent and balanced bilinguals speak with an “accent”? The Critical Period Hypothesis by Lenneberg ( 1967 ) attempts to answer these questions, and it is sensitive to age (Lenneberg, 1967 ). Children are better equipped to acquire languages because their brains are more “plastic” before they hit maturity. They have access to UG, to which adults have either no access or only partial access. Afterward, the loss of plasticity results in the completion of lateralization of language function in the left hemisphere. Even though adults are more cognitively developed and exhibit a high degree of aptitude, they have to rely on their native language (L1 transference—including “foreign accent” together with morphological features) in the process of learning a second language (Gass, 1996 ). Then there comes a time when their ultimate attainment of L2 falls short of the native language target, termed “fossilization” stage. No amount of training allows them to bypass this stage to free themselves from second language errors. Siegel, for instance, offers an alternative explanation of the language attainment state termed fossilization in second language acquisition research—a stage of falling short of attaining a native-speaker end grammar (Siegel, 2003 ). He argues that fossilization is not biologically driven but is the reflection of learners’ decisions not to clone the native speaker’s norm in order to index their own identity. Some researchers believe that this stage does not have a biological basis; instead, it is the result of bilingual, dual, or multiple identities. Adult learners are not ready to give up their identity and, as a result, this prevents them from having a perfect native-like competency of L2. For alternative theories of language acquisition, see, for example, a usage-based approach by Tomasello ( 2003 ); and the Dynamic System Theory by De Bot, Wander, and Verspoor ( 2007 ).

The differential competencies, as evident from the different types of adult bilinguals, can be accounted for primarily on sociolinguistic grounds. For instance, gender or the period of residency in a host country yields the qualitative and quantitative differences in bilingual language acquisition. Factors such as access to workplace, education, relationship, social networks, exogamic marriage, religion, and other factors lead to differential male and female bilingualism in qualitative grounds (Piller & Pavlenko, 2004/2006 ). Additionally, learners’ type, their aptitude, and attitude also contribute to a variable degree of language learning curves. Instrumental learners who learn a second language for external gains tend to lag behind Integrative learners who aim at integration with the target culture. Similarly, the Social Accommodation Theory (Sachdev & Giles, 2004/2006 ) attempts to explain differences in language choices and consequences on one hand and the social evaluation of speech (good vs. bad accents) on the other, which influence the social-psychological aspects of bilingual verbal interaction in different social settings (Altarriba & Moirier, 2004/2006 ; Lippi-Green, 2012 ).

8. Effects of Bilingualism

Until the middle of the 20th century in the United States, researchers engaged in examining the relationship between intelligence and bilingualism concluded that bilingualism has serious adverse effects on early childhood development. Such findings led to the development of the “factional” view of bilingualism, which was grounded in a flawed monolingual perspective on the limited linguistic capacity of the brain on one hand and the Linguistic Deficit Hypothesis on the other.

Their line of argument was that crowding the brain with two languages leads to a variety of impairments in both the linguistic and the cognitive abilities of the child. Naturally, then, they suggested that bilingual children not only suffer from semilingualism (i.e., lacking proficiency both in their mother tongue and the second language) and stuttering, etc., but also from low intelligence, mental retardation, left handedness, and even schizophrenia.

It took more than half a century before a more accurate and positive view of bilingualism emerged. The main credit for this goes to the pioneering work of Peal and Lambert ( 1962 ), which revealed the actual benefits of bilingualism. The view of bilingualism that subsequently emerged can be characterized as the Linguistic Augmentation Hypothesis (Peal & Lambert, 1962 ). Peal and Lambert studied earlier balanced bilingual children and controlled for factors such as socioeconomic status. Sound on methodological grounds, their result showed bilinguals to be intellectually superior to their monolingual counterparts. Their study, which was conducted in Montreal, changed the face of research on bilingualism. Many studies conducted around the globe have replicated the findings of Peal and Lambert. In short, cognitive, cultural, economic, and cross-cultural communication advantages of childhood and lifelong bilingualism are many, including reversing the effects of aging (Bialystok, 2005 ; Hakuta, 1986 ). Nevertheless, the effects of bilingualism on children’s cognitive development, particularly on executive function and attention, is far from conclusive; see Klein ( 2015 ) and Bialystok ( 2015 ).

9. Bilingualism: Language Spread, Maintenance, Endangerment, and Death

Language contact and its consequences represent the core of theoretical and descriptive linguistic studies devoted to bilingualism, and onto which globalization has added a new dimension. Ironically, in the age of globalization, the spread of English and other Indo-European languages, namely, Spanish and Portuguese, has led to the rise of bilingualism induced by these languages; they also pose a threat to the linguistic diversity of the world. Researchers claim that about half the known languages of the world have already vanished in the last 500 years, and that at least half, if not more, of the 6,909 living languages will become extinct in the next century (Hale, 1992 ; Nettle & Romaine, 2000 ). Research on language maintenance, language shift, and language death addresses the questions of why and how some languages spread and others die. Phillipson and Mufwene attempt to account for language endangerment within the framework of language imperialism ( 2010 ) and language ecology ( 2001 ), respectively. Fishman ( 2013 ) examines the ways to reverse the tide of language endangerment. Skutnabb-Kangas views minority language maintenance as a human rights issue in public and educational arenas ( 1953 ).

Critical Analysis of Scholarship

Advances in our understanding of bilingualism have come a long way since the predominance of the “factional” and linguistically deficient view of bilingualism. The complexity and diverse conditions responsible for lifelong bilingualism has led to a better understanding of this phenomenon on theoretical, methodological, and analytical grounds. A paradigm shift from monolingualism and the emergence of a new, interdisciplinary approach promises new challenges and directions in the future study of bilingualism.

Issues and Conceptualization

Although bilingualism is undoubtedly a widespread global phenomenon, it is rather ironic that, for a number of reasons, including the primary objective of linguistics, multidimensional aspects of bilingualism, and misperception of bilingualism as a rare phenomenon, the study of bilingualism has posed—and continues to pose—a serious of challenges to linguistics for quite some time. This is evident from eminent linguist Roman Jacobson’s observation from more than half a century ago: “bilingualism is for me a fundamental problem of linguistics” (Chomsky, 1986 ). Similarly, Chomsky remarked that the pure idealized form of language knowledge should be the first object of study rather than the muddy water of bilingualism (Grosjean, 1989 ). Consequently, research on bilingualism has taken a backseat to monolingualism, and monolinguals have served as a benchmark to characterize and theorize bilinguals, which, in turn, led to the ill conceptualization of the bilingual person as “two monolinguals in one brain” (Dehaene, 1999 ).

Are bilinguals just a composite or sum of two monolinguals crowded in one brain? A large body of research devoted to the bilingualism and intelligence debate either implicitly or explicitly subscribed to the “two monolinguals in one brain” conception. This set the stage for the “linguistic deficiency hypothesis” about bilingual children and adults on one hand and the limited linguistic capacity of the brain on the other. When looking from the lens of monolingualism, a “factional view” (Bhatia & Ritchie, 2016 ; Nicol, 2001 ), or even distorted view, of bilingualism emerged that portrayed bilinguals as semilinguals with a lack of proficiency not just in one but two languages. Although still in its infant stage, from recent research on bilingualism, a more accurate or holistic view of a bilingual and multilingual person has begun to emerge in 1990s, namely, just as an individual bilingual does not constitute two monolinguals in one brain, a multilingual is not merely a byproduct of bilingualism alone or vice versa. Similarly, the notion that brain capacity is ideally suited for one language is a myth. Additionally and interestingly, no two bilinguals behave the same way all the time since they are not a clone of each other.

Bilingualism, unlike monolingualism, exhibits complex individual, social, political, psychological, and educational dimensions in addition to involving a complex interaction of two or more languages in terms of coexistence, competition, and cooperation of two linguistic systems. Additionally, although bilingualism is a lifelong process, the language development among bilinguals is not merely a linear process; there are turns and twists on the way to becoming bilingual, trilingual, and multilingual. The path to trilingualism is even more complex than growing up with two languages (Bhatia & Ritchie, 2016 ).

The role of sociolinguistic factors in language learning; language use (creativity); language maintenance; and language shift, particularly in trilingual language acquisition and use, opens new challenging areas of future research. The main challenge for theoreticians and practitioners is how to come to grips with various facets of the bilingual brain ranging from language contact, bilingual language interaction, to language modes of the bilingual mind/brain on one hand and methodological issues on the other.

Despite a number of studies on the Critical Period Hypothesis, and other competing hypotheses of bilingual language acquisition, future research in cognitive aptitude, age, and multiple language effects with the lens of interdisciplinary debatable findings and methodologies continues to pose new challenges and promises to the field of bilingualism (Long, 2016 ).

Further Reading

• Auer, P. , & Wei, L. (Eds.). (2007). Handbook of multilingualism and multilingual communication . Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
• Bhatia, T. , & Ritchie, W. (2004/2006). The handbook of bilingualism . Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
• Bhatia, T. , & Ritchie, W. (2013). The handbook of bilingualism and multilingualism . Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
• Ferreira, A. , & Schwieter, J. W. (Eds.). (2015). Psycholinguistic and cognitive inquiries into translation and interpreting . Amsterdam: Benjamins.
• Heredia, R. , & Cieś licka, A. (Eds.). (2015). Bilingual figurative language processing . New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Schwieter, J. W. (Ed.). (2015). The Cambridge handbook of bilingual processing . Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.

Foundational Works

• Bialystok, E. , & Hakuta, K. (1994). In other words: The science and psychology of second language acquisition . New York: Basic Books.
• Cummins, J. (2000). Language, power and pedagogy: Bilingual children in the cross-fire . Clevedon, U.K.: Multilingual Matters.
• Edwards, J. R. (1994). Multilingualism . London: Routledge.
• Grosjean, F. (2008). Studying bilinguals . Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Haugen, E. (1953). The Norwegian language in America: A study in bilingual behavior . Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
• Mackey, W. F. (1967). Bilingualism as a world problem/Le bilinguïsme: Phenomène mondial . Montreal, QC: Harvest House.
• Romaine, S. (1995). Bilingualism (2d ed.). Oxford: Blackwell.
• Weinreich, U. (1953). Languages in contact: Findings and problems . The Hague, The Netherlands: Mouton.

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Bilingualism as a Life Experience

• Posted October 1, 2015
• By Bari Walsh

What do we know about bilingualism? Much of what we once thought we knew — that speaking two languages is confusing for children, that it poses cognitive challenges best avoided — is now known to be inaccurate. Today, bilingualism is often seen as a brain-sharpening benefit, a condition that can protect and preserve cognitive function well into old age. 

Indeed, the very notion of bilingualism is changing; language mastery is no longer seen as an either/or proposition, even though most schools still measure English proficiency as a binary “pass or fail” marker.

A growing body of evidence suggests that lifelong bilingualism is associated with the delayed diagnosis of dementia. But the impact of language experience on brain activity has not been well understood.

It turns out that there are many ways to be bilingual, according to HGSE Associate Professor Gigi Luk , who studies the lasting cognitive consequences of speaking multiple languages. “Bilingualism is a complex and multifaceted life experience,” she says; it’s an “interactional experience” that happens within — and in response to — a broader social context.

Usable Knowledge spoke with Luk about her research and its applications.

Bilingualism and executive function

As bilingual children toggle between two languages, they use cognitive resources beyond those required for simple language acquisition, Luk writes in a forthcoming edition of the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Child Development . Recent research has shown that bilingual children outperform monolingual children on tasks that tap into executive function — skills having to do with attention control, reasoning, and flexible problem solving.

Their strength in those tasks likely results from coping with and overcoming the demand of managing two languages. In a bilingual environment, children learn to recognize meaningful speech sounds that belong to two different languages but share similar concepts.

In a paper published earlier this year , she and her colleagues looked at how bilingualism affects verbal fluency — efficiency at retrieving words — in various stages of childhood and adulthood. In one measure of verbal acumen called letter fluency — the ability to list words that begin with the letter F, for instance — bilinguals enjoyed an advantage over monolinguals that began at age 10 and grew robust in adulthood.  

Bilingualism and the aging brain

Luk and her researchers are looking at the neuroscience of bilingualism — at how bilingualism may affect the physical structure of the brain in its different regions.    

What they’ve found so far shows that older adults who are lifelong bilinguals have more white matter in their frontal lobes (important to executive function) than monolinguals, and that their temporal lobes (important to language function) are better preserved. The results support other evidence that persistent bilingual experience shapes brain functions and structures.

A growing body of evidence suggests that lifelong bilingualism is associated with the delayed diagnosis of dementia. But the impact of language experience on brain activity is not well understood, Luk says.

In a 2015 paper, she and her colleagues began to look at functional brain networks in monolingual and bilingual older adults. Their findings support the idea that a language experience begun in childhood and continued throughout adulthood influences brain networks in ways that may provide benefits far later in life.

Who is bilingual?

Monolingualism and bilingualism are not static categories, Luk says, so the question of what it means to be bilingual, and who is bilingual, is nuanced. There are several pathways to bilingualism. A child can become bilingual when parents and caregivers speak both languages frequently, either switching between the two. A child can be bilingual when the language spoken at home differs from a community’s dominant language, which the child is exposed to in schools. Or a child can become bilingual when he or she speaks the community’s dominant language at home but attends an immersion program at school.  

Bilingualism is an experience that accumulates and changes over time, in response to a child’s learning environments, says Luk.

Language diversity in schools

In one of her projects, Luk works with a group of ELL directors to help them understand the diverse needs of their language learners and to find better ways to engage their parents. She’s looking at effective ways to measure bilingualism in schools; at connections between the science of bilingualism and language and literacy outcomes; and at the long-term relationship between academic outcomes and the quality and quantity of bilingual experience in young children.

Part of her goal is to help schools move beyond binary categorizations like “ELL” and “English proficient” and to recognize that language diversity brings challenges but also long-term benefits.

“If we only look at ELL or English proficient, that’s not a representation of the whole spectrum of bilingualism,” she says. “To embrace bilingualism, rather than simply recognizing this phenomenon, we need to consider both the challenges and strengths of children with diverse language backgrounds. We cannot do this by only looking at English proficiency. Other information, such as home language background, will enrich our understanding of bilingual development and learning.”  

Additional Resources

• A Boston community organization that runs a bilingual preschool spoke with Luk about her work and its applications to practice. Read the interview.

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🏆 best bilingualism topic ideas & essay examples, 👍 good essay topics on bilingualism, 🥇 most interesting bilingualism topics to write about, ✅ simple & easy bilingualism essay titles, ❓ questions about bilingualism.

• Bilingualism and Multilingualism However, to discuss the aspects of bilingualism and multilingualism, it is necessary to focus on the factor of the social motivation and psychological peculiarities of the ability to use two or more languages for interactions.
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• Bilingualism in Professional Life The importance of bilingualism at the professional level is displayed through the changes in society as a whole and the advantages that are speaking two languages has.
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• Native Language Loss in Bilinguals The present research aims to analyze the process of native language loss, in particular, the age when bilinguals cease to use their language and when they start to forget it.
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• Bilingual Education: Pros and Cons In this system, English is a secondary language geared to making students catch up with their academics until they can get comfortable enough to join mainstream English classes.’Bilingual education is a step backward in our […]
• Bilingualism as a National Language Policy The use of the language in formal learning and communication is the key determinant of the importance and effectiveness of a language.
• Linguistics: Bilingualism, Multilingualism and Tolerance In my opinion, a person with some understanding of a local language is likely to find some of the social and cultural things in a foreign country awkward or abnormal.
• The Way Bilingual People Perceive Their Cultural Heritage Amy Tan writes in her essay “Mother’s tong” about the memories of her childhood, the inability of her mother to speak English as if it was her native language, and the ways it influenced the […]
• Employee Management: Bilingualism in Organizations Title VII has helped to decrease discrimination in the workplace. Prior to the introduction of the Title VII Act, employers denied women health benefits and incentives during leaves.
• Identifying Language Impairment in Bilingual Children Perhaps, the integration of more items from the Spanish language can equalize the informativeness of the two versions of the assessment tool.
• Bilinguals’ Cognitive-Linguistic Abilities and Alzheimer’s Disease This irregularity is reflected in the preserved linguistic abilities, including code-switching and semantic fluency, and the declined functions in translation, picture naming, and phonemic fluency, calling for improved therapy and testing practices.
• Language Ability Barriers in Bilingual Children Thus, the potential barriers to language ability assessment are the lack of adjustable tests with norms for various bilingual variations and the absence of specific criteria for language acquisition evaluation.
• Bilingual Training Program Interventions Furthermore, the author suggests that language development in bilingual children can progress in both types of training programs, but the use of bilingual programs enables the component of supportive context in family support.
• Treating Bilingual Children With Language Impairment: Nonlinguistic Processing It results in issues with language acquisition and might promote the emergence of primary or specific language impairment. Recent research shows the presence of a subtle weakness in nonlinguistic cognitive processing skills in children characterized […]
• Language Switching in Bilingual Older Adults Bilingualism and multilingualism have been analyzed in terms of the peculiarities of bilinguals’ cognition and perception, as well as language processing, cognitive and perception differences between bilingual and monolingual people, and the characteristics of bilingualism […]
• Bilingual and Immersive Educational Strategies The multinational diversity contained in the territories of the States requires the introduction of the study of several languages in the practice of teaching children.
• The Effect of Childhood Bilingualism on Episodic and Semantic One of the main points of the study work is to implement memory tasks similar in advantage and thematic background for two groups of children living in a multinational society.
• Language Development and Bilingualism in Children Prior to acquiring particular words and phrases, the child must show signs of willingness to interact with another person, which is a leading trait of this phenomenon.
• Bilingual and Immersion Methods of Learning English It was previously believed in the scientific discourse that learning English is best done in the process of immersion in the language environment.
• Bilingualism and Communication: Motivation, Soft Skills and Leadership This essay will focus on the effects of learning a foreign language on communication competency, specifically interpersonal, cultural, and leadership skills. Firstly, one of the essential effects of learning a new language is an increase […]
• Bilingualism Resistance and Receptivity Explained This paper will also seek to explain how social psychology has been a factor in influencing the reception and resistance to bilingualism. This paper has discussed how literacy is vital in determining the resistance or […]
• “Viva Bilingualism” by James Fallows In his article Viva Bilingualism, James Fallows analyzes such issue as bilingualism in the United States, in particular, the author argues that two or even more languages can successfully co-exist in America and it will […]
• History of Singaporean Education: Independence and Bilingualism in Schools The government increased budgetary allocation to the education and primary education received 59% of the budget allocation, whereas 27% and 14% of the budget allocation went to secondary school and higher education respectively.
• Bilingual Education: Benefit in Today’s World In most cases, the language is a part of any culture in the world, and preventing bilingual education can have a negative effect on many cultures in the United States.
• Bilingualism and English Only Laws According to, laws that require English to be the only official language that should be in U. However, supporters of laws that require English to be the only language that should be used in U.
• Bilingual Education: Enhancing Teachers Quality More so, the number of English language learners in the urban classes is increasing in such a rate that the number of bilingual teachers has to be increased in ten fold.
• Bilingual E-Dictionaries and Machine Translators Efficiency This research covers the actual practice of translation in relation to the field of lexicology which is “the study of words and their meanings in one language or a group of languages”..
• Bilingualism: Views of Language The degree of development of speech inevitably affects feeling of the child when skill to state the ideas and to understand speech of associates influences their place and a role in a society.
• Bilingual Education in the United States As soon as a flexible approach making the process of code-switching easier for the ELLs is adopted, improvements in bilingual education can be expected.
• Bilingualism and Executive Functions in Children CLS is the only school in Northern California to implement KIP for students in grades K-5, and to increase the parents’ awareness of the true benefits of the program, a study devoted to the advantages […]
• English Vocabulary Acquisition in Bilingual Students The principal emphasis is put on the lexical side of the language; thus, the researchers carry out a detailed analysis of the vocabulary units that the students employ.
• Bilingual Education for Hispanic Americans The right to learn a native language is incorporated as Article 29 of the Convention of Right of a Child in the General assembly of the United Nations in 1989.
• Why Bilinguals Are Smarter? The tasks have led to the assertion that bilingualism has an effect on the brain that leads to improvement of the cognitive skills that are not related to language.
• Bilingual Education Impact on Preschoolers The key questions to be addressed in the literature review are concerned with the understanding of children’s early development in relation to bilingual education: Is dual-language learning beneficial or disadvantageous for small children?
• Parents Challenges: Raising Bilingual Children The problem is significant due to the lack of parents’ knowledge about the importance of language development and the absence of efforts on the part of educators with regards to teaching bilingual children.
• Bilingual and ESL Programs Implementation in Schools As for ESL pull-out programs, they are based on pulling minority students out of the mainstream classroom to provide them with class instruction in English as a second language.
• The Implementation of Bilingual Schools in America This kind of study was due to the demands by the Spanish immigrants in the United States that their children learn the English language as well.
• Bilingual Education for Minority Language Students in the US According to Kim, the aim of the research is to underline the significance of the bilingual approach and determine the trends in this field in American society.
• Bilingual Education Concept One of the reasons as to why there is opposition to bilingual education is the fact that students tend to greatly rely on their native language, keeping them from learning as well as having proficiency […]
• Education: Bilingual Kindergarten A major problem with bilingualism in kindergartens is that it leads to a lack of mastery in either of the languages.
• The Peculiarities of the Bilingual Education The peculiarities of the bilingual situation in the context of Melbourne, Victoria, with focusing on the usage of the Italian language In relation to the question of using one or more languages, Australia can be […]
• “Translanguaging in the Bilingual Classroom: A Pedagogy for Learning and Teaching” Among the benefits of flexible pedagogy and flexible bilingualism identified by the authors are ease of communication and preservation of culture, indiscrimination of a second language and simultaneous ‘literacies’ endorsement as students participating in bilingual […]
• Benefits of Bilingualism Among Kindergarten Children The purpose of this report is to show the benefits of learning more than one language among kindergarten children. The purpose of this report is to analyse the benefits of learning two languages among kindergarten […]
• Bilingual Education: Programmes in Australia In this situation, the English language is the primary language in Australia, and the other languages are discussed as the languages of minorities.
• Paweł Zielinski’s Report on Bilingualism This text aims to find the correct definition of the term ‘bilingual’, by identifying the characteristics that define a bilingual, the distinctions caused by the different times a language is learned, and whether learning a […]
• Bilingualism and the Process of Language Acquisition: Speeding up Cognition and Education Processes When it comes to mentioning the positive aspects of being a bilingual person, the first and the foremost advantage to mention is the ability to convey specific ideas in either of the languages without any […]
• Bilingualism in East Asia Countries In most East Asian countries, multilingualism is restricted to elites; although patterns of language ability differ between the classes multilingualism is the norm at all levels of the society.
• Sociolinguistics: Bilingualism and Education This means that children are forced to acquire the language of majority to be treated in accordance with the same rules and traditions applicable to the monolingual majority.
• Bilingual Development: Second Language Acquisition Successive acquisition is similar to first language acquisition because a child learns the second language through analysis of rules and making errors.
• Bilingual Education: Programs Support On this note, the fact that a vast number of researches support bilingual education efficacy is evident that children exposed to these programs are more successful that those in all-English programs.
• The Benefits of Being Bilingual in a Global Society And, it represents the matter of crucial importance for educators to be able to adopt a proper perspective onto the very essence of bilingualism/multilingualism, as it will increase their ability to design teaching strategies in […]
• Why Is Bilingual Education Important Considering the diversity nature of students in any classroom scenario, it is important for the teaching orientation to adopt a variety of mechanisms, which will ensure there is satisfaction of all learner needs.
• Bilingualism Affects Audio-Visual Phoneme Identification
• Role of Bilingualism and Biculturalism as Assets in Positive Psychology
• The Intellectual Power of Bilingualism
• Bilingualism Impact on Intelligence and Scholastic Achievement
• Why Bilingual Education Is Even More Relevant Today
• The Benefits of Raising a Bilingual Child With Autism
• Perspectives on Bilingualism and Bilingual Education for Deaf Learners
• Bilingualism in the Education of Adolescents
• The Roots of Bilingualism in Newborns
• Advantages of Bilingualism and Multilingualism
• The Cognitive Benefits of Bilingualism in Autism Spectrum Disorder
• The Bilingual Brain: Language, Culture, and Identity
• Are the Cognitive Benefits of Bilingualism Restricted to Language
• Bilingualism and Its Importance in Education
• Executive Function and Bilingualism in Young and Older Adults
• Benefits of Bilingualism in Early Childhood
• Audio-Visual Integration During Bilingual Language Processing
• Economic Advantages of Bilingualism
• Myths & Facts About Bilingual Children
• The Impact of Bilingualism on Cognitive Development
• Bilingualism and Bilingual Education as a Problem Right and Resource
• Parents’ Attitudes Towards Bilingualism and Bilingual Education
• Structural Brain Changes Related to Bilingualism
• The Effects of Bilingualism on Language Development of Children
• Bilingual Benefits Reach Beyond Communication
• Teacher Candidates’ Beliefs About and Knowledge of Bilingualism and Bilingual Education
• Childhood Second Language Learning and Subtractive Bilingualism
• The Effect of Bilingualism and Age on the Subcomponents of Attention
• How Bilingualism Can Affect the Way Individuals Interact
• Foreign Language Acquisition, Bilingualism, and Biculturalism
• The Influence of Bilingualism on Third Language Acquisition
• What Are the Advantages and Disadvantages of Bilingualism
• Bilingualism and Its Impact on the Development of the World
• Why Bilingual Students Have a Cognitive Advantage for Learning to Read
• Do Bilinguals Have Better Cognitive Control
• Language Lateralization in Adult Bilinguals
• Flexibility in Task Switching by Monolinguals and Bilinguals
• Assessing the Double Phonemic Representation in Bilingual Speakers of Spanish and English
• Benefits of Bilingualism: Why Is Bilingual Education Important
• Bilingual Education Helps to Improve the Intelligence of Children
• Is Bilingualism Important in Today’s Generation?
• How Does Bilingualism Impact an English Language Learner?
• Does Bilingualism Improve Brain Functioning?
• Why Do the Effects of Bilingualism Change Language Acquisition?
• How Can Bilingualism Have a Positive Impact on a Country?
• What Is the Importance of Bilingualism in Globalization?
• How Does Bilingualism Affect the Learning Process of Children?
• Is Bilingualism Growing in the US?
• How Does Bilingualism Increase Brain Power?
• What Factors Influence the Development of Bilingualism?
• Does Bilingualism Among the Native Born Pay?
• How Can Bilingualism Affect Cognitive Functions?
• Why Is Bilingualism Important in the US?
• How Does Bilingualism Improve Your Health?
• What Are the Advantages of Early Bilingualism?
• Does Bilingualism Improve Social Life?
• How Does Bilingualism Affect Society?
• What Are the Benefits of Bilingual Education to the Society?
• Does Bilingualism Affect Cognitive Development?
• How Does Bilingualism Help the Economy?
• Does Bilingualism Affect Culture?
• What Are the Challenges of Bilingualism?
• How Does Bilingualism Impact Language Development?
• What Is the Relationship Between Bilingualism and Cognition?
• How Is Bilingualism Good for a Country?
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IvyPanda . (2024) '119 Bilingualism Essay Topic Ideas & Examples'. 2 March.

IvyPanda . 2024. "119 Bilingualism Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." March 2, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/bilingualism-essay-topics/.

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IvyPanda . "119 Bilingualism Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." March 2, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/bilingualism-essay-topics/.

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