The Advantages of Being Bilingual

I have two children at home and both of them speak two languages from birth. What is more, I seem to have many students in my classes who are bilingual and without a doubt there is often a “you’re so lucky” look thrown at them by the other students who are forced to learn a second language the “normal” way.

Given the fact that our school places special emphasis on individual education while encouraging emotional, mental and intellectual development, we have many students who come from bilingual and international families. This means that I daily come in contact with numerous bilingual students and hence I have been reading many articles on the benefits of bilingualism lately and I’ve decided to gather some of the best ones into one post. 

The most significant advantage which has been reported recently must be the fact that “bilingual patients developed dementia 4.5 years later than the monolingual ones.” This was the outcome of a research lead by Dr. Thomas Bak. Suddenly, growing old doesn’t seem so bad J

Bilingualism has also been found to enhance a child’s working memory as shown by a research conducted by Ellen Bialystok at the University of Granada.

Bilinguals are better at multi-tasking. “Children who grow up learning to speak two languages are better at switching between tasks than are children who learn to speak only one language” as explained in Bilingual Children Switch Tasks Faster than Speakers of a Single Language.

Bilingualism makes you more open-minded and sensitive to others:  “bilinguals have an enhanced awareness of other people’s points of view, born from their deeper understanding, from an early age, that some people have a different perspective.”

This probably makes bilinguals better managers as well as stated in the Financial Times article The Multilingual Dividend.

Another study found that bilingualism enhances your listening ability. It showed that in a noisy environment bilinguals are “better at detecting the different sounds, therefore enhancing attention.”

Bilingual children are less easily distracted. Judy Willis MD, a neurologist, teacher and author states that “compared to monolinguals, the bilingual children develop greater attention focus, distraction resistance, decision-making judgment and responsiveness to feedback”  and that “research supports encouraging parents to retain use of their native language in the home” in her article Neuroscience and the Bilingual Brain.

If you grow up as a bilingual you are often also bicultural. In his article Advantages of Being Bicultural  Prof François Grosjean lists the benefits as “having a greater number of social networks, being aware of cultural differences, taking part in the life of two or more cultures, being an intermediary between cultures” as well as having “greater creativity and professional success”.

So, next time my 7 year old places a Czech word in the middle of his English sentence, or one of my bilingual students confuses Czech and English pronunciation – I will just give them a “sympathetic look” and think: “Yeah, you’re still better off than I am.”

… and to the rest of the students… I just gave 8 reasons to start studying your second or third language…. The more the better J