The article “Bilingual brains – Smarter & Faster” is written by Judy Willis on November 22, 2012. The article describes bilingualism is a gift that parents can give their children because being bilingual has shown advantages when compared to those who know one language. These advantages include an elevated level of thinking/ awareness such as an increased attentive focus and cognition. For example, “compared to monolinguals, the studied bilingual children, who had had five to ten years of bilingual exposure, averaged higher scores in cognitive performance on tests and had greater attention focus, distraction resistance, decision-making, judgment and responsiveness to feedback.” Even in MRI scans, the prefrontal cortex networks of bilingual children demonstrated greater activity. These were specifically in the the brain networks called executive functions that are used for goal-oriented behavior. The brains of bilinguals are more complex since they need to figure out not only what a word means but what patterns of the sentence and grammar, and pronunciation that needs to be used for the language being spoken. For example: “these control networks make choices, such as which memory storage circuits are the language-correct ones to activate from which to select the correct word, syntax, and pronunciation. ”
Research has shown that parents who speak a different language than English should maintain the native language in the home even if there are social pressures to limit language learning. Parents feel that learning two languages will confuse the student in learning English and also making it difficult to transfer different schools. Also, children struggled to feel like they “fit in” due to having to translate for their parents and did not want their parents to sound “ignorant.” What these parents do not know is that learning two or more languages actually “strengthen their highest cognitive brain potentials.” Parents need to be informed about the research and keep the native language in the home. The brain is like a muscle that becomes stronger after we workout our body, that “build strength, speed, and efficiency in their executive function networks.” Now the research is done on how to expose children to bilingualism in early ages .
This is really important to for my research questions, as not only are the advantages of bilingualism being more commonly known, there is a visible growth in determining how to best achieve these advantages with our own children.
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Website Source: Willis, J., M.Ed. (2012, November 22). Bilingual brains - smarter & faster. Retrieved June 25, 2019, from Psychology Today website: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/radical-teaching/201211/bilingual-brains-smarter-faster
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