Learning journal #9 - SDLC 105

[Ziwei Liao]

In Matter’s article “Why bilinguals Are Smarter”, he talks about there are fundamental benefits for bilingualism – being smart. Being bilingual has positive effect on the brain, and can improve cognitive skills even not related to speak language.  The reason is that bilingual’s brain has both languages active. When two languages are working at the same time in the brain, it helped the brain to resolve internal conflict, just like a workout for the brain.  The experiment of asking bilingual and monolingual children to sort blue circles and red squares showed that bilingual children are faster and more accurate in performing the task. I agree all the benefits for being a bilingual.  However, there were also concerns over training kids to be bilingual at very young age.  Because they are receiving double the information, they might be slower than monolingual in learning the one particular language because other kids put all attention into learning one language and can practice more.