This is based on the reading "Why Billinguals are Smarter"
Bilingualism has its obvious benefits. But recent research says that there are many deeper advantages rather than just being able to converse with a wider group of people. It helps with the cognitive skills, affect how smart someone is and even help the elderly.
1st example, involves a child’s mind. Being bilingual helps a child’s academic and intellectual development. This has been proven by researchers, educators and scientists. It helps though, in a very “blessing in disguise” format. When one’s brain is using just one language, the other is still active. This creates interference. But instead of being negative, it actually allows the brain to deal with internal conflict and gives it a workout and strengthens it. This allows bilinguals to solve problems much faster than monolinguals. This has been solved in a simple experiment using two bins, red squares and blue circles. The task involved sorting the squares and circles based on shape with conflicting colors. The result which came of it, was that the bilinguals seemed to perform the task much faster which proves that bilingualism improves the brain’s executive function which allows us to stretch our mind and put it to doing difficult tasks that involve distractions.
This is not the only advantage; bilinguals who can perform tasks that don’t involve conflict or ignore distractions, can also do many other things, but at a greater speed. They can perform activities with lesser effort in parts of the brain than monolinguals can which proves that they are efficient.
The 2nd example involves infants. A study in Italy proved that infants who are exposed to more than one language from birth seemed to be better than the ones that aren’t. The study involved the infants to look on one side of a screen where there was a puppet. The study made the puppet come on the opposite side of the screen at moments and at these moments the infants who were exposed to bilingual environments seemed to have that much concentration and focus that they followed the puppet wherever it went, while the other infants didn’t.
A 3rd example involves a study in California. It shows that bilinguals are more resistant than others to the onset of dementia and other symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease.
Bilingualism has become something that every individual encourages. All parents want to see their children speak a language that they aren’t familiar with. It is something that enhances the mind to become better in all ways possible. As Nelson Mandela says “If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his own language, that goes to his heart.”
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