As a bilingual speaker myself, it was quite interesting to read these articles that discussed why bilinguals are smarter and/or if bilinguals were actually smarter. The first article details how bilinguals are smarter because the use of both language systems allows strengthening of a brain’s cognitive muscles. The article also describes how bilingual speakers have an increased ability to monitor the environment, which is due to switching between speaking the primary and secondary language. For instance, I usually talk to my family members in Korean, but sometimes we switch our language to English, without even realizing it. This skill has become natural to me and I didn’t realize that this natural flow can actually positively influence my strengths as a bilingual speaker.
The second article takes this topic on the opposite side and questions whether bilingual speakers are indeed smarter. An interesting point that they made was that bilingual individuals may know more words overall, e.g. when combining both languages, but may know less words in each language, separately. I can definitely agree to this reasoning because I basically have two different ways to say one item, such as dog. However, I do sometimes feel like I lack a full span of vocabulary for both languages, when they are separated into the Korean vocabulary and the English vocabulary. Both articles were quite interesting to read because they allowed me to evaluate my skills as a bilingual speaker and how I can assess its strengths and weaknesses.
Comments