Soledad Pina

Soledad Pina Molina
Head of Lower School

 

Parents who want to offer their children a multilingual education often wonder about the pros and cons of exposing their children to different languages and how best to support their children’s language acquisition so that they become proficient speakers.

What is multilingualism?

Multilingualism refers to the ability to use two or more languages on a daily basis. Bilingualism is common, with perhaps one in three people being bilingual or multilingual, as using two or more languages on a daily basis is normal practice in some regions of every continent and increasingly so in many communities due to global movements.

However, despite the prevalence of bilingualism, very little scientific research has been conducted on this topic, particularly on the development of bilingualism at an early age. There are still no definitive answers to many questions, but with the number of studies conducted over the last few decades, some of them can be partially answered.

Advantages of multilingualism

Multilingualism offers a number of advantages that go beyond the linguistic level. Below are some of the main benefits of educating multilingual children, as supported by various studies:

  • Ease of travel
  • Better access to job opportunities
  • Stronger family and cultural ties
  • Ease of making friends
  • Better understanding of other people’s perspectives
  • Improved ability to switch tasks
  • Memory advantages

There is obvious evidence of the benefits of educating multilingual children: they will know several languages, which is important for travelling, finding employment, talking to family members, maintaining family and cultural connections, and making friends from different backgrounds. However, beyond these obvious linguistic benefits, researchers have studied whether bilingualism confers other non-linguistic advantages (Akhtar & Menjivar, 2012). Nowadays, it is easier to find texts related to this topic, such as The Bilingual Edge (King & Mackey, 2009), which explains the potential benefits of bilingualism at an early age.

Several studies suggest that multilingual people have certain advantages in the social sphere. This is not surprising, as multilingual individuals must navigate a complex social world where different people have different language skills. For example, bilingual preschoolers seem to have better skills for understanding others’ perspectives, thoughts, desires, and intentions (Bialystok & Senman, 2004).

Bilinguals also show some cognitive advantages. In particular, they seem to perform better on tasks that involve switching from one activity to another by being able to inhibit previously learned responses. Additionally, there is evidence that they are advantaged in certain aspects of memory, such as generalising information from one event to another later event (Brito & Barr, 2012).

How adults can help in the process

It is important to remember that children learn any language through listening and interacting with different speakers. They need to be exposed to the sounds, words, and grammar of the languages they will use. Both quality and quantity matter. High-quality language involves social interaction, so providing opportunities to interact with different speakers has been linked to vocabulary learning in multilingual children.

So, what strategies should parents use? The best answer is that every parent should use any strategy that promotes high-quality and high-quantity exposure to each of the child’s languages. This can include structured approaches such as using a different language depending on the person (one person, one language), place (one language at home, another outside the home), or time (alternating days of the week, mornings/afternoons).

Opting for an international education provides good opportunities for children to develop all the necessary linguistic structures appropriately and consistently, as well as opportunities for social interactions that consolidate language acquisition.

Myths about multilingualism

One of the biggest concerns parents often have about raising multilingual children is whether it will cause confusion. Except in cases of neurological problems, bilingual adults speak whichever language they choose at any given moment and are clearly not confused.

Bilingual children quickly distinguish between two languages and show no signs of confusion. By the age of 4 months, they can rhythmically identify similar languages such as French and Spanish (Bosch & Sebastián-Gallés, 1997). However, by the age of 8 months, only bilingual children are still sensitive to differences, while monolinguals stop paying attention to subtle variations in facial movements (Sebastián-Gallés, Albareda-Castellot, Weikum, & Werker, 2012). So, rather than showing confusion, it seems that bilingual babies are better at distinguishing the information that differentiates one language from another.

A misunderstood behaviour, often mistaken for confusion, is when a bilingual child mixes words from two languages in the same sentence. This is known as code-mixing. But in fact, code-mixing is a normal part of bilingual development and there are good reasons for it (B. Zurer Pearson, 2008).

So, are multilingual children more likely to have speech difficulties? The answer is no. Multilingual children are no more likely than monolingual children to have speech difficulties, learning delays or be diagnosed with a speech disorder (Petitto&Holowka, 2002; Paradis, Genesee, & Crago, 2010 ). Just as some monolingual children have speech delays or disorders, this can occur in multilingual children at the same rate. The fact that a bilingual child has a difficulty is not evidence that bilingualism can cause speech difficulties in general.

References

  • Akhtar, N., & Menjivar, J. (2012). The bilingual advantage: Language, literacy, and the role of the family. Cambridge University Press.
  • Bialystok, E., & Senman, L. (2004). The advantage of bilingualism for the development of executive functioning. Developmental Science, 7(2), 200–203. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7687.2004.00351.x
  • Bosch, L., & Sebastián-Gallés, N. (1997). Native-language recognition abilities in 4-month-old infants from monolingual and bilingual environments. Cognition, 65(1), 33–69. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0010-0277(97)00004-8
  • Brito, N. H., & Barr, R. (2012). The influence of bilingualism on the development of executive function. Developmental Science, 15(6), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7687.2012.01180.x
  • King, K., & Mackey, W. (2009). The bilingual edge: Why, when, and how to teach your child a second language. HarperCollins.
  • Paradis, J., Genesee, F., & Crago, M. B. (2010). Dual language development & disorders: A handbook on bilingualism & second language learning. Brookes Publishing.
  • Petitto, L. A., & Holowka, S. (2002). Bilingual signed and spoken language acquisition from birth: Implications for the nature of language and the bilingual brain. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6(11), 410–416. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1364-6613(02)01963-8
  • Sebastián-Gallés, N., Albareda-Castellot, B., Weikum, W. M., & Werker, J. F. (2012). A bilingual advantage in infant speech perception. Psychological Science, 23(9), 994–999. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797612448737
  • Zurer Pearson, B. (2008). Raising a bilingual child: A step-by-step guide to the most common questions and concerns. Living Language.