Today, there are approximately 6,500 spoken languages worldwide. No wonder that the majority of the world population is at east bilingual. In the United States, however, only 20 % of individuals speak two or more languages. The world we know is progressively becoming more and more globalized. The possibility to travel freely, international trade, innovative technologies and outsourcing are creating numerous possibilities for bilingual people. Speaking more than one language represents numerous benefits for individuals, families, and society in general. Multilingualism provides people with life-long intellectual, cultural, social, economic and health advantages. It improves cognitive functioning, irrespectively of the languages involved. It enhances the cognitive load that a person can handle at once, while improving semantic and episodic memory, increasing meta-linguistic awareness, and developing problem-solving and conflict management skills. Speaking more than one language offers significant academic benefits to students, while enhancing their decision-making and critical thinking skills. It also provides young employment seekers with an increased number of job opportunities (Marian & Shook). This paper argues that bilingualism offers numerous benefits and should be encouraged.
Bilingualism provides students with academic advantages. Being able to switch between different languages positively affects flexibility of their brain, enabling students to deal with a number of tasks faster and easier. Bilingualism positively affects focusing, critical thinking, remembering and decision making skills. Bilinguals have advantages in learning new languages and remembering large amounts of information. Maintaining high brain activity provides numerous mental health benefits. Bilingualism facilitates human mind to stay sharp for long time, because of connections between languages formed in the brain. It may even postpone the onset of dementia. Bilingual children are advantaged in comparison to their monolingual peers. The ability to switch between languages enables them developing flexible approaches to finding solution to problems. Children learning to read in their native language have a strong background to build upon when they start learning a second language. It facilitates the knowledge transfer related to reading into their second language.
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"The Benefits of Speaking More Than One Language".
Bilingualism may have positive effects on both individual’s s personal life and career. People who speak more than one language integrate easier and faster in today’s globalized society. Developed cultural and social skills enable bilinguals to adapt their behaviors, attitudes and values to different cultures, while blending and combining the aspects of the involved cultures. People who speak more than one language have more success in creativity, social relations, and professional field. According to a study conducted by the researchers from the University of Florida, bilingual Americans have more job opportunities and earn on average $7,000 more than their monolingual peers (Fradd 24).
Bilingualism provides cognitive benefits and reinforces decision-making skills. In order to maintain balance between multiple languages, the brain of bilinguals relies on executive functions, a system regulating cognitive abilities that involves processes like inhibition and attention. Due to the fact that all language systems in the bilingual person’s brain are active and competing, one utilizes these control mechanisms each time when speaking or listening. This constant activity reinforces the control mechanisms and modifies the associated regions in the brain. Bilinguals are often better in conflict management and critical thinking tasks. This is related to the ability to disregard competing information, while focusing on the relevant input aspects.
It is important for our nation to realize how much positive impact bilingualism can offer to particular individuals and to society in general. Additionally to having social, cognitive, intellectual, cultural and economic advantages, speaking more than one language is good for health. This suggests the necessity to support bilingualism in families, while promoting bilingual education in schools and universities in order to increase the number of bilingual Americans.
- Fradd, S. “Developing a Language-Learning Framework for Preparing Florida’S Multilingual Work Force”. Creating Florida’s Multilingual Global Work Force, 1st ed., Florida Department of Education, Miami, 2000.
- Marian, V and A Shook. “The Cognitive Benefits Of Being Bilingual”. Cerebrum, vol 13, 2012.
