Bilingualism is slowly becoming a popular “trend”. Those who are able to speak a second language at an advanced level and not only, are clearly considered by the society intellectually capable of great things. As a bilingual, the individual must not only know the grammar rules or achieve a high level in communication. He also has to study the cultural background of that specific language. Knowing a second language has a major impact on one’s life. It does not only change his vision on the world, and other cultures, but it also affects his internal psychology, his emotional side which influences furthermore his relationships with other people: relatives, friends and strangers. A bilingual child has a specific cultural and social background. As Ellen Bialystok says, the neighbourhood and the educational arrangement must be taken in consideration when speaking about his language abilities. (Ellen Bialystok, p. 1) The factors that lead to his or her bilingualism “influence the nature of children’s cognitive development.” (Ellen Bialystok, p1). Bilingualism is experienced by any human being, no matter the age. Even “at the lowest levels of knowledge (…) exposure to fragments of other languages is unavoidable”. Pure monolingualism is hardly a reality, especially nowadays when books and movies in foreign languages are available and easy to reach by any individual. Ellen Bialystok is right about how children experience “different kinds of interactions
Bilingual people often get pushed away or bullied for not being able to speak a new language. Bilingual speakers should feel like they belong in their own identity. They should also speak out about their struggles and challenges with bilingualism. In the essay, "Hunger of Memory", Richard Rodriguez explains that being able to keep his native tongue while also learning a new language can be very helpful in the outside world. Being able to acknowledge different languages can help at school, work, or even just the grocery store.
For bilinguals, education normally starts off as a challenging time when little English is spoken in their home. Rodriguez, a first generation Mexican American, had a limited exposure to English because Spanish was entirely spoken together with his family. Therefore, he considered it to be his private language because he felt most comfortable and confident using it. Due to Richard’s insufficient practice with English, he suffered developing and speaking with others outside of his household. As a result, Rodriguez’s parents took awareness and encouraged him to speak in English at home.
The timeliness of the article is recent, it was published in 2014. The authors are reliable, both Bialystok and Craik have degrees in psychology, as well as conducted some of this research themselves. This article proves its truthfulness with citing where they received some of their information about advances of bilingualism. The purpose of this article is to educate the scientific audience that there is evidence of bilingualism being a benefit on our
In the essay “Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood” (1981), Richard Rodriguez, an experienced writer, expressed that “…it is not possible to for a child – any child – ever to use his family’s language in school” and began expressing his past experiences with bilingualism (510). Rodriguez recollects his feelings toward the accents he has listened to throughout his childhood, his “disabling confusion” from gaining fluency in English and Spanish, and the intimacy passing between sounds and words (519). By implementing his personal experiences, he entices his reader into reading actively in order to express how confusing, yet beneficial bilingualism can be. Rodriguez’s audience is focused to those who can relate when using more than one language
Adults who attempt to learn a new language can understand the logic of the new language but can’t fully master jargons, diction, and exceptions to grammar rules. Researchers discovered that when adults mastered two languages in childhood, both languages were located in the same areas of the brain with no influence on the cortex. Bilingual adults keep the two languages unconnected, starting one and temporarily stopping the other when speaking to an individual who only speaks one
During the 1970’s, California was in an uproar of submersion of bilingual education in the public education system. This period of permissive was a landmark for bilingual education because Lau V. Nichols marked a movement that lead to assimilation to redefine unification of the Americanization in the United States during this period. First, to understand the movement, in 1906 the Nationality Act passed that implicated the first legislation that required incoming immigrants to speak English as the dominant language (Barker, 2011). I believe in order to understand what is going on in the present you have to understand the history.
Language forms a part of culture and identity. Bilingualism is the right to speak multiple languages. Part of bilingualism is keeping and developing a passion for language. In the essay “The New Bathroom Policy at English High School,” Martín Espada suggests the definition of bilingualism and the importance of keeping it. Espada understands the difficulty of continuing to speak Spanish.
However, in order for one to truly understand the arguments made by the authors they must also understand the context behind these arguments; therefore, knowing how the individual authors’ definition of bilingualism lets the reader truly absorb what points they’re trying to make and why. In Espada’s essay, he defines bilingualism as a way for a person to remain in contact with their different cultural identities. There are many areas in the essay where the reader could interpret this definition from. However, the most significant piece of evidence appears at the beginning of the essay where Espada mentions his friend Jack Agueros’ analogy to describe his bilingualism “English and Spanish are like two dogs I love. English is an obedient dog.
Having a second language in your background is so impactful on one’s life, providing them with more skills. This is the 21st century and having this skill helps an individual be
If students begin their bilingual education as early as kindergarten, they are more likely to successfully acquire a second language. Children are like sponges and soak up information easily. Research conducted by Dr. Patricia Kuhl at the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences at the University of Washington shows that by 8-12 months, if babies are exposed to a second language, they retain the ability to distinguish those foreign sounds. Moreover, through the age of 7 or 8, children are able to learn to speak a second language with fluent grammar and without an accent.
The more language knowledge significantly helps towards your career as you know. Bilinguals have the privilege of get their information from a wider variety of resources. Also, it has great educational benefit to kids. Many studies suggest that bilingual children tend to have a higher concentration and are better at working through distraction while doing their school work. Research has shown that bilinguals score higher on average on tests involving creative thinking or problem solving.
Increasing development of bilingual education and the evolution of language may be due to the population size, social, political, economical and personal requirements. Numerous researches show that learning a language can improve mental agility, it can strengthen brain, develop communicative abilities of invidividuals and strengthen and improve overall humans´ abilities and skills. The concept of bilingualism should be tackled because of the various definitions that are given to this term. Those definitions seem to share one basic element, which is the use of two given languages by a given speaker. According to Merriam-Webster dictionary bilingualism is the ability to speak two languages or the frequent use (as by a community) of two languages.
The ability to develop foreign language become reduces. Besides the age factor Experience and school environment as well as the teaching. They play an important role in the development of language skills. So the bilingual is necessary: using
Being bilingual has got many advantages. It has been debated that bilingualism has multiple advantages such as cognitive, cultural, academic benefits as well. Cognitive benefit reveals that being bilingual help to facilitate human brain. People who are bilingual have two language systems which are working simultaneously. These systems don’t create hindrance in individual’s performance and ensure brain’s functioning of both cognitive aspects (Bialystok, 1999).
The notion of bilingualism is frequently connected to the idea of code-switching since a person should have ability to speak using two or more than one variety. Researchers have made countless studies describing bilingualism as they create awareness in different ways. To begin with is Bloomfield (1933) who defined bilingualism as having the “native- like control of two languages”. However, Haugen (1953) pinpointed that bilingualism is the ability of a speaker to communicate and understand an additional variety. This is to mean that the concept of bilingualism exist only when an individual of a certain variety has the capability to communicate effectively in an additional variety.