Keep Your Brain Healthy: The Additional Benefits of Being Bilingual
Before the 1960s, bilingualism was considered an obstacle to children learning to speak because they had to spend too much energy distinguishing between languages. In fact, more modern research has shown that this energy helps with a number of executive functions, such as the ability to focus and solve problems.
When you use two or more languages to communicate, your brain works differently: two parts of your brain are active (for speaking and writing) and the other two parts are passive (for listening and reading).
There are three specific types of bilingualism:
AcompoundBilingual is a child who develops two languages simultaneously: many of the children at IMS already have two native languages that they are learning at home, neither of which may be Spanish or English. When they get to school, they are also immersed in those two languages and will absorb vocabulary from both languages.
AcoordinateBilingual is someone who uses two languages in two different contexts (such as school and home). Older students who have moved to a new country are often described this way.
Abilingual subordinate-as is the case with many adults- is someone who filters a new language through the first. This is why learning multiple languages simultaneously is so easy for young children: they use both sides of their brain and seem to have a more holistic understanding of the social and emotional contexts of each language. Being bilingual gives your brain notable advantages, with a greater density of gray matter containing neurons and synapses. This increased activity has been attributed to a delay in the onset of degenerative diseases such as dementia and Alzheimer’s.
It is quite clear that, apart from the advantage of being able to speak more than one language, the route and method by which young children learn several languages simultaneously contributes to other cognitive advantages: improved memory and attention. Working memory – which is the temporary storage of information – tends to be better in bilingual children than in monolingual children.
So while being bilingual doesn’t necessarily make you smarter, it does make your brain healthier, more cognitive, and more active.
Give your children a head start in life and introduce them to another language as young as possible.
