Bilingualism and the Advantages of Multilingual Capability

Bilingualism
The concept of bilingualism is common across the globe in the contemporary society for instance in Europe 56% are known to speak in a language other than their mother tongue. This trend is seen to both facilitate cross cultural communication and enhancing cognitive abilities of individuals. Those that are bilingual are known to be better in attention and task switching than those who are monolingual due to the capability to inhibit one language while using another. Children under the age of seven who are bilingual are also known to be better at coping with the environmental changes than the monolingual children.
Language is the essential tool that we use to understand the world around us and to communicate our feelings and thoughts. It is also the tool we use to connect cross-culturally. Though the US is widely known to be monolingual, one fifth of over five years population are known to be multilingual. 66% of the world’s children are estimated to be raised bilingual.
Bilingualism and cognition
Research indicates that when a bilingual uses one language, the other language is also active. Hearing a word comes in sequence not whole word at once, hence the brain system will start guessing what the word is even before the entire word is said hence activating many words in both the languages, this is referred to as language co-activation. It is however concluded that this linguistic competition can cause difficulty in language, for instance naming pictures slowly and instances where the speaker is unable to conjure the word but can recall all the details about the word. Constant switching between two languages can also confuse the listener if they do not properly understand both languages. From such challenges, in order for the brain to maintain balance between two languages, there is need to have general cognitive abilities which include the process of attention and inhibition. The language system of a bilingual individual are always active and competing, hence the individual uses the inhibition and attention every time he speaks or listens.
Bilinguals often perform better on tasks that require conflict management. The ability to ignore competing perceptual information and focus on the relevant aspects of the input is called inhibitory control. Bilingual people often perform better than monolingual people at tasks that tap into inhibitory control ability. This means the bilinguals are can be better in handling tasks that tap into the inhibitory control than the monolinguals. The bilinguals are also known to be better in switching between two tasks than the monolinguals. It appears that bilingual experience not only changes the way neurological structures process information, but also may alter the neurological structures themselves.
There are practical benefits in being bilingual. One of them is that the improvement in cognitive and sensory processing triggered by bilingualism can help this individual better process information in the environment which leads to a clearer signal for learning. Such kind of improved attention can explain why a bilingual can learn a third language faster than a monolingual would learn a second language. Bilingualism appears to provide a means of fending off a natural decline of cognitive function and maintaining what is called “cognitive reserve.” The bilingualism is also known to reduce diseases such as Alzheimer with bilingual patients showing signs of the disease at an average age of 77.7 years as compared to the 72.6 years for the monolinguals (Marian V, 2012).
Advantages and disadvantages of bilingualism
The bilingual capacity comes with several advantages some of which have been mentioned hitherto. Notable ones are the fact that being bilingual leads to improved cognitive skills. The bilinguals are also known to have more efficient monitoring system, such that even though the monolinguals and bilinguals have the same brain response in situations where the brain’s monitoring system is not taxed, when it comes to a situation where high monitoring demands, the bilinguals are seen to be faster. The bilinguals are also known to have a delay in cognitive damage like the dementia and cognitive degenerative diseases. There are also linguistic skills that come with being bilingual which are the ability to learn new words, spotting rhymes and other associations between words, ability to use possessed information in new ways, word categorization, coming up with solutions to problems, good listening skills and improved communication skills.
There are some disadvantages that have been associated to bilingualism through numerous researchers. One is that the bilinguals may have weaker verbal skills than the monolinguals since they have two competing and constantly active languages which leads to more taxing of the brain. It is also said that the bilinguals have fewer words of any of the given languages or weaker vocabulary they know as compared to the individual who knows only one language (Myler T., 2018).
Approach for second language acquisition
There are various approaches or theories to second language acquisition. However, among the many, the one that would work best for me is the functional or communicative approach to second language acquisition. This is also referred to as the natural approach and it focuses on the use of language for communication. This approach includes multiple aspects of communicative process with the language structures which are chosen in line with their utility in achieving a communicative purpose. This approach is concerned mainly with the input that the learner imbibes, level of comprehension of the message of the language being learned as well as the student engagement according to their individual levels of competence (Mora J.K., 2018).
This above chosen method of second language acquisition is best suited for students since it will increase cognitive function in different professional settings. The method does not confine the student to the grammatical rule of the language at the onset, but it looks at the daily life functionality of the language. This approach hence helps the learner to freely practice the language being learned rather than the rules of grammar held therein. This freedom of expression helps lower the official nature of the professional learning environment, hence giving the learner lesser anxiety about the hard rules of the grammar of the language, an act that increases interest of the individual.
Reference
Marian V, (2012). The Cognitive Advantage of being Bilingual. Retrieved June 22, 2018 from https://dana.org/Cerebrum/2012/The_Cognitive_Benefits_of_Being_Bilingual/
Mora J.K., (2018). Second and Foreign Language Teaching Methods. Retrieved June 22, 2018 from http://moramodules.com/ALMMethods.htm
Myler T., (2018). Key Advantages and Disadvantages of Being Bilingual. Retrieved June 22, 2018 from https://www.omniglot.com/language/articles/bilingualadvantages.htm