Bilingualism in The World Essay Example

De Groot’s study on language awareness. Since an early age, in fact, it was always obvious to me how “Bilinguals excel at paying selective attention to relatively subtle aspects of a language task” (Matlin, 392).

Breaking down sentences and pin-pointing minor grammatical details seemed much more natural and obvious to me than to my monolingual classmates. From this follows that I have always been very meticulous about grammatical mistakes; in a sense, fluency in two languages has given me more material to chose from when trying to analyze the way I say and construct sentences. Additionally, it is also clear how I constantly compare the two languages when speaking, wondering which one would get the message across more concisely but yet in a more clear manner. Without a doubt, I can say that both languages helped me gain a better understanding of the other one and enabled me to think more critically in both academic and social settings.

Another advantage which explains the beauty of bilingualism can be observed in any bilingual person who is talking to another bilingual, especially when the two share both languages. From my experience, episodes like this highlight the complexity of having two languages to sort through simultaneously. For instance, whenever talking to one of my relatives who is also fluent in the two languages I speak, we both eventually (come to the realization that communicating is rendered much simpler when the two languages intertwine and blend into each other. In other words, (I believe our neurological pathways have become more alike as a direct result of speaking multiple languages. This leads to a type of communication that is much more interesting,

meaningful and exciting. To reiterate, bilingualism is about forging new, more numerous, and usually more efficient brain connections, in such a way that renders the idea of only knowing one language outdated and almost antiquated.

Aside from all the positive qualities of individuals who speak more than one language, there are a few reported disadvantages. Some sources claim that “…bilinguals know fewer words of any semantic category in comparison to people that speak fluently only one language – their vocabularies seemed to be somewhat smaller than those of monolingual speakers…” (Gollan, Montoya, Werner). Logically this makes sense, as a person has to store twice as much information per “item,” it is predictable that a bilingual’s vocabulary may be smaller in each language respectively, even though more information is being stored and processed. (Michael and Gollan). Additionally, as mentioned in another study: “bilinguals suffer more from 'tip of the tongue' moments than monolingual speakers” (Gollan, Acenas, 246-269).

Tip-of-the-tongue experience (TOT) is associated with “…a variety of cues, heuristics, or sources of evidence, such as partial information, related information, and cue familiarity…”. (Schwartz, Bennett). In other words, the study underlines bilinguals’ overall slower recalling skills, which can be explained by looking at the broader amount of information through which the bilingual brain’s search process has to filter. From experience I can relate to the above-mentioned claims: I have noticed that quite often recalling a word takes longer than monolingual people, and I many times I have bought myself thinking along the lines of “what’s that word…?” However, in my opinion, the benefits and brain elasticity typical of multilingual people outweigh the small temporal disadvantages.

Just like everything in life, multilingualism

is beneficial if done with moderation. While raising a bilingual kid appears to have far more benefits than side effects, one must also take into consideration the child’s mental well being. For example, should the kid show signs of confusion in mastering just one language, it is not advisable to “push” a second language, for doing so might hinder the child’s ability to learn either language (Grosjean). Living in Northern Italy, my parents dwelled on the idea of sending me to school in Switzerland so that I could learn German starting from kindergarten. However, after discussing the idea with a psychologist, they reconsidered in light of the possibility of overwhelming a 3-year-old with as many languages as his years of life. Obviously I cannot know whether or not I could have taken on a third language before the age of four, but nevertheless, I am glad I was given the possibility of learning two. Speaking another language has opened many doors in my life, from the possibility of moving to the United States, to making adaptation of all kinds much smoother and less stressful. Bilingualism has been a founding stone of my personality; while I can only hope that one day everyone in the world will have the language opportunities I was so lucky to receive, I am confident my children will be at least bilingual.