Benefits of Bilingualism or Multilingualism
By Daniela Pérez
If your child is learning foreign languages at school or you are passing your mother tongue to them, knowing in depth the benefits of bilingualism or multilingualism as you prepare your child for their future will encourage you to keep pressing forward in the language learning journey.
Being bilingual or multilingual is a benefit that should not be taken for granted in today’s globalized world. While you learned a second or third language through school, parents/grandparents, traveling, or later in life, the advantages are very tangible in many areas.
For this article we will divide the benefits into four categories to make it easy to understand and share with our kids the reasons why they are learning a new language.
As a side note, when older kids know why they are learning a new language they are more likely to stick with it and they would help you look for opportunities to practice the target language. This can be a fun family discussion.
Cognitive benefits of Multilingualism
The brain executive functions are the areas of our brain that enable us to plan, concentrate, focus attention, remember instructions, and juggle multiple tasks successfully. Learning more than one language makes our brain take a close note of our attention, being mentally flexible, concentrating on a task for a longer period of time, and finding solutions to a problem with another point of view. Research has also shown a delay in the decline of our cognitive abilities of our brains preventing illnesses like Alzheimer’s disease and intellectual flexibility.
Therefore learning a new language keeps our brains healthy for the long run. Just for this reason alone, learning a new language is important for any child or adult. But as we know, there are more reasons…
Educational benefits of multilingualism
When we learn a new language we enhance our metalinguistic awareness by making connections with similar words in both languages. Our vocabulary increases and we are able to read and write texts in both languages. Our reasoning works at a higher level as we have to think about content in both languages. All these skills help our brain to be ready to acquire a new language more easily in the future if we choose to.
Economic benefits of multilingualism
Maybe this is one of the reasons that motivated a lot of people to learn languages, providing fluent bilateral bilinguals or multilinguals with the opportunity to earn a better income. As our societies are more globalized there is a higher demand for bilinguals and multilinguals workers in the private and public sectors. Bigger companies are doing business with more countries, and having people in house that speak the language is very appealing to them. The opportunities in this area are endless since a bilateral bilingual-multilingual person can also obtain a job overseas due to their language skills.
Socio-cultural benefits of multilingualism
When you learn a new language you also learn cultural aspects of that country. Languages and cultures are interconnected, which allows us to have a better understanding of other cultures. We also develop empathy for human kind and appreciate our own culture. If you are passing your mother language to your kids this is an important aspect of your language learning journey as you want your children to understand and appreciate their cultural heritage as well as speak with family members.
Learning a new language also helps us to improve our self-esteem. Learning a second language is work but when kids or adults start seeing their progress they are happy to accomplish a difficult task as they communicate with people from other cultures. Proud moment!
This website has a great graphic about a bilingual brain.
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