Hetyey Annamária: Bilingualism - a blessing or a curse?

Bilingualism – a blessing or a curse?

Bilingualism is a phenomenon which interests not only linguists, but sociologists, anthropologists and even ordinary people. Strictly, bilingualism means that one can use two languages with nearly equal fluency. The conflict between the advantages and disadvantages of bilingualism is usually referred to as the “bilingual paradox”. Being able to communicate, speak or write in two or more languages seems a great advantage in many fields of life. However, researchers and scientists have showed that there is another side of the coin in connection with bilingualism. Of course, the question is not as simple as it is stated in the title, but there is a significant amount of both advantages and disadvantages of learning more than one language at an early age. In my essay, I will present arguments on both sides, without attempting to be comprehensive.

As Sorace (2011) states, bilingualism is not just knowing more than one language. It has long term positive effects in adulthood and even in old age. Bilingual children not only understand language structures more spontaneously, which leads them to learn any foreign language easier, but they also have advantages that go beyond languages. These advantages can be observed in tasks that include cognitive flexibility and attention control: research proves that bilinguals are better at selectively paying attention, selecting irrelevant information, and at switching between different solutions to a problem (Sorace, 2011).

The base of these cognitive advantages is that bilinguals have to keep the two languages separate from each other and therefore they develop a strong mechanism to do so. Bilingual children have the constant experience of two languages being available in their brains and they have to suppress one of them when the other one is active and used. This action leads them to improve their executive control which is retained throughout their lifespan (Sorace, 2011). Executive control is a system, which consists of three units: inhibition, working memory and cognitive flexibility (Bialystok and Viswanathan, 2009).

It is proven that bilingualism has a positive effect on executive control, but there is less agreement about the components that are affected by bilingualism. This improvement of the executive control develops in childhood by bilinguals; it maintains more efficient performance in adulthood and declines less severely with aging (Bialystok, 2009). Supporting the same argument, several studies and experiments conducted by Ellen Bialystok (as cited in Bialystok, 2009; Sorace, 2011; Bialystok and Viswanathan, 2009) show that bilingual children perform better than monolingual children on metalinguistic tasks that require controlled attention and inhibition; they also develop an ability to solve problems with conflicting or misleading cues at an earlier age than monolinguals (Bialystok, 2009). Another proof for the advantage of the more developed executive control can be found in Bialystok’s paper (2009), precisely the card sorting task developed by Zelazo (as cited in Bialystok, 2009). Bilingual children are shown to master the task’s problem, which is “the ability to switch criteria for the sorting decision and attend to the new feature while the irrelevant feature remains salient” (Bialystock, 2009), earlier than monolinguals. A study made by Carlson and Meltzoff in 2008 also showed that bilingual children performed better on tasks that showed conflict for competing options that had to be solved to get a correct response. This is similar to the situation in a bilingual child’s head, when the two languages collide and the child has to choose an appropriate form or answer. There is also evidence that the advantage in executive control by bilinguals is not connected to one specific cultural background. The study of Bialystok and Viswanathan (2009) showed that bilingual children in Canada and in India perform similarly in tasks investigating the bilingual advantages or disadvantages.

When we make a simple internet search about the benefits and the difficulties of bilingualism, it seems that people think that there are no disadvantages of being bilingual at all. A few bilinguals mention that they sometimes mix words from the two languages; that it is hard for them to feel that they are a member of either one of the two cultures, that they have bad grammar in both of the languages, or that bilingual children might start speaking later than monolinguals. As in many other cases, scholars, researchers and academicians have proven us wrong. The many advantages in executive control are also accompanied by disadvantages in the domain of language. One well documented aspect is that bilinguals have smaller vocabulary in each language than monolinguals (Bialystok, 2009; Sorace, 2011). This situation can mislead professionals like kindergarten teachers, doctors or the parents, since the size of a child’s vocabulary is associated with his or her language development, both in oral and literate forms (Bialystok, 2009). This disadvantage does not disappear as the children become older and grow up; it just presents itself in another way.

In the case of adults, the access to vocabulary and lexical retrieval of words takes more time. As Bialystok (2009) summarizes it from many different sources: by the help of a variety of tasks, bilinguals have been shown to be slower in picture naming, they achieved lower scores on verbal fluency tasks, they experience more tip of the tongue situations, they demonstrate poorer word identification through noise and they also experience more interference in lexical decisions. In the articles about the above listed disadvantages, there is also evidence that the source of these problems is partly the interference of the two languages, which needs to be resolved in order to get a correct answer (Bialystok, 2009). The reason for this deficit in lexical access is not entirely known yet, but according to the researchers one possible explanation is that bilinguals use one of their languages less often than monolinguals, and therefore there are weaker links created in the brain which are necessary for rapid and fluent speech production.

As mentioned earlier, there is not total agreement on what components of the executive control are enhanced by bilingualism. As Bialystok (2009) states, there is no evidence that short-term or working memory is enhanced in bilinguals, although it is known to be part of the executive functions, and it does not change throughout a bilingual’s life. In tasks which are based on verbal recall, bilinguals tend to have disadvantages, but when nonverbal materials or more controlled processing requirements are involved, the performance of mono- and bilinguals are more equalized (Bialystok, 2009). According to Bialystok (2009), one very important finding is that all the above listed advantages and disadvantages are demonstrated in younger and older groups of mono- and bilinguals, which means that the features do not disappear through aging.

In my opinion, it is better to be bilingual, than learn a foreign language at either a younger or older age. Although there are several disadvantages of being bilingual, I still think that with open-eyed parents, prepared teachers the difficulties and disadvantages can be minimized and eventually overcome. As I recall my language learning experiences; it was hard, took a lot of time and my level of knowledge is still not as high as I would like. If I can, I definitely will teach my children English at an early age and I also would like them to visit a bilingual school, where they can start learning a third language. On the other hand, I will ensure that they perform well in both Hungarian and English with books, songs, hobbies and hopefully by the own decisions of my children.

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References

Bialystok, E. (2009). Bilingualism: The good, the bad, and the indifferent. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 12, pp 3-11.

Bialystok, E. & Viswanathan, M. (2009). Components of Executive Control with Advantages for Bilingual Children in Two Cultures. Cognition, 112 (3), 494-500.

Sorace, A. (2011). Cognitive advantages in bilingualism: Is there a “bilingual paradox”? Multilingualism. Language, Power, and Knowledge, 335-358. Pisa, Italy: Edistudio.