Bilingualism
Introduction
Bilingualism is changing the present-day society. A lot of people today speak more than one language because of the many benefits of bilingualism. Benefits such as exposure to more opportunities and the most obvious being improvement of one’s social life. This paper reviews various articles concerning the benefits of bilingualism. The literature review is then interrelated with information gathered from two interviews. The interviews involve two bilingual people. The paper concludes by highlight the essential points gathered from the interviews and the literature review.
Summary and Analysis
Based on the interviews with Kyle and Hyeyoung being bilingual enables the brain to function better. This is because learning more than one language is a way of exercising the brain which results in better brain performance. According to Kyle, being a bilingual comes with more freedom and independence since one is more aware of the words and phrases needed to move around when traveling. Also when staying abroad, Hyeyoung the knowledge of a second language instills more confidence in one’s abilities. Kyle and Hyeyoung both agree that bilingualism helps them communicate with people from different cultures which brings them joy during their interactions.
From the interviews, it is evident that communication skills are improved as one learns another language. Speaking and listening skills acquired during the learning helps in social interactions and in building solid relationships. Hyeyoung affirms that a bilingual job seeker is more desirable than a monolingual job seeker. The reason being that many employers are engaged in businesses with international clients and the employees need to communicate with people from different cultures.
In their article, Chen & Padilla (2019), summarizes the major advantageous results of bilingualism and biculturalism. They further integrate these advantages into a conceptual framework known as the GEAR model. When the benefits of bilingualism are concerned, I have learnt that bilingual speakers who have learnt another language in a bicultural framework are likely to have a better sense of social justice since they have an improved sense of unequivocal empathy towards cultural variety. Other points worth noting are that people with high levels of bilingualism are more inclined toward creative thinking tasks. Besides, bilingualism is essential in meeting the social, economic, political, and educational needs of a person. This is of most importance wherever there is interdependence among various countries with similar borders or whenever people speaking different languages live within a similar geographic area.
Although bilingualism has many advantages, what is absent according to Chen & Padilla (2019) is a comprehensive framework that relates these advantages and the probable connections amongst their assets. We are introduced to the GEAR model, a tool used to research the exceptional assets of becoming bilingual and bicultural. Four components are combined to come up with the model. The components are psychology, cognitive, linguistic, and sociology. The results of this combination are psychological Growth; cognitive Exploration; linguistic Awareness; and social Reinforcement.
Through the model, we learn the different lenses through which we can understand the advantages of bilingualism. In other words, when bilingualism and biculturalism are interlinked, the results are higher individual levels of fulfillment and achievement since the person does not choose between preferring one language over another. Also, the Gear model gives a broader insight into the beneficial results of bilingualism. Chen & Padilla (2019) concludes by maintaining that actively bilingual people are better positioned to experiences better positive life outcomes such as emotional satisfaction and happiness.
In their article, Ono and Ransom (2018) introduce the aspect of bilingualism in relation to social media usage and language identity. Since the youth in this generation use social media daily the authors thought it wise to investigate how bilingualism and social media related. Ono one of the author and who is Japanese and bilingual is an excellent example of how two cultures and languages correlate. According to the authors when a person becomes bilingual, they are exposed to a different culture that influences their identity and perception. With each culture comes different values that are passed on from one generation to the other.
During their analysis, Ono and Ransom (2018) performed an 18 person survey at Western WA University to get an overview of the perceptions of bilingualism in social media, and its relationship to a person’s identity. The data collected from the survey was separated into bilingual or monolingual participants. Then all the surveys were averaged and the results from each question compared between the two groups. The results gathered noted that the two groups are confident that social media is an important tool in society. The difference emerged in the notion that bilingualism influences a person’s perception and identity. With the bilingual participants, they agreed that bilingualism impacts perception and identity with the monolinguals being impartial to that idea.
The article settles that bilingualism has an impact on a person’s perception, values, conduct, and is essential in shaping the person’s character. Consequently, knowledge of another language gives various identities within various interactions. With all the social advantages that come with being bilingual, there comes the feeling of not belonging to any culture. On the other hand, social media is used by many cultures and for various reasons. From the data, the authors were able to justify that social media is an assorted platform used to express culture and identity. While bilingualism influences social media usage in various ways, it is evident that the views of social media are dependent on the language one speaks or if they are bilingual.
In the article the benefits of being bilingual, Dutch monolinguals are compared to the Turkish–Dutch bilingual children. The authors highlight that bilingualism affects visuospatial, social, and working memory in children. Bilingualism encourages working memory and the benefits are also prevalent in language-independent working memory responsibilities that include socialization and processing.
The weight of the author’s argument lies in the results of their experiment involving bilingual Turkish–Dutch and Dutch monolingual children. The focus point of the analysis was if bilingual children performed better than monolinguals in verbal memory tests and visuospatial. The results were those bilingual Turkish – Dutch children presented cognitive advances in visuospatial and verbal working memory tests. These outcomes agree with the current studies that denote that dual-language knowledge impacts the central control system (Blom et.al, 2014). What’s more, the results reveal that bilingual cognitive benefits exist in socioeconomically disadvantaged bilingual residents and proposes that advantages to executive control are watered-down by bilingual ability.
Conclusion
In conclusion, being bilingual brings about better tolerance and open-mindedness. Learning a second language while young impacts a child’s intellectual growth positively in addition to enhancing their linguistic and emotional growth. The most evident benefit of being bilingual is the chance to interact with two diverse communities without the feeling of exclusivity. A bilingual person is more likely to appear smarter in a social context than a monolingual person.
References
Blom, E., Küntay, A. C., Messer, M., Verhagen, J., & Leseman, P. (2014). The benefits of being bilingual: Working memory in bilingual Turkish–Dutch children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 128, 105-119. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2014.06.007
Chen, X., & Padilla, A. M. (2019). Role of bilingualism and biculturalism as assets in positive psychology: Conceptual dynamic GEAR model. Frontiers in Psychology, 10. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02122
Ono and Ransom. (2018, November 28). Bilingualism, social media, and identity | Just another western Washington University WordPress site. WordPress for WWU. https://wp.wwu.edu/bilingualismsocialmedia/