2002年11月12日 火曜日
Benefits of Bilingualism
by Mizuko Ito
Biculturalism, Language
If you were ever in doubt about the benefits of chanponism, recent research suggests that early exposure to two languages has cognitive benefits.
A recent article in the LA Times writes:.
" Kids who grow up in bilingual homes may be slower to speak than other kids, but once they've learned both languages they appear to have a number of intellectual advantages."
The article is based on a interviews with a variety of researchers in the US. The commonalities in much of the research are that bilingual kids learn early on that rules and meanings are arbitrary. They are better at switching between different tasks and rules, and can ignore distractions and peripheral information.
For example, research by Adele Diamond at the University of Massachusetts shows that bilingual kids tend to do better at the Stroop test. Kids are presented with a list of colors written in different inks. The word "red" might be written in green ink, but the child needs to say the color of the ink rather than read the word.
The article also reviews research by Joy Hirsch at Columbia University on MRI scans that shows the different parts of the brain that are activated by people using different languages. People who are fully bilingual from childhood seem to show different patterns of brain activity than people who learned a second language later in life. Researchers don't really know what this means yet, but they are finding distinct neurological differences.
Posted by Mizuko Ito at 2002年11月12日 01:37
Comments
ha ha! my mother has been claiming this for years. i'll have to send her the link!
when i was about 8, i participated in a study in Japan that i think measured intelligence in bilingual children - i don't remember exactly. i wonder what studies Japanese academia has published on this subject.
This definitely makes sense to me- especially the part about when one learns a second language and how the brain compartmentalizes that information separately from the first language one learns.
My parents made a conscious decision to have me learn English first before Japanese. They didn't want me to be confused between the two, which made sense to me growing up.
I've benefited a lot from being able to speak both languages but maybe it's possible to teach both languages very early and have both (or more) languages come from the same part of the brain. Very interesting stuff.
If/when I have my own children, I'll want them to speak both English and Japanese (and Spanish/Italian too) so it'll be interesting to see if the language experts can provide us a recommendation on how/when to expose kids to more than 1 language.
i also wonder what's the best way. i know some multi-lingual parents here in hong kong start from the time their kids are born. for example, in one family, the father speaks only in chinese, the mother in french, the domestic helper in english to the child. and the child learns english at school. the parents told me that their child spoke quite late(age 3) compared to those learning just one language because he seemed to be a bit confused. but once he started to speak, he was able to use each language to the corresponding person.
I used to be worry about bilingual problem. But this article has made me more confident to keep on speaking in my language (Indonesian) with my 2 year-old daughter, and let her learn the Japanese language naturally from her (Japanese father) and other children whom she meets in the parks. She also likes Children English TV program and the online game in internet like Sesame Street, Teletubbies, Disney, etc. It is interesting to see her doing code-mixing and code-switching between the languages.
This is interesting, but it's extremely hard to figure out what is the best way to teach children multiple languages. I know for a fact that my accent in Japanese is better than some people I know who learned it from birth, together with English, rather than later as I did (age 10)...
I think that this may come from an inability to correctly limit one's pronunciation to the sounds in one language. Maybe this is because young children learning both tend to speak both languages as if they were just two modes of the same language, and develop the 'best' mix of pronunciations for both... I'm not sure...
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