Multilingualismo

Effects of bilingualism on children's cognitive development.

By the end of 1979, approximately 3.6 million children in the United

States were judged to be in need of special linguistic assistance to cope with

the regular school curriculum (Pifer, 1980).

bilingual education is presently under considerable attack.

commonly held beliefs regarding the effects of bilingual education:

Children who are instructed bilingually from an early age will suffer cognitive or intellectual

retardation in comparison with their monolingually instructed counterparts.

(2) They will not achieve the same level of content mastery as their monolingually instructed

counterparts.

(3) They will not achieve acceptable native language or target language skills.

(4) The majority will become anomic individuals without affiliation to either ethnolinguistic

group.

The measurement of intellectual potential was, and still is, heavily dependent on verbal abilities. The main concern was that bilingual children would suffer from some kind of language handicap, and this, in turn, would be an obstacle to a fair assessment of their intellectual abilities and potential.

bilingual children appeared inferior on a wide range of linguistic abilities. Among other things, bilinguals were shown to have a poorer vocabulary lower standards in written

linguistic confusion

the effect depends on 5 dimension (Arsenian, 1937):

Degree of bilingualism. Bilinguals vary in degree of proficiency in their

two languages.

Degree of difference between the two languages.:Spanish, for example, is closer to other Indo-European languages such as Italian. It is clear that more cognitive effort is required from a Spanish child to learn the morphology, grammar, and phonetics of English than for the same child to learn Italian that the degree of difference between two languages might mediate the effects of a bilingual experience on children's cognitive development.

Age when learning a second language. the experience of

becoming bilingual will have different cognitive effects, depending on the learner's age. THIs is an unresolved issue. Some people see this good, but some people think that if the children has not a degree of competence in his 1st language and starts with a 2nd can affect child’s cognitive development, but is positive if the child is competent in his first lgge.

Method of learning the second language.:both simultaneously or one after another.

Attitudes toward the second language. when the second language is identified in any way with a colonizing or assimilating force. In such situations, a negative attitude

toward the second language might play a crucial role in determining children's linguistic and academic performance

1950: Monolinguals performed significantly higher than bilinguals on measures of verbal intelligence.

(Leopold, 1939,1947,1949a, 1949b) made one of the best investigation with his daughter Hildegart, she lived in a English speaking environment, but his father talked in German. developed strategies to use new words appropriately in the context of their respective languages, both languages

seemed to develop adequately as two independent systems; bilingualism accelerates the development of abstract thinking by freeing the child's thought from the concreteness and "tyranny" of words.

Peal and Lambert (1962) Contrary to the findings of earlier studies, the results of the Peal and

Lambert study showed that bilinguals performed significantly better than monolinguals in most of the cognitive tests and subtests in verbal and non verbal activities. bilinguals were superior to monolinguals in concept formation and in tasks that required a certain mental or symbolic flexibility

COGNITIVE ADVANTAGES OF BALANCED BILINGUALS (over monolinguals):

-Cognitive flexibility: this term is not clear; bilinguals' performance on measures of general intelligence; flexibility noted in bilinguals could stem from language-related abilities such

as a precocious use of verbal

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