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Importance of Being Bilingual

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Published: Mar 14, 2024

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Bilingualism as a Life Experience

Posted October 1, 2015
By Bari Walsh

What do we know about bilingualism? Much of what we once thought we knew — that speaking two languages is confusing for children, that it poses cognitive challenges best avoided — is now known to be inaccurate. Today, bilingualism is often seen as a brain-sharpening benefit, a condition that can protect and preserve cognitive function well into old age.

Indeed, the very notion of bilingualism is changing; language mastery is no longer seen as an either/or proposition, even though most schools still measure English proficiency as a binary “pass or fail” marker.

A growing body of evidence suggests that lifelong bilingualism is associated with the delayed diagnosis of dementia. But the impact of language experience on brain activity has not been well understood.

It turns out that there are many ways to be bilingual, according to HGSE Associate Professor Gigi Luk , who studies the lasting cognitive consequences of speaking multiple languages. “Bilingualism is a complex and multifaceted life experience,” she says; it’s an “interactional experience” that happens within — and in response to — a broader social context.

Usable Knowledge spoke with Luk about her research and its applications.

Bilingualism and executive function

As bilingual children toggle between two languages, they use cognitive resources beyond those required for simple language acquisition, Luk writes in a forthcoming edition of the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Child Development . Recent research has shown that bilingual children outperform monolingual children on tasks that tap into executive function — skills having to do with attention control, reasoning, and flexible problem solving.

Their strength in those tasks likely results from coping with and overcoming the demand of managing two languages. In a bilingual environment, children learn to recognize meaningful speech sounds that belong to two different languages but share similar concepts.

In a paper published earlier this year , she and her colleagues looked at how bilingualism affects verbal fluency — efficiency at retrieving words — in various stages of childhood and adulthood. In one measure of verbal acumen called letter fluency — the ability to list words that begin with the letter F, for instance — bilinguals enjoyed an advantage over monolinguals that began at age 10 and grew robust in adulthood.

Bilingualism and the aging brain

Luk and her researchers are looking at the neuroscience of bilingualism — at how bilingualism may affect the physical structure of the brain in its different regions.

What they’ve found so far shows that older adults who are lifelong bilinguals have more white matter in their frontal lobes (important to executive function) than monolinguals, and that their temporal lobes (important to language function) are better preserved. The results support other evidence that persistent bilingual experience shapes brain functions and structures.

A growing body of evidence suggests that lifelong bilingualism is associated with the delayed diagnosis of dementia. But the impact of language experience on brain activity is not well understood, Luk says.

In a 2015 paper, she and her colleagues began to look at functional brain networks in monolingual and bilingual older adults. Their findings support the idea that a language experience begun in childhood and continued throughout adulthood influences brain networks in ways that may provide benefits far later in life.

Who is bilingual?

Monolingualism and bilingualism are not static categories, Luk says, so the question of what it means to be bilingual, and who is bilingual, is nuanced. There are several pathways to bilingualism. A child can become bilingual when parents and caregivers speak both languages frequently, either switching between the two. A child can be bilingual when the language spoken at home differs from a community’s dominant language, which the child is exposed to in schools. Or a child can become bilingual when he or she speaks the community’s dominant language at home but attends an immersion program at school.

Bilingualism is an experience that accumulates and changes over time, in response to a child’s learning environments, says Luk.

Language diversity in schools

In one of her projects, Luk works with a group of ELL directors to help them understand the diverse needs of their language learners and to find better ways to engage their parents. She’s looking at effective ways to measure bilingualism in schools; at connections between the science of bilingualism and language and literacy outcomes; and at the long-term relationship between academic outcomes and the quality and quantity of bilingual experience in young children.

Part of her goal is to help schools move beyond binary categorizations like “ELL” and “English proficient” and to recognize that language diversity brings challenges but also long-term benefits.

“If we only look at ELL or English proficient, that’s not a representation of the whole spectrum of bilingualism,” she says. “To embrace bilingualism, rather than simply recognizing this phenomenon, we need to consider both the challenges and strengths of children with diverse language backgrounds. We cannot do this by only looking at English proficiency. Other information, such as home language background, will enrich our understanding of bilingual development and learning.”

Additional Resources

A Boston community organization that runs a bilingual preschool spoke with Luk about her work and its applications to practice. Read the interview.

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The Benefits of Being Bilingual

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The Benefits of Being Bilingual was originally published on Idealist Careers .

Bilingualism, or the ability to speak two or more languages fluently, can be a huge asset for job seekers. As a 2017 report by New American Economy discovered, the need for bilingual workers in the United States more than doubled in the previous five years. This trend is projected to increase, especially for Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, and Arabic speakers.

But even if you don’t speak one of these languages—or don’t use a second language on the job at all—bilingualism makes you a more adaptable thinker, according to a report by the Language Institute . Quick and flexible thinkers with broad perspectives will benefit any employer.

Here are some of the benefits of being bilingual, from the job hunt to personal and professional development.

The benefits of being bilingual in social-impact careers

The New American Economy report also reveals bilingual jobs are common in fields with a high degree of person-to-person interaction. Employers in fields like education, health care, and social work actively seek bilingual workers. Dozens of languages may be represented among students at a school, clients at a housing or health facility, and residents of a neighborhood—especially in urban areas. A staff member who can serve as an interpreter or translator is invaluable. Language skills are also applicable in many advocacy jobs; immigration lawyers, for instance, often need to communicate with clients who may not speak English.

So where can your language skills be best put to use? The most in-demand bilingual skill depends on where you live. In a place where many people speak a certain language—be it Spanish in Miami, French in Louisiana, or Vietnamese in the Bay Area of California—many jobs strongly encourage bilingual candidates.

Benefits of being bilingual beyond language

Your bilingual skill set can give you an edge whether you speak your second language in the workplace or not. Knowing two languages makes your brain more flexible ; switching between two sets of grammar rules, vocabulary, tones, and nuances is a lot of work! In fact, even if you’re only speaking one language, your brain activates both language systems and requires you to focus on one—making you a natural at complex mental tasks.

This adaptability can make you quicker at thinking on your feet, better at workplace problem solving, and a whiz at multitasking. When it comes to working with people, bilingual thinkers can be more adept at “reading” and communicating with others.

Bilingualism versus biculturalism

Linguistic fluency comes in many varieties. If you learned a second language in school, you’ve probably mastered reading, speaking, and listening. But if you spoke two languages at home or learned a second language specific to your ethnic background, you may also be bicultural—someone with insider knowledge of two different cultures. This includes the dominant culture of the country you’re in; for example, the English-speaking culture in many areas of the United States.

Each culture has its own rituals, values, and behaviors that go far beyond language. A bicultural candidate will be able to navigate between the complex aspects of both cultures. While this perspective is key when working with diverse cultural groups, it also gives you a skill you can apply in any job—the ability to understand and combine multiple perspectives at once, known as integrative complexity. Your aptitudes count as a bonus in many ways, from interpersonal skills like mediation and conflict resolution to brainstorming big ideas for an organizational mission.

Promote your skills

If you’re bilingual, remember that you’re a standout candidate! Mention your second language on your resume , even if you don’t consider yourself fully fluent. A little ability can be just the boost you need to bring something extra to the table.

In an interview , you can emphasize your:

Ability to understand diverse perspectives;
Creativity and inventiveness;
Problem-solving expertise;
Skill at different modes of communication; and
Any other benefits you think bilingualism has given you, since each person’s experience will be different.

Ready to start searching? Check out job, internship, and volunteer opportunities requiring or encouraging a specific second language skill .

Essay on Bilingualism

Students are often asked to write an essay on Bilingualism in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Bilingualism

What is bilingualism.

Bilingualism is when a person can speak two languages. This skill can be gained early in life, like a child growing up in a house where two languages are spoken. It can also be learned later, like a student studying a second language in school.

Benefits of Bilingualism

Being bilingual has many good points. It can make your brain stronger and more flexible. It can also make it easier to understand and learn about other cultures. Plus, being able to speak two languages can help you get jobs in the future.

Challenges of Bilingualism

Learning two languages can be hard. It takes time and practice. Sometimes, people who speak two languages can mix them up. But with patience and hard work, these challenges can be overcome.

Bilingualism in Society

In many places around the world, being bilingual is normal. In these places, people use two languages to live, work, and play. This shows how important and useful bilingualism can be in our lives.

250 Words Essay on Bilingualism

Bilingualism is a term used when a person can speak two languages fluently. This skill is often gained when a person is brought up in a family or a place where two languages are spoken regularly.

Benefits of Being Bilingual

Being bilingual has many benefits. It makes the brain strong and flexible. This is because switching between two languages is a mental workout for the brain. It also helps in connecting with different people and understanding different cultures.

Challenges in Bilingualism

Learning two languages can be hard. It takes time and practice to become fluent in two languages. Sometimes, it can also be confusing to switch between languages.

How to Become Bilingual?

To become bilingual, one can start learning a new language at a young age. Schools, online courses, and language clubs offer classes. Practicing speaking, reading, and writing in the new language every day can also help.

Bilingualism is a valuable skill. It helps in brain development, understanding cultures, and connecting with people. Though it can be challenging, with regular practice, anyone can become bilingual.

500 Words Essay on Bilingualism

Bilingualism is a term that describes a person’s ability to speak two languages. It’s like having two tools in your toolbox instead of one. When a person can speak, read, and write in two languages, we say that person is bilingual. Some people learn two languages when they are very young, maybe because their parents speak different languages. Others learn a second language at school or as an adult.

Being bilingual has many benefits. It’s not just about being able to talk to more people. It can also help your brain. Scientists have found that bilingual people often do better at tasks that need multitasking. This is because using two languages often means you are better at switching between different tasks.

Bilingual people can also find it easier to learn more languages. If you already know two languages, picking up a third or even a fourth can be easier. This is because you already understand how languages work.

Bilingualism and Culture

Language is a big part of culture. By learning and understanding another language, you can also learn about another culture. This can make you more open-minded and understanding of people who are different from you. It can also help you feel connected to more people around the world.

While knowing two languages can be great, it can also be hard. Sometimes, bilingual people can get confused between the two languages. They might mix up words or use the wrong grammar. This is called “code-switching”. It’s normal and usually not a big problem. But it can be frustrating.

Also, if you don’t use one of your languages often, you might forget some of it. This is why it’s important to practice both languages regularly.

In conclusion, being bilingual can be a great skill. It can help your brain, make it easier to learn more languages, and help you understand other cultures. But it can also be hard and require a lot of practice. Whether you’re born into a bilingual family or decide to learn a second language, it’s a journey that can open up a world of opportunities.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

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The Advantages of Being Bilingual

Language is one of the defining characteristics of humans. It is an interplay between culture, geography, and biology and is the one thing capable of connecting billions of people. At the time of writing, there are over 6,000 languages spoken across the globe, with English, Mandarin, Hindu, and Spanish being among the most widely spoken .

With such a massive diversity in spoken languages, it quickly becomes apparent why speaking multiple languages can be so advantageous. Geopolitics, education, and businesses rely heavily on efficient communication and minimal instances of misunderstandings. Think of how often simple linguistic misunderstandings cause large disputes and errors, both at the individual and collective level, and you can see why being bilingual is crucial for social activities. Below are some of the advantages of being bilingual

Communication is the key to understanding

One of the best advantages of being bilingual is that it will open up a new avenue for creating connections with others. The United States, for example, is home to 350 languages alone. As a result, it is seen as a melting pot for cultures, but unfortunately, tensions can arise within the country’s smaller communities simply due to language barriers. Having a sizable portion of the population fluent in at least one other language creates bridges between these communities, leading to fewer points of contention.

Teachers are some of the people best positioned to take on the task of fostering new generations of bilingual students. Schools across the U.S. already have foreign language courses integrated into their graduation requirements, but continued education in language studies is often recommended to obtain fluency. For those who never took a foreign language course in school or who wish to piggyback on what they’ve already learned, an online language tutor is arguably the best method toward fluency. There is also an assortment of self-paced online courses and smartphone apps that can supplement this knowledge.

Seeing as English is the most widely spoken language globally, it’s no surprise that it is rigorously instilled into students living in countries outside of the U.S. Learning English gives these students highly sought-after career opportunities in tourism and work abroad. That said, fluent English speakers also have a chance to make money teaching English to students who live in countries where English is not the native language.

Many companies often emphasize hiring people who are fluent in other languages. Knowing multiple languages will increase your odds of being hired, particularly in customer-facing roles. To tap into additional markets, hiring bilingual employees is strategic for businesses to have workers that can communicate with non-native language speaking demographics.

As a traveler, learning the language of the countries you visit opens up a more comprehensive lens into the culture, which has many benefits. For instance, learning Spanish and traveling across Latin America will give you a window into the deeper nuances of specific subcultures. It’ll also make it easier to navigate these countries, lessen the chances of falling for scams, allow getting better deals on consumer goods, and make befriending the locals easier.

All of this is to say that there is a clear incentive for bilingualism among different cultures to bypass language barriers and create a more interconnected, global society.

Exercising your mental faculties

Beyond the unifying nature of language, becoming bilingual has proven cognitive benefits for those who take on the effort. These benefits can be subtle, but ultimately bilingualism can make you a better reader, problem-solver, and general learner.

Whether or not you learned a second language as a child or later in life, studies have shown that being bilingual can help stave off cognitive decline in old age. What’s more, knowing how to switch between two languages has been shown to increase memory and creativity.

Having the ability to read in another language gives bilingual people access to more knowledge resources. For example, novels, news reports, and scientific studies written in another language are now accessible to bilingual people. In addition, increased use of these language skills is continually honed as new words and semantic nuances are discovered within these texts. And in terms of reading news reports, bilingual people can glean more profound insight into events happening across the world, thus making them more worldly people.

And finally, having already mastered another language, especially as a child, gives bilingual people the advantage of learning other skills. Language is a set of systems, much like any other system such as computing languages, scientific disciplines, and music.

So, not only does being bilingual increase your career opportunities, but it also grants learners cognitive abilities that can be applied to just about any other task that living in modern society requires. Moreover, by fostering bilingualism in as many people as possible, the world can become a much more unified and productive place to thrive within.

Becoming Bilingual: An Experience That Changed My Life

John Nobile Carvalho is a Biochemistry major from Uberlandia, Minas Gerais, Brazil. John’s inspiration for writing this paper was in finding the most significant and impactful moments of language learning. The reason he considers his essay important is “because during the writing process I was able to recall memories and think of the journey I’ve been on, and all the challenges I’ve faced while learning two languages.” He also credits remote learning with providing plenty of time to devote himself to his studies and this project: “I was aware that this factor could help me focus and write something interesting for people who are not bilingual as well as people who are bilingual.” Besides being a student, John is also a musician and a book lover, and counts the blues and science-fiction books among his passions. He states that he “could never live a day without playing my guitar for a few minutes, or not reading a few pages of a book. These are the two ways I have to escape reality and enjoy the moment.”

The process of becoming a bilingual person can be seen as a long journey, which has several challenges, but at the same time several achievements. Learning a new language can be considered a challenge because it goes far beyond just learning to use words, expressions and knowing how to apply correct grammar, and what I mean by that is that you have to make mistakes, live in situations where you feel vulnerable, and go through difficulties. Even though it is not a simple task, I believe that this process allows us to develop persistence, willpower, maturity and a lot of discipline. Given the explanation, I ask myself the following question: what was my process of becoming bilingual, and how did that make me who I am today?

Well, my journey started relatively early in my life. The first memories I have in mind, when I had contact with the English language, was around the age of 7 years old. I mainly remember the moment when my father used to listen to songs that had quite different lyrics than what I was used to listening to in Brazilian music. I remember asking my dad what those words were and what they meant, and I also remember referring to them as ‘‘strange words.’’ I can perfectly remember the way my father had explained to me that it was English; he said it was a type of language that human beings use and that in particular it was used elsewhere in the world. That fascinated me, and with each day that passed by, I would ask my father to show me more and more music by American artists; this led me to develop a passion for Blues, Rock, Jazz, and Soul Music. I loved the rhythm, melody, and harmony of the songs of these musical genres, but there was a big problem. I could not understand practically anything about what the lyrics were saying, and that was quite frustrating.

After a while, it started to bother me, so I realized it was time to take an initiative. I realized it was time to seek to understand the meaning of the lyrics of the songs I loved so much. I remember sitting on the floor of my room, trying to read and pronounce each word in the rhythm in which I heard them in the songs. I also remember feeling quite angry at first because I could not understand anything at all. Over time, this curiosity made me discover that I could use online translators and websites that made music translations available from English to Portuguese. At that moment I realized that there were no more limits for me. I knew that everything would start to flow naturally.

Basically, my relationship with the English language started to develop organically, and after a few months of practicing English, the words that did not make any sense started to make all the sense. I was obsessed with learning new words, phrases, and expressions. When I least expected it, with the help of subtitles, I was able to watch cartoon shows, movies, and documentaries in English. I felt fulfilled when I was able to understand certain simple dialogues, for example in the video games that I used to play, and for me, that was rewarding. Another memory I have was when I joined elementary school, and the public school where I studied used to offer English classes, and I remember having ease in these classes thanks to all the effort and dedication that I had put into studying and practicing English on my own.

As time went by, my relationship with the English language was solidifying and becoming stronger and stronger. I practically did not listen to music in Portuguese anymore; I did not care about watching cartoons and films in Portuguese anymore, which made me more immersed into American culture. I remember in 2009, when I was only 11 years old, my cousins and colleagues who played football with me asked me why I did not like to watch Brazilian and South American football like “A Liberators da America” (South American Tournament). I always said that European football championships like the Premier League (from England) were more interesting, but they did not understand that I thought it was interesting because I was discovering a “new world”. Right after I turned 14, my parents gave me my first skateboard, and it motivated me, even more, to continue learning things related to English and American culture. I used slang in English with my friends and tried to speak in English with my English teachers at school. I used to sing and play songs in English. I found it fascinating the fact that in less than seven years I had already learned so much about English.

During these seven years of studying and learning the English language, I remember listening to a lot of people around me, like my parents, uncles and aunts, cousins and several friends saying that I was doing the right thing. English was a synonym for “success and mystery” in my mind. They used to say “João, you must learn the English language, as this will bring you great opportunities in your future”. Everyone was absolutely right, and I say this because all the incentives and motivations they gave me were essential for my evolution and progress. I am incredibly grateful mainly for my parents, because thanks to them, I was able to have access to a good education. I was able to access the necessary resources to continue making progress. Without them none of this would have happened, and I would never have gotten as far as I did.

Now, after fourteen years of dedicating myself to studying the English language, I realize that my view on it has changed dramatically. At first, I was just a child venturing into a strange and unknown language, and that was incredibly attractive. When I say that my vision has changed drastically, I mean that now this language is not only a source of curiosity. It has practically become the tool that allows me to connect with the world, and in a way even with myself. I can say with all conviction that being bilingual is one of the most important tools I have in my life. I would say that English for me today is like the oxygen that I breathe all the time, and what I mean is that I can no longer live without it.

English is not just another language that exists in the world. For me, English has shaped my identity and the person I am today. What I mean by that is that English is not just a language, in my life it goes much further. A beautiful example that I always carry in mind is how English made me develop a beautiful conception of music. I consider myself a musician, and I consider music as one of the greatest inventions of mankind, and thanks to the English language I was able to venture into the world of music. Nowadays I study music every week in English: I play in concerts; I play with my friends, so through this example, it is evident how English managed to shape one of the main characteristics of my identity. Another example that comes to mind is that since I was a child, my biggest dream of all has been to become a scientist in the future. That dream only started after I watched countless scientific documentaries, read several books by phenomenal scientists like Carl Sagan and Neil deGrasse Tyson, and with every day that passes I am sure that my dream will be realized. Thanks to English, I was able to develop the habit of reading, watching documentaries, searching for information and building knowledge, and in my opinion, I think this is incredible. Through the study of this language, I was even able to value my mother tongue even more because like English, Portuguese is an intriguing and spectacular language that I am proud to speak.

To emphasize how crucial the process of becoming bilingual has been in my life, I can tell you how my life has changed completely since I moved to the United States. My first real contact with American society was a wave of feelings and emotions. To clarify what I am trying to say, I could use the experiences of author Orhan Pamuk (2007) as an example, when he describes how frustrating and difficult it is to adjust and adapt to a new culture and a new language. The silence was sometimes my only form of expression, as it was his. However, the best part is that this “wave of feelings and emotions” made me realize that all the years of study and my effort should be valued and put into practice. After a few months, I already felt more comfortable, so I was able to enjoy everything that this new environment had to offer me. I developed not only a love affair with the English language but also with the city of Boston. I had an epiphany and a profound reflection that, like Brazil, the United States is also the place I refer to as home.

This leads me to another interesting and profound reflection that I have been experiencing lately. The fact of moving to the United States is not only a great opportunity to have a beautiful future, and it is not just another phase of my life. It is also an opportunity to be able to connect worlds and cultures. Amin Maalouf (1998) clearly describes how beautiful it is that bilingual people living in other countries can be sources of knowledge, and according to him, these people have a great responsibility in acting as bridges that connect different cultures.

Maalouf is absolutely right, and his reflection resonated with me because I feel this responsibility; I feel responsible to share the American culture with my friends and family who live in Brazil. Likewise, I am responsible for sharing Brazilian culture with American society. I think this is extremely important because if I do that, I can make a difference in the world, I can help the world. I can help the world become a harmonious place, and I feel that I can use the knowledge I have to help people to develop more empathy, respect, and love for people from different places and cultures. Being bilingual and living in another country means having the responsibility to help people and eliminate any kind of prejudice, intolerance, and misunderstanding that they have in mind.

Given all these facts, contexts, and personal experiences, I return to my question: what was my process in becoming bilingual, and how did that make me who I am today? Well, the answer is quite simple, I have had an incredible journey so far. Every second studying English, all my effort, every person involved, every mistake made, every learning experience — all of this was crucial to getting me to where I am today. This journey brought me knowledge and reflections, which helped me to better understand the world and myself. I would never have imagined that English would bring me so many opportunities — all of this was beyond my expectations. I am sure that English will bring me more unique experiences, and I can say with all gratitude that I am ready for all of them.

Maalouf, Amin. (1998). Deadly Identities (Brigitte Caland, Trans.). Al Jadid , 4(25). Retrieved from https://www.aljadid.com/content/deadly-identities .

Pamuk, Orhan. (2007, April 7). My First Passport: What Does it Mean to Belong to a Country? (Maureen Freely, Trans.). The New Yorker . Retrieved from https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/04/16/my-first-passport .

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My identity as a bilingual learner

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Posted 2:06 p.m. Tuesday , Dec. 21 , 2021

Student shares her struggles with literacy and what she wishes educators knew about being bilingual

By Ka Zang Lee

I have been asked and told by educators, “Is English your second language? Is that why you do not comprehend the course content? English is your second language therefore your paper has a lot of incorrect grammar and punctuations.” As a person of color and bilingual, my identity should not be compared to someone whose English literacy is not proficient. Born here in the United States but raised by a refugee parent, I struggled to meet the criteria of English literacy from my childhood to adolescent years. I was trying to find my identity in two different worlds. At home, I was taught how to read, write, and speak in Hmong. At school, I am taught how to read, write, and speak English.

A memory that I can still recall was when I was five years old coming home right after school. I took off my shoes and hung up my backpack at the door entrance. My father turned around, looked straight into my eyes, and said, “You are at home so speak Hmong only. You can only speak English while working on your homework. Leave the English language at school. This is my rule, and you must follow it. Ok?” Looking back into my father’s eyes, I nodded my head yes. Even though following these rules was expected, I went ahead and broke the rules. I headed straight to the T.V., pressed the power button on, adjusted the T.V. antenna for a better connection, and turned the channel dial to Sesame Street on PBS kids. Walking back to the sofa I sat down and watched Big Bird talking to the children about today’s lesson. Big Bird’s lesson of the day was learning the alphabet. As Big Bird sang the alphabet song, I sang along with him. I tried to memorize how the alphabet letters look like in alphabetical order and compared the alphabet letters to the first letter in the names of fruits or animals. After watching Sesame Street, I would take out a piece of paper and write out the letters — making out the sounds of each alphabet letter that I have memorized. The letter “A” was easy for me because it was one of the alphabet letters in my name.

Even though I had utilized Sesame Street as one resource to improve my English literacy at home, I could not help but to think about why speaking English at home was not allowed. The following day my father walked my brother and me to school, holding his warm hand as he swings it back and forth. I asked the big question, “Why can’t I speak English at home?” There was a moment of silence from my dad as he was thinking about how he should answer this question before he spoke. “The reason I don’t allow you and your siblings to speak English at home is that I do not want my children to lose their native language. I do not want my children to forget who they are.” Squeezing his hand, I looked up into my father’s eyes and said, “Ok, Dad.” My father smiled back without any words. I believe knowing my identity was valuable at home; however, this affected me at school. Even in kindergarten, I still had not met my reading and writing criteria. My teacher worried that I had fallen behind. For this reason, I was held back a year and had to take kindergarten again. My parents and my kindergarten teacher broke the news to me. I was devastated to be held back a grade. I felt sad to leave my friends behind. I was angry at myself for being a failure, and it made me realize how important English literacy was.

After this incident in kindergarten, I thought my struggle with English literacy had ended. Unfortunately, my struggle continued into my middle school and high school years. This time specifically with an English writing class, I had a weak foundation in writing due to an underdeveloped vocabulary, poor grammar, poor spelling, lack of access to reading materials, and developing writing skills. For this reason, I was placed into the English as a Second Language program, better known as ESL. The idea behind placing me into the ESL program was to help me to become fluent in English literacy by breaking down the English language rules, but to me it was once again memorization. My struggle with English literacy affected my middle and high school academic performance so much that I was told by my high school advisor, “You will never be able to attend a four-year college. You might be able to attend a technical college, but never a four-year college.” This made me feel even worse about my English literacy and affected my attitude about it. I figured, why take the time to comprehend? So, I decided to just memorize so I can graduate with my high school diploma.

The fact that I was told that I would not be able to attend a four-year college did not stop me from enrolling at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse (UWL). Attending UWL, I noticed a big shift from a high school-level to a university-level English literacy. At UWL I learned that writing is a crucial skill to have because I am challenged every day to write and think critically and analytically. However, to be able to write a good piece, I still struggle to develop my vocabulary—I struggle to find the right words, which challenges me in my writing skills. I’ve discovered that vocabulary is the foundation that builds good sentences for effective writing, and it also helps me to comprehend the content of my courses. Because I don't have confidence in my writing skills and vocabulary, I have developed anxiety. I worry about how my professors will judge me and criticize my writing as a bilingual student. I quickly realized how my memorization habits would impact my ability to comprehend and critically think once I began education at UWL.

Despite my academic challenges, my perception of English literacy has changed not only as a student but as a parent. My children were born here in the United State where English is their first language, not second. I raise my children differently from how my parents raised me at home. Unlike my father who did not permit spoken English at home, English is primarily spoken at my home. However, I know it is important for my children to know their race and ethnicity. Therefore, I encourage my children to learn the Hmong language and culture. Unfortunately, they are not able to grasp the Hmong language and culture as quickly as English. As a parent, I do not want any of my children to experience the struggle with English literacy like I did. I have a daughter and she reminds me a lot of myself at her age. She is struggling to read and write in her class. I do not want my daughter to have the experience of being held back a grade. I do not want her to lose her friends, to feel like a failure, and to be unable to move onto the next grade level as I did. I want her to improve her English literacy. The only way for her to improve her English literacy is to spend time with her after school or on the weekends. I purchased writing workbooks, flashcards, and she and I work on it together. We sing and write the alphabet letters in big letters and small letters. We use alphabet flashcards to make out the sounds of each letter. We practice writing her name and the family names. As she wrote our names, she noticed that we all share the letter “A” in our names.

I still struggle when I’m asked the questions “Is English your second language? Is that why you do not comprehend the course content?” While it may be true that English is my second language, I hope that educators will understand bilingual students’ hardships with learning English literacy and have compassion or empathy toward these students. Because not only does this affect students individually, it also affects how those students will raise their children.

UWL College Writing Symposium

Ka Zang Lee’s essay was part of the 2021 College Writing Symposium at UW-La Crosse. The day-long event showcased the work of UWL’s first-year writers in English classes, ENG 100, 110, and 112. The CWS provided students with additional opportunities to practice sharing their writing with audiences outside of their immediate classes, to professionalize, and to demonstrate to future employers, scholarship committees, and internship providers that they’re willing to work outside their comfort zones.

“Ka Zang Lee’s essay is a poignant example of the unseen struggles and triumphs with writing that UWL students experience,” says UWL Professor of English Darci Thoune. “Her literacy narrative highlights in exquisite detail how formative experiences with our families and at school shape who we are as learners.”

Ka Zang Lee is a second-year student at UWL studying sociology with a minor in ethnic and racial studies. She is a mother of three and a wife who lives in the La Crosse area. In her free time, she likes to travel and do outdoor activities with her family.

Tagged people: Darci Thoune
Tagged departments: English
Tagged keywords: Equity and diversity , Featured and Transformational education
Other tags: Student experience
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The Benefits of Being Bilingual in a Global Society Analytical Essay

Thesis statement, rationale-driven considerations for second language acquisition, theories of bilingualism, ability vs. aptitude, learning strategies, the role of parental involvement, recommendations, based upon personal experiences.

The realities of today’s living are being marked by an increasing role of information, as the foremost factor that defines the very essence of post-industrial social interactions. After all, due to exponential progress in the field of informational technologies, which had taken place during the course of latest decades, it now became a commonplace practice to transfer huge amounts of information from one corner of the globe to another, within a matter of an instant.

As it was pointed out by Clark (2010, p. 1): “We live in an ever-changing, evolving, constantly shifting world, where socially construed boundaries are becoming more obscured while simultaneously making visible the spaces, dimensions, and strategies of being and becoming multiple people in multiple places”.

In its turn, this results in producing the phenomenon of ‘overlapping identities’ – unlike what it used to be the case even as recent as fifty years ago; nowadays, more and more people begin to assess the subtleties of their individuality from essentially cosmopolitical perspective. [1] Therefore, it comes as not a particular surprise that, as time goes on, the issue of bilingualism continues to grow increasingly embedded into the very core of a number of today’s socio-political discourses.

The reason for this is simple – in highly globalized world, one’s ability to speak more than one language automatically increases the extent of his or her existential competitiveness. What it means is that, there are many fully objective reasons to expect that, in very near future, the number of bilingual individuals will increase dramatically.

And, it represents the matter of crucial importance for educators to be able to adopt a proper perspective onto the very essence of bilingualism/multilingualism, as it will increase their ability to design teaching strategies in a manner fully consistent with earlier mentioned process of Earth becoming ‘borderless’, in allegorical sense of this word. [2]

In this paper, I will aim to discuss theoretical aspects of bilingualism and to show how the practical implementation of bilingualism-inducing strategies in academic environment may result in substantial enhancement of teaching process’s effectiveness.

While elaborating on paper’s subject matter, I will also aim to promote an idea that the very tendency for more and more people to grow increasingly bilingual, which defines the social implications of Globalization, has been dialectically predetermined. What it means is that nowadays, becoming bilingual had effectively ceased to be an option for individuals who seek to attain social prominence.

Given the fact that the qualitative subtleties of just about any socio-historical phenomena are being defined by the dialectical essence of associated causes and effects, it will only be logical to suggest that there are fully objective motivations behind the process of people becoming increasingly bilingual/multilingual.

In her book, Baker (2001) provides us with the insight on what accounts for these motivations. According to the author, the rationale for second language acquisition can be generalized as consisting of three mutually supplementing sub-elements: ideological, international and individual.

Ideological rationale is being largely related to the fact that, ever since seventies, the policy of multiculturalism in Western countries had attained governmentally endorsed status. In its turn, this resulted in transforming the demographic pattern of West-bound immigrants.

Whereas; before the institutionalization of multiculturalism, it were predominantly White people immigrating to such English-speaking countries as U.S., Canada and Australia; nowadays, the bulk of newly arrived immigrants to these countries consist of those, commonly referred to as ‘representatives of racial minorities’. [3]

And, due to characteristics of these people’s visual appearance, their assimilationist anxieties emerge being much stronger, as compared to what it used to be the case with assimilationist anxieties, on the part European immigrants, for example.

This is the reason why an acquisition of host-country’s official language (e.g. English) represents the matter of crucial importance for these people – by becoming proficient in such a language, ethnic immigrants prove their ability to assimilate into host-society, and consequentially to become such society’s productive members.

There is another aspect to this – even though that it now became a commonplace practice to associate the concept of European colonialism with the notion of ‘oppression’, the native people from former European colonies continue to subconsciously associate this concept with the notion of ‘progress’. According to De Mejia (2002, p. 4): “An interest in the use of international languages is often associated with positions of social prestige in societies which have a colonial history…

In these countries the use of world languages (especially English) is considered by many of the governing elite as vital to the modernization of the economy and to the development of science and technology”. Apparently, as time goes on, more and more people consider one’s proficiency in a second language being utterly prestigious – pure and simple.

The international rationale behind acquisition of a second language is being concerned with the fact that, as compared to what it is usually the case with monolingual individuals; the bilingual ones are being put in advantageous position, especially when it comes to indulging in commercial activities. One does not have to be particularly smart, in order to be able to realize why – a particular individual’s proficiency in second language implies the increased extent of his or her exposure to information.

And, as it was rightly noted by Baker (2001, p. 112): “Languages provide access to information and hence power… For the business person and the bureaucrat, for the scholar and the sports person, access to multilingual international information opens doors to new knowledge, new skills and new understanding”.

Given the fact that, as it was being mentioned earlier, the realities of today’s post-industrial living are closely associated with essentially instant transfers of information on world-wide scale, those who can understand and speak more than one language are being more likely to take advantage of a number of rapidly emerging professional and commercial opportunities.

The individual motivation behind people’s decision to seek fluency in foreign languages has to do with the fact that such fluency results in increasing the extent of a concerned person’s cultural awareness. After all, it is only the people that have succeeded in familiarizing themselves with foreign cultures, which can be considered educated, in full sense of this word. And, within the context of such a familiarization, one’s proficiency in at least one foreign language will come as a great asset.

Yet, what it is being even more important is that individual’s acquisition of a second language usually results in enhancing the workings of his or her intellect. According to Ramirez (1985, p. 195): “Bilingualism could be an advantage in abstract thinking (conceptualizing things and events in relation to their general properties rather than relying on their linguistic symbols) and in encouraging mental flexibility”.

As compared to their monolingual counterparts, bilingual individuals appear being much more intellectually flexible, as the fact that they can express their thoughts in foreign language naturally predisposes them towards recognizing the validity of a number of moral, ethical and religious notions as being only relative to the affiliated circumstances.

The context of an earlier provided conceptualization as to what accounts for rationale in acquisition of a second language, implies that it is very important for teachers to be able to choose in favor of a proper set of bilingualism-inducing incentives, meant to apply in every individual case. After all, without being sufficiently motivated to indulge in studying of a second language, it is very unlikely that students will be able to succeed in it.

As it was rightly suggested by Dornyei (1998, p. 117): “Motivation provides the primary impetus to initiate learning in the L2 and later the driving force to sustain the long and often tedious learning process… Without sufficient motivation, even individuals with the most remarkable abilities cannot accomplish long-term goals”.

And, given the fact that bilingualism-inducing motivations can be generally categorized as ‘integrative’ (concerned with addressing learner’s assimilationist anxieties) and ‘instrumental’ [4] (concerned with convincing learner that becoming bilingual will increase the extent of his or her existential competitiveness), teachers must be capable of properly identifying what will account for circumstantial appropriateness of exposing learners to either set of motivations.

For example, it would prove very unlikely for practically minded students to think of attaining ‘cultural awareness’ as strong enough motivation to proceed with their studies. Alternatively, it will also be very unlikely for assimilation-seeking learners to be motivated to indulge in studying of a second language, because their eventual bilingualism would increase their efficiency as stock-traders, for example.

One of the foremost aspects of bilingualism-related discourses is the fact that there is still much uncertainty as to structuralist subtleties of how bilingual individuals perceive surrounding reality, in linguistic sense of this word, which stems out of conceptual incompatibility between the applied analytical methodologies.

As it was pointed out by Hamers and Blanc (1991, p. 1): “One of the major problems of an interdisciplinary approach (to bilingualism) is the integration of the macro- and the micro-levels of analysis”. Nevertheless, as of today, bilingualism’s neurological mechanics are being usually assessed within the context of Balance, Iceberg and Threshold theories. [5]

The proponents of Balance theory, such as Macnamara (1966), and Albert and Obler (1978), suggest that, due to the main principle of brain’s neurological functioning (people can only concentrate on doing one thing at the time), bilinguals’ increased proficiency in second language necessarily accounts for their reduced proficiency in native language.

In their book, Appel and Muysken (2005, p. 104) have outlined the conceptual premise behind Balance theory with perfect clarity: “If an individual learns more than one language, knowing one language rest nets the possibilities for learning other languages. More proficiency in one language implies fewer skills in the other ones”.

The empirical observations of immigrants’ linguistic behavior seems to support the validity of Balance theory’s provisions – after all, it does not represent much of a secret that, after having spent a considerable time living amidst foreign linguistic environment, people tend to ‘enrich’ their native languages with newly learned foreign words, as being the most semantically suitable.

This particular theory’s drawback appears to be the fact that, up to date, no evidence has been found as to brain’s limited capacity to memorize linguistic idioms.

The proponents of Iceberg theory (analogy), such as Cummins (1980), point out to the fact that the manner in how bilingual people go about expressing their thoughts in both languages reflects the inner working of their psyche. What it means is if, let’s say a particular person has been known to experience difficulties, while operating with highly abstract categories in his or her native language, this will also be the case with such individual trying to do the same, while utilizing second language.

In other words, according to the proponents of this theory, the acquisition of second language cannot produce detrimental effects onto a particular individual, for as long as the rate of his or her IQ appears adequately high.

The advocates of Threshold theory, such as Skutnabb-Kangas and Toukomaa (1976) and Clarkson (1992), are not sharing such point of view on the essence of bilingualism. According to them, the process of a particular person attaining proficiency in second language is being rather linearly defined.

Whereas; it is very unlikely for children-bilingualists to be utterly comfortable with expressing intellectually refined thoughts in both languages (due to their age-related underdevelopment), as time goes on, these individuals will continue to grow ever-more proficient in one language, at first, and eventually – in both languages.

This explains why, regardless of what was their age when they started to learn foreign language, most highly educated people have absolutely legitimate reasons to think of themselves as such that are being fully proficient in at least two languages. However, just as it is being the case with Balance theory, Threshold theory features a number of shortcomings. For example, its proponents do not specify as to what should be considered a criteria, when it comes to measuring individual’s bilinguistic proficiency.

Also, this theory does not take into consideration the specifics of bilingual people’s ethno-cultural affiliation. And yet, as it will be shown in this paper’s following sub-chapter, the particulars of bilingualists’ physiological/genetic makeup directly affect the degree of their linguistic expressions’ comprehensiveness.

As we are being well aware of, people’s ability to learn foreign languages differs rather dramatically. Whereas; some individuals do not seem to experience any problems whatsoever, while acquiring second language, for others, learning a few basic foreign phrases appears to be the limit. How can it be explained?

As of today, there are two qualitatively different approaches to tackle the subject matter, concerned with the concept of ‘ability’, on one hand, and with the concept of ‘aptitude’, on another.

For example, according to Oller and Perkins (1978, p. 417), students’ likelihood to succeed in acquiring second language is being correlative with the rate of their Intellectual Quotidian(IQ): “It appears that some of the variance in verbal intelligence is common to variance in first and second language proficiency, some of which in turn may be common to the kinds of non-random sources of variance in self-reported data”.

In its turn, this explains why individuals who score high, while IQ-tested, often exhibit a particular talent in becoming proficient foreign-language speakers.

Nevertheless, given the fact that the very concept of IQ-testing is now being widely criticized, on the account of its ‘euro-centrism’, [6] it comes as not a particular surprise that recent decades saw the emergence of qualitatively new approach towards addressing the issue linguistic proficiency, commonly referred to as ‘aptitudal’ or ‘emotionally-intelligent’.

The proponents of this approach, such as Skehan (1998), argue that it is namely the fact that bilingualism-enhancing tasks, to which students are being commonly subjected in Western academia, can be best referred to as ‘emotionally exhausting’, which in turn explains some students’ lack of progress in becoming proficient bilingualists.

To put it plainly – many ethnic students’ linguistic failure should not be thought of as ‘thing in itself’, but rather as the consequence of educators’ failure to adhere to the principles of multicultural tolerance, while dealing with ‘ethnically unique’ learners.

The objective analysis, however, leaves few doubts as to the full appropriateness of a suggestion that the rate of one’s IQ does in fact reflect his or her capacity for learning foreign (particularly Western) languages. After all, individual’s ability to score high, while IQ-tested, extrapolates his or her ability to operate with utterly abstract mental categories. And, it does not represent much of a secret to linguists that English language alone features close to hundred thousand of highly abstract idioms.

Therefore, in order for just about anyone to succeed in learning English, as a second language, he or she would need to have an understanding of how abstract terms relate to emanations of surrounding reality. Unfortunately, this does not always seem to be the case among people endowed with primitive/rural mentality, who immigrate to Western countries from the Third World.

In his book, Bruhl (1928, p. 120) was able to define the qualitative essence of primitive perception of surrounding reality with utter precision: “Identity appears in their (natives’) collective representations… as a moving assemblage or totality of mystic actions and reactions, within which individual does not subjectualize but objectualize itself”.

Whereas, non-Westerners are being more capable of perceiving existential challenges through the lenses of utilitarian practicality, as compared what it is the case with native-born Westerners, their ability to define dialectical relationship between causes and effects appears significantly undermined – and yet, this is the foremost precondition that ensures success in learning Western languages.

As it was shown in Bruhl’s book, after having been asked to exclude semantically unrelated word out of wordily sequence axe – hammer – saw – log , indigenous people in Brazil, South-East Asia, Africa and Australia were experiencing a particularly hard time – in their eyes, the earlier mentioned sequence made a perfectly good sense as it was (due to what they perceived as these notions’ ‘usefulness’).

The fact that words axe, hammer and saw could be categorized as ‘instruments’, on one hand, and that the word log could be categorized as ‘material’, on another, never even occurred to these people.

Therefore, the fact that the foremost psychological characteristic of non-Whites has traditionally been their strive to ‘blend’ with the environment, rather than opposing it, as it is being the case with most Whites, created objective prerequisites for them to experience particularly hard time, when it comes to gaining proficiency in Western languages that feature a fair amount of abstractizations.

There is even more to the issue. As it was shown by Vanhanen and Lynn (2002, p. 194), the rate of one’s IQ is being predetermined by genetic rather than by environmental factors: “There is a positive correlation between brain size and intelligence so the race difference in brain size suggests a genetic basis for the difference in intelligence…Black infants reared by White middle class adoptive parents in the United States show no improvement in intelligence, contrary to the prediction of environmental theory”.

In its turn, this explains the phenomenon of ‘ebonics’, commonly referred to as ‘Black-English language’, which features an acute absence of even slight traces of an abstract terminology.

Therefore, it will only be logical to conclude that there exists a correlation between the particulars of one’s racial affiliation and his or her likelihood to succeed in becoming bilingual individual, in traditional context of this word. And, although the earlier articulated line of argumentation is being of rather theoretical essence, I believe that it does provide certain insights as to how proper and improper bilingualism-inducing academic techniques may be distinguished from each other.

As it was suggested in paper’s earlier parts, there are good reasons to believe that the qualitative aspects of people’s physiological and consequentially psychological constitution, do affect their chances of becoming affiliated with bilingualism, as an integral element of their existential mode. Therefore, it will only be logical to hypothesize that, when it comes to designing educational strategies, meant to facilitate students’ proficiency in foreign languages, these aspects must be taken into consideration.

The validity of this suggestion can be well illustrated in regards to the fact that it now became a legitimate practice among teachers, to classify students along the lines of what defines the inner characteristics of their cognitive apparatus, before subjecting them to a particular learning strategy.

According to Carrell and Monroe (1994), the individuals that indulge in liberal studying (e.g. learners of foreign languages), can be categorized as extroverts (sensing, feeling, interacting), on one hand, and as introverts (judging, thinking, abstracting), on another.

The insights, contained in their article, directly relate to the subject of this paper’s discussion, as the successful implementation of two qualitatively different linguistic input-related strategies, which are being commonly referred to as ‘structuralist’ and ‘meaningful’, cannot be ensured without teachers taking into account the specifics of learners’ psychological predisposition.

According to the advocates of structuralist approach to language-teaching, such as Skinner (1957), the process of students attaining proficiency in foreign language is being mainly concerned with memorization. This is the reason why the practitioners of this approach have traditionally been known for their tendency to place a particular emphasis onto drill and repetition, as success-ensuring keys to bilingualism.

Ever since early seventies, however, an entirely new approach to teaching foreign languages was becoming increasingly popular – a so-called ‘meaningful’ one.

According to one of the most prominent advocates of such an approach Dell Hymes (1996, p. 33), in order for students to be able to succeed in memorizing foreign words, they must be seeing them as such that convey an easy-to-recognize social meaning: “The linguistic features that enter into speech styles are not only the ‘referentially-based’ features usually dealt with in linguistics today, but also the ‘stylistic’ features that are complementary to them, and inseparable from them in social communication”.

What it means is that the second language should not be taught to students outside of what they perceive as such language’s practicality.

As it was noted by Baker in earlier quoted book: “We use a language for a specific purpose. Language is a means rather than a structural end. Effective language does not mean grammatical accuracy nor articulate fluency, but the competence lo communicate meaning effectively” (p. 119). Therefore, it comes as not a surprise that both approaches to teaching foreign languages differ rather dramatically in how their practitioners go about reaching their professional objectives.

Whereas; ‘structuralist’ methodology places heavy emphasis onto utilization of audiolingual techniques, as the instrument of increasing the extent of students’ proficiency in second language, the ‘meaningful’ one relies mainly upon the contextual appropriateness of deployed teaching strategies – hence, its strong affiliation with the concept of interactive socialization.

Given the fact that, as we have pointed out earlier, just about all the students can be categorized as introverts and extroverts, it will only be natural to expect the extrovertly-minded ones to be able to benefit from being exposed to specifically ‘meaningful’ method of acquiring linguistic skills in foreign language.

The reason for this is simple – being naturally predisposed towards socialization with others, these students will be much more likely to become bilingual, once they are being provided with an opportunity to practice their newly acquired linguistic skills in the environment where the possession of these skills might prove crucial, in social sense of this word.

Alternatively, students known for their tendency to indulge in social withdrawal, will be more likely to benefit from being provided with an opportunity to study second language in the manner that would allow them to introvertedly reflect upon what they are being taught.

Nevertheless, this does not mean that they may be able to attain a full proficiency in second language, without being required to practice the acquired linguistic skills. This is the reason why, as of today, it is specifically ‘meaningful’ strategies for studying foreign languages that continue to grow increasingly popular with both: teachers and learners.

Apparently, as time goes on, more and more educators become aware of a simple fact that the actual value of just about any language cannot be assessed outside of what represents its utilitarian significance. As Grosjean (1982, p. 8) had put it: “Language does not exist in itself but has a use for the overall behavior which is meaningful in a given culture. Functions of language are universal but the linguistic forms vary across languages and cultures”.

Because, due to the process of Globalization the world becomes increasingly ‘flat’ and ‘borderless’, it does not represent much of a challenge to predict that, in very near future, the ‘meaningful’ language-teaching strategy will probably attain the only legitimate academic status – the dialectically predetermined laws of history created objective preconditions for this to happen.

The discourse, regarding the role that parental involvement plays in the process of children becoming accustomed to the ways of bilingualism, initially revolved around the issue of what can be considered such involvement’s drawbacks.

After all, as it appears from the number of studies, conducted prior to the time when Western societies became subjected to the ideological oppression of political correctness, it is quite inappropriate to think that, given their love towards their children, parents are being simply in no position to undermine the effectiveness of the process of children attaining proficiency in second language.

For example, according to Brown and Hanlon (1970), most immigrant-parents in America tend to pay very little attention to whether their young ones utter English sentences in grammatically and stylistically proper way.

Partially, this can be explained by the fact that these parents themselves possess rather inadequate skills in the language of a host-country. However, there is also another aspect to the problem – as both authors have shown, it represents a commonplace practice among immigrant-parents to be mainly concerned with what their children say, as opposed to being concerned with how they say it.

The idea that parents (especially newly arrived immigrants) appear rather poor equipped, when it comes to providing their children with linguistic guidance, is also being explored by O’Grady (1997, p. 259): “A rarely noted point about parental feedback – direct or indirect, deliberate or incidental – is that it focuses on relatively peripheral, language-particular aspects of the child’s grammar… It is hard to even imagine a situation in which a parent would have the opportunity to provide feedback that would help a child discover the existence of syntactic categories”.

Apparently, the factor of parental love plays rather negative role within the context of children and adolescents growing bilingual, in academic rather than in street-spoken sense of this word.

Nevertheless, as it was shown by Lanza (1997, p. 256) there is a certain beneficence to how even the most indulgent parents address their children’s emerging bilingualism, because by exchanging bilingual remarks with their young ones, parents simultaneously provide them with the insight on what accounts for contextual suitability of language-switching: “The parent who initiates a code-switch with his or her child signals the appropriateness of language mixing and hence socializes the child into code-switching”.

After all, the process of children’s upbringing is not being concerned with parents exercising a strict control over how they react to life’s challenges, but with endowing children with a number of behavioral stereotypes.

The memorized behavior-related information, received from parents, is not simply being stored in child’s brain, but continues to spawn ever-newer forms of tacit knowledge, reflected in child’s apparent ability to understand so much more then he or she could have possibly known from indulging in experiential interaction with surrounding realities.

As the result, children’s ability to extrapolate earlier obtained knowledge onto an unfamiliar ‘strangeness’ allows them to choose in favor of a proper act, while being confronted by formally unknown, but subconsciously recognizable situations.

Thus, parents’ involvement into their children’s bilingual upbringing is best conceptualized as ‘double-sided-medal’: on one hand, such involvement often results in slowing down the pace of children growing bilingually proficient, but on another, it simultaneously results in increasing the extent of children’s bilingual adaptability – whatever the ironically it might sound.

The experiences of becoming bilingual, on the part of some of my immigrant-friends, can be compared to the experiences of an individual, who despite being utterly unaware of how to swim, has nevertheless been thrown into the river and told to whether swim or die. By the time they had found themselves in the midst of English speaking environment, they could barely speak the language at all. Nevertheless, it has only taken them as little as few months to become fully proficient in English.

The reason for this is simple – after having arrived to U.K., they had made a conscious point in trying not to socialize with compatriots from the old country. Therefore, I consider myself being in position to come up with at least three advices as to what will facilitate the process of a particular individual attaining proficiency in second language:

The prolonged social interaction with native-born language carriers – In

order for just about anyone to be able to get a good grip of a foreign language, he or she must never cease being exposed to the contextual aspects of such language’s practical utilization.

This suggestion is being fully consistent with the conceptual essence of a ‘meaningful’ approach to linguistic learning, which emphasizes the crucial importance of establishing provisions for the learners to perceive newly obtained linguistic information as such that interrelate with the very essence of their psychological anxieties.

After all, as psychologists are being well aware of, it is only the emotionally charged experiences, which people tend to memorize the most.

The continuous memorization of words and semantic idioms – No matter

how strongly may a particular person be willing to socialize with language’s native-born carriers, this person not be able to advance too far with becoming an efficient bilingualist, unless he or she is being disciplined enough to apply a continuous effort into expanding its linguistic vocabulary.

By striving to memorize as many words as possible on daily basis, the learner will not only be able to expand its vocabulary, which in itself is the important prerequisite of bilingualism, but also to attune the workings of its cognitive apparatus.

As it was noted by De Groot and Kroll (1997, p. 106): “L2 learning is demanding; individuals with low-working memory capacity may encounter processing failures more frequently than those with high capacity, with the effect that learning is diminished (and with it, perhaps, motivation and commitment)”.

It is fully understandable, of course, that nowadays people are being encouraged to think of the very notion of discipline as necessarily euro-centric, and therefore ‘evil’. One’s endowment with the sense of discipline, however, does not make it less of an asset, especially when the studying of a second language is being concerned.

The stimulation of learner’s sense of aesthetic finesse – As my personal

experiences indicate, people’s endowment with artistic sensitivity (such as one’s love of music), often reflects upon their ability to succeed rather spectacularly in learning second language. And, there is an absolutely rational explanation to this phenomenon.

The so-called Wernicke region in brain’s left hemisphere is responsible for both: decoding the semantic meaning of verbally articulated idioms and defining the subtleties of one’s artistic taste. [7]

Therefore, just as it is being possible for musically gifted individuals to subconsciously spot inconsistency in melody’s timbre or pitch, it is being possible for linguistically gifted individuals to subconsciously sense what will account for contextual, grammatical or stylistic appropriateness/inappropriateness of utilization of a particular word or phrase in representational matrix of a second language.

What it means is there are objective reasons to expect that people’s commitment to indulging in artistic pursuits is going to positively affect their chances of attaining bilingual proficiency.

As it was being hypnotized in the Introduction, there are a number of reasons to think that in very near future, the bilingualism will become the norm of life for just about anyone on this planet. The validity of such an idea is being confirmed by the linear subtleties of historical progress.

Apparently, the issue of bilingualism should not be discussed in terms of being simply a fashionable trend, but rather in terms of being an indication of the fact that, it is only the matter of time, before the conceptual matrix of Western educational practices will undergo a dramatic transformation. Therefore, there can be very little doubt as to the sheer beneficence of acquiring second language, regardless of who happened to be a concerned party.

At the same time, as it appears from an earlier conducted research, the bulk of bilingualism-inducing strategies, currently deployed in Western academic curriculum, are best defined as unnecessarily overcomplicated. In part, this can be explained by the very essence of today’s socio-political and educational discourses, deeply embedded in dogmas of political correctness.

This is exactly the reason why most educators and social scientists that participate in bilingualism-related discourse, deliberately try to avoid mentioning any links between the rate of people’s IQ and their ability to succeed in becoming bilingual. And yet, as it was pointed out earlier, such links do in fact exist. Denying their existence would be the same as denying the fact that Earth revolves around the Sun.

Therefore, it will only be logical to conclude this paper by suggesting that the future research, regarding the same subject matter, should mainly focus on exploring the qualitative nature of people’s predisposition towards acquiring bilingual skills, which often appears being biologically motivated.

I believe that the line of argumentation, utilized throughout the paper, and earlier articulated concluding remarks, are being fully consistent with paper’s initial thesis.

Albert, ML & Obler, LK 1978, The bilingual brain: Neuropsychological and neurolinguistic aspects of bilingualism , Academic Press, New York.

Appel, R & Muysken, P 2005, Language contact and bilingualism , Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam.

Baker, C 2001, Foundations of bilingual education and bilingualism , Multilingual Matters Limited, Clevedon.

Battro A 2004, ‘Four digital skills, globalization, and education,’ in Globalization: Culture and Education in the New Millennium, eds. Suárez-Orozco M & Baolian Qin-Hilliard D. University of California Press, Berkeley.

Bialystok, E 2001, Bilingualism in development: Language, literacy, and cognition , Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

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Bruhl, L 1928, The soul of the primitive , George Allen & Unwin Ltd, London.

Carrell, P & Monroe, L 1993, ‘Learning styles and composition’, The Modern Language Journal , vol. 77, no. 2, pp. 148-162.

Clark, JB 2010, Multilingualism, citizenship and identity: Voices of youth and symbolic investments in an urban, globalized world , Continuum International Publishing, London.

Clarkson, PC 1992, ‘Language and mathematics: A comparison of bilingual and monolingual students of mathematics’, Educational Studies in Mathematics , vol. 23, pp. 417—429.

Cummins, J 1980, ‘The entry and exit fallacy in bilingual education’, NABE Journal , vol.4, no. 3, pp. 25-59.

De Groot A & Kroll JF 1997, Tutorials in bilingualism: Psycholinguistic perspectives , Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah.

De Mejia, AM 2002, Power, prestige, and bilingualism: International perspectives on elite bilingual education , Multilingual Matters Limited, Clevedon.

Dörnyei, Z 1998, ‘Motivation in second and foreign language learning’, Language Teaching , vol. 31, pp. 117-135.

Gardner, R 2002, ‘Social psychological perspective on second language acquisition,’ in The Oxford Handbook of Applied Linguistics , ed. Kaplan, R. Oxford University Press, New York.

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Isbister J 1996, The immigration debate: Remaking America , Kumarian Press, West Hartford.

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Lynn, R & Vanhanen, T 2002, IQ and the wealth of nations, Greenwood Publishing Group, Westport.

MacNamara, J et al. 1968, ‘Language switching in bilinguals as a function of stimulus and response uncertainty’, Journal of Experimental Psychology, vol. 78, pp. 208-215.

Mensh, H & Mensh, E 1991, The IQ mythology: Class, race, gender, and inequality , Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale.

O’Grady, W 1997, Syntactic development , University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Ohmae, K 2005, Next global Stage: Challenges and opportunities in our borderless world , Wharton School Publishing, Upper Saddle River.

Oller, JW & Perkins, K 1978, ‘A further comment on language proficiency as a source of variance in certain affective measures’, Language Learning , vol. 28, pp. 417- 423.

Ramirez, AG 1985, Bilingualism through schooling: Cross-cultural education for minority and majority students , State University of New York Press, New York.

Skinner, BF 1957, Verbal behavior , Appleton-Century-Crofts, New York.

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Antonio Battro, ‘Four digital skills, globalization, and education,” in Globalization: Culture and Education in the New Millennium , eds. Marcelo Suárez-Orozco and Desirée Baolian Qin-Hilliard (Berkeley : University of California Press, 2004), 91
Ohmae Kenichi, Next global stage: Challenges and opportunities in our borderless world (Upper Saddle River: Wharton School Publishing, 2005), 5.
John Isbister, The immigration debate: Remaking America (West Hartford, CT: Kumarian Press, 1996), 1.
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Colin Baker, Foundations of bilingual education and bilingualism (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters Limited, 2001), 163-169.
Harry Mensh, and Elaine Mensh, The IQ mythology: Class, race, gender, and inequality (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991), 30.
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Chicago (A-D)
Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2018, June 7). The Benefits of Being Bilingual in a Global Society. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-benefits-of-being-bilingual-in-a-global-society/

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Bilingualism: Views of Language
Bilingualism and Multiculturalism
Bilingualism and Executive Functions in Children
“Sexism in English: Embodiment and Language”
Language as a Symbol of Group Membership: Asserting the Right to Be Unique
The Role of Media’s Influence
Defamiliarization
The Significance of Language: “Mother Tongue”

The Benefits of Bilingual Education and Its Impact on Student Learning and Growth

A teacher points to a chalkboard in front of a group of students.

Approximately 5 million students in the United States are English language learners, and the number of English language learners (ELLs) in the US public school system continues to rise steadily, especially in more urbanized school districts.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), students who speak English as a second language are more likely to struggle with academics, and only about 67 percent will graduate from public high school in four years—whereas the average for all students is 84 percent. ELL students can better develop their English proficiency and close the gap in achievement by participating in language assistance programs or bilingual education programs, the NCES explains.

The benefits of bilingual education can begin with students in elementary school and follow them throughout their lives. Education’s impact can lead to a variety of outcomes depending on whether ELL students learn English in a monolingual or bilingual environment. Educators in diverse classrooms or working as school leaders should consider the benefits of bilingual education when creating curricula and establishing desired student learning outcomes.

What Is Bilingual Education?

While bilingual education can take many forms, it strives to incorporate multiple languages into the process of teaching. For example, since there is such a large Spanish-speaking population in the United States, many primary and secondary school students can benefit from educational environments where they are learning in both English and Spanish.

Bilingual education can often be the most effective when children are beginning preschool or elementary school. If children grow up speaking Spanish as their primary language, it can be difficult for them to be placed in English-speaking elementary schools and be expected to understand their teachers and classmates. In a bilingual classroom, however, young students can further establish their foundation of Spanish as well as English, better preparing them for the rest of their education.

Of course, this works for students who begin school speaking any language as their primary language. Children whose parents have come to the United States from another country may have limited English skills when they first begin elementary school. Teachers working in bilingual education classrooms will balance their use of two languages when teaching math, science, history, and other subjects to help these students develop a stronger foundation of their first language as well as English as their second language.

Academic Benefits

Students can benefit in many ways from participating in bilingual education programs or classrooms. Some of the benefits of bilingual education relate to intellect. For example, research has shown that students who can speak and write in multiple languages have cognitive advantages over their monolingual peers. Those who learn a second or third language from a young age are able to develop communication skills and a higher degree of literacy. Children who grow up in bilingual environments develop a keen awareness of how language works and have a stronger foundation for learning additional languages in the future.

Students can also benefit academically from bilingual education. Students who pursue higher education are typically required to take a foreign language at the collegiate level, so those who have been exposed to bilingual educational environments before college—and speak two or more languages—have an advantage over their peers. They can advance in their studies and feel comfortable with multiple communities of students on their campuses.

Students who are exposed to multiple languages throughout high school and college can also have long-term career benefits. Their proficiency in multiple languages is an advantage when they graduate and enter the workplace as professionals. Every industry has a need for effective communicators who can speak multiple languages to meet the needs of the growing number of English language learners in the United States. International operations also have a great need for professionals who can speak multiple languages and represent US-based organizations and companies.

Growth beyond Academics

While there are many benefits of bilingual education related to school and work, bilingual education programs also have a huge impact on students’ cultural and social growth. Children who grow up speaking English as a second language often come from culturally diverse backgrounds. Incorporating cultural education in the classroom can help create enriching academic experiences for all students.

Exploring multiple languages in the classroom provides a foundation for cultural education that allows students to learn and grow alongside classmates from a different cultural background. As a result, students learn to become more adaptable and more aware of the world around them.

To encourage the academic and cultural development of students in bilingual education settings, teachers should have a strong foundation in education and leadership. They should demonstrate a passion for teaching as well as an understanding of how language and culture work together in their students’ academic journeys. Educators should be aware of the role that policies play in the educational environments they cultivate and have an understanding of how to best represent their students’ cultural backgrounds.

Pursue a Master of Arts in Teaching or Master of Education in Education Policy and Leadership

To implement the best teaching practices in bilingual education classrooms, teachers should be equipped with a foundation in transformational leadership and cultural awareness. To that end, teachers looking to have a meaningful impact on the lives of their students can further their own education and pursue an advanced degree in education policy and leadership. Through programs like American University’s Master of Arts in Teaching and Master of Education in Education Policy and Leadership , educators can broaden their worldviews, engaging in topics such as education law and policy, quantitative research in education, and educational leadership and organizational change.

Culturally Responsive Teaching Strategies: Importance, Benefits & Tips

EdD vs. PhD in Education: Requirements, Career Outlook, and Salary

Transformational Leadership in Education

Bilingual Kidspot, “5 Amazing Benefits of a Bilingual Education”

Learning English, “Number of English Learners in US Schools Keeps Rising”

National Center for Education Statistics, “Digest of Education Statistics”

National Center for Education Statistics, “English Language Learners in Public Schools”

Pew Research Center, “6 Facts About English Language Learners in U.S. Public Schools”

USA Today, “More US Schools Teach in English and Spanish, But Not Enough to Help Latino Kids”

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Advanced Essay #2: A Bilingual Education

My newest advanced essay revolved around being bilingual and its impact in my life and its benefits to modern education. As it stands, there is a bill currently that would implement a English-only system in Pennsylvania. Skills I focused on in my paper were understanding. Because my situation was very unique I really worked on the skill of having you feel like you were there with me. Another skill I wanted to work on was improving my grammar. Overall, I have good grammar but it can always improve. A part of my piece I’m proud of is having the courage to write about being bilingual and my past that relates to my education. I’ve always avoided writing about my previous education but I’m glad I started now. I plan to become more of a creative writer who can improve on editing. I think the skill in seeing your flaws in writing is very important, and I’d love to acquire it.

In September 2015, members of the Pennsylvania Legislature issued an “English Only” legislation, Bill 1506. Currently, 31 US states have similar legislation. The bill would require all state and local government business to be conducted in English. Some are against this bill, like opinion writer Charlie Deitch who says “ It’s hard to make meaningful gains in government when most of the time is spent parsing crap legislation meant to appease the citizenry sitting with closed minds.” As a child, I was born into a bilingual home in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Both my parents were born in Nicaragua, a multilingual but predominantly Spanish speaking country. My mother grew up in the United States and does not speak fluent Spanish. Her parents spoke Spanish but did not teach their children. My father lived in Nicaragua until he was 27; he speaks Miskito, Creole English and Spanish. As a child, I primarily learned one language, English. My mother would say a few words in Spanish. My father prefered Creole English and Miskito to Spanish. Then, when I was five years old, I was enrolled at Independence Charter School, a school with a bilingual program so I would become fluent in Spanish. Some members of the Pennsylvania Legislature apparently fear multilingualism and multiculturalism. My story should alleviate their fears.

From kindergarten through fifth grade, I spent 80 - 90% of my school day learning in Spanish. Besides Spanish Language Arts, math, science and social studies were in Spanish. I had one period a day of English. For example, I learned the world's’ countries in Spanish. I never knew Switzerland, England or Belgium. I knew them as Suiza, Inglaterra and Bélgica. Math operations were la adición, división, multiplicación, and resta or subtracción. Classes had a “Spanish only rule.” You couldn’t speak English in classes; if we have something to say, it had to be in Spanish. What I learned in Spanish in third grade, SLA students learn in Spanish II.

Despite the challenge of learning in a second language, I enjoyed learning in Spanish. Most of my teachers were Latina and born in Spanish speaking countries. They spoke Spanish from birth. I learned proper pronunciation. In addition, they exposed us to their cultural traditions. This helped me embrace my heritage. Because of my physical appearance, especially my freckles, most people assume I am only white. But when I learned Spanish, I gained the confidence to embrace and love my complex heritage.

When I started middle school, the language demands increased. Now, math and science were in English. Only Spanish Language Arts and social studies were in Spanish. It was difficult and frustrating to shift and learn new information in English. I had to learn more new vocabulary in a month than I had in five years. I almost lost five years of Spanish to a month of confusion. I wasn’t alone; many of us found learning math and science in English challenging. I learned to say “integers and acute” instead of “agudo y enteros” and “DNA and ecosystem” instead of “ADN y ecosistema.” In addition, my ADHD made it difficult to focus. There was also enormous pressure to have high grades and test scores to get into a magnet high school.

Nevertheless, while being bilingual has its perks, it made the infamous PSSA’s, extremely stressful. The PSSA’s are the standardized test in Pennsylvania; high test scores are required to enroll into a favorable high school. The tests are in English. The teachers couldn’t help me during the test. No definition of terms. No explanation of a math concept I had learned in Spanish but could not explain in English. The only thing my teacher could say was “try your best!” This response instilled more fear. This is when I realized my education was partially flawed.

A bilingual education made standardized testing very stressful because I was not fully prepared in English but there were significant benefits. Since entering high school, I have become a more confident student. Many of my peers from the immersion or bilingual program are succeeding in quality schools. My complicated heritage and bilingualism have made me a more insightful and creative student, rather than a textbook student. I believe I have the skills and drive to succeed.

While bilingualism assists my learning in school and is a bridge with my family, there are many other benefits to being bilingual. Being bilingual is a skill that will always be in demand in the work force. I learned from teachers, parents and extended family who see and experience life through many different lens. Whether the Pennsylvania Legislators who support “English only” like it or not, by 2050 less than half of the United States will be of European descent.

Apparently, some members of the Pennsylvania legislature want to deny Pennsylvanians who either do not speak English or prefer another language second class citizenship. Many other countries encourage bilingualism or multilingualism, far too many people in the U.S. fear bilingualism and want to legislate against it. The bill has reached some support. The bill's’ authors suggests “ Bill 1506 is meant to bring the country together under one language.” The bill will do nothing but hold our language skills back. But Although learning in school in my second language was often challenging, I am better student and citizen because of it.

My bilingual education gave me real world skills to work skills. I had cultural experiences that I would not have had in a monolingual school. My language skills have given me opportunities that I now appreciate. A bilingual education is a privilege, not a burden. The proposed “English Only” bill in the Pennsylvania Legislature is grounded in fear and narrow nationalism. Rather than limit our learning, the Pennsylvania Legislature should encourage bilingualism and cross cultural experiences. Learning in two languages may take a toll on a young learner but the benefits outweigh the initial burden. Rather than promoting “English Only,” the Pennsylvania Legislature should be funding multilingual public education and expanding opportunities for cultural exchange.

Esack, Steve. "English Language Bill Backlash Grows in Capitol." Morning Call . The Morning Call, 26 Sept. 2015. Web. 19 Nov. 2015.

http://www.mcall.com/news/nationworld/pennsylvania/mc-pa-english-only-backlash-20150926-story.html

http://www.pghcitypaper.com/pittsburgh/the-only-purpose-of-english-only-legislation-is-to-obstruct-the-real-business-of-government/Content?oid=1857177

Deitch, Charlie. "The Only Purpose of English-Only Legislation Is to Obstruct the Real Business of Government." Pghcitypaper . Pittsburgh CityPaper, 30 Sept. 2015. Web. 23 Nov. 2015.

http://www.post-gazette.com/news/politics-state/2011/09/15/Bills-seek-to-make-English-official-Pa-language/stories/201109150337

Barnes, Tom. "Bills Seek to Make English Official Pa. Language." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette . Pitt PG, 15 Sept. 2011. Web. 23 Nov. 2015.

http://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/billInfo/billInfo.cfm?sYear=2013&sInd=0&body=h&type=b&bn=2132

"Bill Information - House Bill 2132; Regular Session 2013-2014." The Official Website for the Pennsylvania General Assembly. Pennsylvania General Assembly, n.d. Web. 23 Nov. 2015.

http://fox43.com/2014/03/26/lawmaker-introduces-bill-that-would-make-english-the-official-language-in-pennsylvania/

"Lawmaker Introduces Bill That Would Make English the Official Language in Pennsylvania." WPMT FOX43 . FOX News, 26 Mar. 2014. Web. 23 Nov. 2015.

Aaron W-S: A Bilingual Education from Aaron Watson-Sharer on Vimeo .

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v.2012; Sep-Oct 2012

The Cognitive Benefits of Being Bilingual

Editor’s note:.

Today, more of the world’s population is bilingual or multilingual than monolingual. In addition to facilitating cross-cultural communication, this trend also positively affects cognitive abilities. Researchers have shown that the bilingual brain can have better attention and task-switching capacities than the monolingual brain, thanks to its developed ability to inhibit one language while using another. In addition, bilingualism has positive effects at both ends of the age spectrum: Bilingual children as young as seven months can better adjust to environmental changes, while bilingual seniors can experience less cognitive decline .

We are surrounded by language during nearly every waking moment of our lives. We use language to communicate our thoughts and feelings, to connect with others and identify with our culture, and to understand the world around us. And for many people, this rich linguistic environment involves not just one language but two or more. In fact, the majority of the world’s population is bilingual or multilingual. In a survey conducted by the European Commission in 2006, 56 percent of respondents reported being able to speak in a language other than their mother tongue. In many countries that percentage is even higher—for instance, 99 percent of Luxembourgers and 95 percent of Latvians speak more than one language. 1 Even in the United States, which is widely considered to be monolingual, one-fifth of those over the age of five reported speaking a language other than English at home in 2007, an increase of 140 percent since 1980. 2 Millions of Americans use a language other than English in their everyday lives outside of the home, when they are at work or in the classroom. Europe and the United States are not alone, either. The Associated Press reports that up to 66 percent of the world’s children are raised bilingual. 3 Over the past few decades, technological advances have allowed researchers to peer deeper into the brain to investigate how bilingualism interacts with and changes the cognitive and neurological systems.

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Cognitive Consequences of Bilingualism

Research has overwhelmingly shown that when a bilingual person uses one language, the other is active at the same time. When a person hears a word, he or she doesn’t hear the entire word all at once: the sounds arrive in sequential order. Long before the word is finished, the brain’s language system begins to guess what that word might be by activating lots of words that match the signal. If you hear “can,” you will likely activate words like “candy” and “candle” as well, at least during the earlier stages of word recognition. For bilingual people, this activation is not limited to a single language; auditory input activates corresponding words regardless of the language to which they belong. 4

Some of the most compelling evidence for language co-activation comes from studying eye movements. We tend to look at things that we are thinking, talking, or hearing about. 5 A Russian-English bilingual person asked to “pick up a marker” from a set of objects would look more at a stamp than someone who doesn’t know Russian, because the Russian word for “stamp,” “ marka ,” sounds like the English word he or she heard, “marker.” 4 In cases like this, language co-activation occurs because what the listener hears could map onto words in either language. Furthermore, language co-activation is so automatic that people consider words in both languages even without overt similarity. For example, when Chinese-English bilingual people judge how alike two English words are in meaning, their brain responses are affected by whether or not the Chinese translations of those words are written similarly. 6 Even though the task does not require the bilingual people to engage their Chinese, they do so anyway.

Having to deal with this persistent linguistic competition can result in language difficulties. For instance, knowing more than one language can cause speakers to name pictures more slowly 7 and can increase tip-of-the-tongue states (where you’re unable to fully conjure a word, but can remember specific details about it, like what letter it starts with). 8 As a result, the constant juggling of two languages creates a need to control how much a person accesses a language at any given time. From a communicative standpoint, this is an important skill—understanding a message in one language can be difficult if your other language always interferes. Likewise, if a bilingual person frequently switches between languages when speaking, it can confuse the listener, especially if that listener knows only one of the speaker’s languages.

To maintain the relative balance between two languages, the bilingual brain relies on executive functions, a regulatory system of general cognitive abilities that includes processes such as attention and inhibition. Because both of a bilingual person’s language systems are always active and competing, that person uses these control mechanisms every time she or he speaks or listens. This constant practice strengthens the control mechanisms and changes the associated brain regions. 9 – 12

Bilingual people often perform better on tasks that require conflict management. In the classic Stroop task , people see a word and are asked to name the color of the word’s font. When the color and the word match (i.e., the word “red” printed in red), people correctly name the color more quickly than when the color and the word don’t match (i.e., the word “red” printed in blue). This occurs because the word itself (“red”) and its font color (blue) conflict. The cognitive system must employ additional resources to ignore the irrelevant word and focus on the relevant color. The ability to ignore competing perceptual information and focus on the relevant aspects of the input is called inhibitory control. Bilingual people often perform better than monolingual people at tasks that tap into inhibitory control ability. Bilingual people are also better than monolingual people at switching between two tasks; for example, when bilinguals have to switch from categorizing objects by color (red or green) to categorizing them by shape (circle or triangle), they do so more rapidly than monolingual people, 13 reflecting better cognitive control when changing strategies on the fly.

Changes in Neurological Processing and Structure

Studies suggest that bilingual advantages in executive function are not limited to the brain’s language networks. 9 Researchers have used brain imaging techniques like functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate which brain regions are active when bilingual people perform tasks in which they are forced to alternate between their two languages. For instance, when bilingual people have to switch between naming pictures in Spanish and naming them in English, they show increased activation in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), a brain region associated with cognitive skills like attention and inhibition. 14 Along with the DLPFC, language switching has been found to involve such structures as the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), bilateral supermarginal gyri, and left inferior frontal gyrus (left-IFG), regions that are also involved in cognitive control. 9 The left-IFG in particular, often considered the language production center of the brain, appears to be involved in both linguistic 15 and non-linguistic cognitive control. 16

The neurological roots of the bilingual advantage extend to subcortical brain areas more traditionally associated with sensory processing. When monolingual and bilingual adolescents listen to simple speech sounds (e.g., the syllable “da”) without any intervening background noise, they show highly similar brain stem responses to the auditory information. When researchers play the same sound to both groups in the presence of background noise, the bilingual listeners’ neural response is considerably larger, reflecting better encoding of the sound’s fundamental frequency, 17 a feature of sound closely related to pitch perception. To put it another way, in bilingual people, blood flow (a marker for neuronal activity) is greater in the brain stem in response to the sound. Intriguingly, this boost in sound encoding appears to be related to advantages in auditory attention. The cognitive control required to manage multiple languages appears to have broad effects on neurological function, fine-tuning both cognitive control mechanisms and sensory processes.

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Beyond differences in neuronal activation, bilingualism seems to affect the brain’s structure as well. Higher proficiency in a second language, as well as earlier acquisition of that language, correlates with higher gray matter volume in the left inferior parietal cortex. 18 Researchers have associated damage to this area with uncontrolled language switching, 19 suggesting that it may play an important role in managing the balance between two languages. Likewise, researchers have found white matter volume changes in bilingual children 20 and older adults. 21 It appears that bilingual experience not only changes the way neurological structures process information, but also may alter the neurological structures themselves.

Improvements in Learning

Being bilingual can have tangible practical benefits. The improvements in cognitive and sensory processing driven by bilingual experience may help a bilingual person to better process information in the environment, leading to a clearer signal for learning. This kind of improved attention to detail may help explain why bilingual adults learn a third language better than monolingual adults learn a second language. 22 The bilingual language-learning advantage may be rooted in the ability to focus on information about the new language while reducing interference from the languages they already know. 23 This ability would allow bilingual people to more easily access newly learned words, leading to larger gains in vocabulary than those experienced by monolingual people who aren’t as skilled at inhibiting competing information.

Furthermore, the benefits associated with bilingual experience seem to start quite early—researchers have shown bilingualism to positively influence attention and conflict management in infants as young as seven months. In one study, researchers taught babies growing up in monolingual or bilingual homes that when they heard a tinkling sound, a puppet appeared on one side of a screen. Halfway through the study, the puppet began appearing on the opposite side of the screen. In order to get a reward, the infants had to adjust the rule they’d learned; only the bilingual babies were able to successfully learn the new rule. 24 This suggests that even for very young children, navigating a multilingual environment imparts advantages that transfer beyond language.

Protecting Against Age-Related Decline

The cognitive and neurological benefits of bilingualism also extend into older adulthood. Bilingualism appears to provide a means of fending off a natural decline of cognitive function and maintaining what is called “cognitive reserve.” 9 , 25 Cognitive reserve refers to the efficient utilization of brain networks to enhance brain function during aging. Bilingual experience may contribute to this reserve by keeping the cognitive mechanisms sharp and helping to recruit alternate brain networks to compensate for those that become damaged during aging. Older bilingual people enjoy improved memory 26 and executive control 9 relative to older monolingual people, which can lead to real-world health benefits.

In addition to staving off the decline that often comes with aging, bilingualism can also protect against illnesses that hasten this decline, like Alzheimer’s disease. In a study of more than 200 bilingual and monolingual patients with Alzheimer’s disease, bilingual patients reported showing initial symptoms of the disease at about 77.7 years of age—5.1 years later than the monolingual average of 72.6. Likewise, bilingual patients were diagnosed 4.3 years later than the monolingual patients (80.8 years of age and 76.5 years of age, respectively). 25 In a follow-up study, researchers compared the brains of bilingual and monolingual patients matched on the severity of Alzheimer’s symptoms. Surprisingly, the brains of bilingual people showed a significantly higher degree of physical atrophy in regions commonly associated with Alzheimer’s disease. 27 In other words, the bilingual people had more physical signs of disease than their monolingual counterparts, yet performed on par behaviorally, even though their degree of brain atrophy suggested that their symptoms should be much worse. If the brain is an engine, bilingualism may help to improve its mileage, allowing it to go farther on the same amount of fuel.

The cognitive and neurological benefits of bilingualism extend from early childhood to old age as the brain more efficiently processes information and staves off cognitive decline. What’s more, the attention and aging benefits discussed above aren’t exclusive to people who were raised bilingual; they are also seen in people who learn a second language later in life. 25 , 28 The enriched cognitive control that comes along with bilingual experience represents just one of the advantages that bilingual people enjoy. Despite certain linguistic limitations that have been observed in bilinguals (e.g., increased naming difficulty 7 ), bilingualism has been associated with improved metalinguistic awareness (the ability to recognize language as a system that can be manipulated and explored), as well as with better memory, visual-spatial skills, and even creativity. 29 Furthermore, beyond these cognitive and neurological advantages, there are also valuable social benefits that come from being bilingual, among them the ability to explore a culture through its native tongue or talk to someone with whom you might otherwise never be able to communicate. The cognitive, neural, and social advantages observed in bilingual people highlight the need to consider how bilingualism shapes the activity and the architecture of the brain, and ultimately how language is represented in the human mind, especially since the majority of speakers in the world experience life through more than one language.

Article available online at http://www.dana.org/news/cerebrum/detail.aspx?id=39638

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The Benefits and Challenges of Being Bilingual in College

College isn’t easy. Simple as that. If for some reason you’re actually breezing through everything and find you need zero help whatsoever, you’re probably doing something wrong. That isn’t to say some people don’t have an easier time; some do, but everyone has their struggles. Bilingual students, in particular, seem to have double the struggle when it comes to college, if only because having two languages in your head can tangle up your life in ways unknown to those who only speak one language.

Bilingualism itself isn’t as rare as most people believe it to be, especially not in a college setting. It is a skill that many students already have or eventually develop through their college careers. These students that end up with the skill of bilingualism though end up having a different set of struggles and benefits when it comes to dealing with, not only in school, but the world as well. Having the skill of bilingualism is worth everything that comes with it, though. For example, connecting with people becomes easier and if you’re looking for a job it’s a skill that’s eye-catching because it’s useful for employers who cater to multiple nationalities. It is a skill , though many won’t see it that way, and the demand is growing more than ever.

As a student in college, this particular skill will help you connect with others and it will help you dive into the world of diversity that college offers. For example, if you know Spanish in conjunction with English you won’t just connect to Spanish speakers that come from your culture, you could connect with anyone who speaks any type of Spanish. One of the most beautiful things to experience is finding people who speak the same language as you but have a completely different culture than you do. English, for example, is used all over the world. The perspective of this diverse language can be seen differently from someone in Australia than from someone in America—mostly because of the different cultures.

Meeting new people, finding a connection with language and connecting with others is just one of the benefits that comes with being a bilingual student. Being bilingual means having a different perspective on life, whether you realize it or not. Knowing two or more languages opens up your mind to understand the world around you in different ways. Every day as a student you will find commonalities between the languages you speak, and the way people use them—no matter which two languages those are. This is particularly important when becoming a part of a college community, college will test your limits and boundaries, not only when it comes to studies, but also when it comes to dealing with others, with the discovery that everyone shares different views than you. Having an open mind will make your life easier and more enjoyable.

Of course, being bilingual in college comes with its struggles (there’s hardly anything that doesn’t). Bilingualism, especially in America, isn’t always met with an enthusiastic response, especially with all the political tension surrounding America now; it is even viewed as a stigma. It has been a rising problem in America that people don’t want others to speak any other language aside from English. This is because many people believe English is America’s official language and therefore its only language. Even though this obviously isn’t true and anyone should feel free to speak the language they want to, it is still a stigma that is heavily enforced in the U.S. and sadly it comes into play in college settings as well.

Aside from getting strange looks when speaking another language in said college setting, it can also cause tension and awkward situations. If English isn’t your first language, and you have a little more trouble speaking it, or just feel more comfortable speaking your native language, some people pick up on it and don’t always have the most graceful responses. An example of this is professors picking up on the difficulty a student has with English, and instead of helping the student, they decide to make the situation harder for them by focusing on them or pointing out their trouble with it. Of course, not all professors automatically resort to this (in fact, most don’t), but situations like this have come to pass and they seem to be becoming more common as time goes on.

Being ridiculed for knowing anything other than English is a problem that you’d think would go away by the time you reach college, but sadly that isn’t always the case. And aside from being given a hard time, sometimes the logistics of having two languages in your head can get you into awkward situations as well. Mixing up words or forgetting one word in one language but remembering it in the other is common and most of the time you just can’t help when it happens. This isn’t like the stereotype in movies when a character always seems to resort to “How you say…” when they forget a word. It’s more like being in the middle of a conversation in English and knowing what word you want to say next but only remembering how to say it in another.

This can seem funny at times, and it is usually depicted as so in shows and movies, but it can be a real problem. For example, if you are in an important conversation with a professor and you immediately cut off because you have forgotten how to say a word in the language you were speaking, it can become awkward and you might come off as irresponsible or unreliable. It can also just put you into situations where other students will judge you for how you switch between languages.

Being bilingual in college is a unique experience, one that not many people know enough about. It comes with its ups and downs but in the end, it is a really useful skill to have. Having more than one language in your head can get a little confusing at times, but it can also be extremely helpful. More and more students should feel open to the possibility of learning or knowing more than one language—it definitely shapes your college experience in the best of ways.

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Best Linguistics Essay Examples

Being bilingual.

992 words | 4 page(s)

With recent statistics suggesting that approximately 56% of the world’s population speaks two or three languages in an exceptionally fluent manner, it is no wonder that linguists, psychologists and sociologists across the world have been investigating the dynamics, advantages and disadvantages of bilinguism. Being bilingual means studying, speaking and understanding two different languages. One can either master a second language later in life or be lucky enough to be born in a bilingual family, where they can easily practice both languages without having to decipher their respective rules. Growing up, I never considered how useful and convenient it would be to be able to speak two or more languages fluently as I was always surrounded by people who spoke the same language as me. It wasn’t until I started traveling around the world and meeting people from different cultural backgrounds that I realized that I needed to improve my English, which over the past few decades has become a global lingua franca. As far as I am concerned, learning a second language has made me much more responsive and sensitive to other cultures, thus giving me a new perspective. When I switch from one language to another, I feel like a completely different person: my mentality, my emotions, my facial expressions, my physiological responses to what my interlocutor says, my gestures and even my tone of voice change.

Interestingly, research has revealed that many bilingual and multilingual speakers tend to emphasize different character traits depending on the language that they are speaking. Noteworthy is a study by Professor Koven, who analyzed the way in which several French-Portuguese bilinguals’ expressed their ideas and acted while speaking different languages, hoping to identify relevant patterns. His findings clearly indicate that bilingual people tend to develop two separate “selves”, one for each language. Since each language is characterized by a distinctive way of communicating (both verbally and non-verbally), bilinguals can experience different feelings and embrace different identities when speaking different languages; for example, one of the bilinguals observed by Professor Koven sounded and acted like an aggressive, hip suburbanite in French and a calm, polite but frustrated bank customer in Portuguese. More recently, researchers found out that bilingual people may even experience changes in self-perception, with some Spanish-English bilingual women reporting feeling more assertive when they speak Spanish and even interpreting the same advertisements in different ways when they see them in English and Spanish. Languages are fascinating because each one of them has a soul, a past and a personality that make it unique.

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When we master a second language, we automatically feel closer to the values and ideas that it embodies, which is why bilingual people see the world differently from other people. The English language, for example, is dynamic, quick, practical and rather informal. Asian languages, on the other hand, tend to be very formal, highly structured and polite, as they reflect the hierarchical societies in which they have evolved. Having experienced all this, I believe that my daily life wouldn’t be as interesting as it is if I didn’t know a second language. Being able to express myself in many different ways is a gift that has significantly enriched my personality and enhanced my communication skills, thus enabling me to seize my opportunities which have contributed greatly to shaping my character. Monolinguals are limited to just one language when watching films, listening to music, interacting with others and performing many other activities. Bilingual and multilingual speakers, on the other hand, can enjoy and appreciate foreign books, music and films, whose essence tends to get “lost in translation”, no matter how talented or experienced the translator is. Comedy films are an excellent example of this. Anyone who has ever seen a comedy film in both its original and dubbed versions knows exactly how difficult it can be to translate and localize humor.

Interestingly, not so long ago, many people across the world believed that raising children to be bilingual was harmful. In both the United States and the United Kingdom, parents were led to believe that bilinguism was likely to result in confusion, communication-related problems, lower intelligence and self-esteem, awkward behavior, various personality disorders and even schizophrenia. It wasn’t until the 1960s that experts began realizing that bilingual and multilingual children performed better than their monolingual counterparts in both vernal and non-verbal intelligence tests. Nowadays, bilingualism is widely viewed as an asset. People who speak more than one language are considered to be more flexible, open-minded, employable and intelligent. While I am certain that one doesn’t need to master a second language to acquire these qualities, I firmly believe that monolingual speakers will always have a narrow perception of the world compared to bilinguals, which is why I will keep working hard to improve my English until I achieve complete fluency. In today’s increasingly interconnected and multicultural world, bilinguism is what allows individuals to feel part of something great and appreciate the impact that one’s culture has on the way in which they express themselves. Bilinguism helps people see things, seize opportunities (especially social and cultural ones), overcome barriers, express themselves and achieve goals like no other skill can, thus changing them in a permanent way. With every language we learn, our personality evolves, our horizons broaden and our perception of ourselves and the people around us gradually changes, thus making it impossible for us to imagine expressing ourselves in just one language. That is why a person who only speaks one language is like a body without hands: always restrained, limited and somewhat incomplete, unable to fulfill his or her full potential, without really being aware of the many experiences and opportunities that he or she is missing out on.

Michèle E. J. Koven. “Two Languages in the Self/ The Self in Two Languages: French-Portuguese Bilinguals’ Verbal Enactments and Experiences of Self in Narrative Discourse.” Ethos, vol. 26, no. 4, 1998, pp. 410–455. www.jstor.org/stable/640663.

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Bragging Writes Winner: A Real College Essay that Really Worked!

My favorite word in the Spanish language is el pollo. I like the way the double “l” rolls off my tongue and how my lips purse to pronounce the “p”. A rightful assumption is that el pollo is some beautiful word, a word signifying hope or love, or that at the very least, it epitomizes some circumstance in my life in a meaningful way. In reality, it translates to “the chicken”.

I started learning Spanish in the seventh grade. Because it was a trimester course, we only learned the basics, but mastering numbers and colors didn’t hold my interest. Sure, I could count to ten and describe the color of the sky, but I couldn’t hold a conversation. When I got to eighth grade, however, Spanish occupied my thoughts, especially when I realized how good I was at it.

As I continued into high school, my Spanish skills flourished. I began to think in Spanish, palabras (words) swirling inside my head, interchanging with English. I found myself complaining about English and its lacklusterness and difficulty in comparison to Spanish (English’s lack of an usted form, for example). My friends spoke French, but that didn’t stop me from replying to their questions in Spanish. Foreign words, unknown to me and not necessarily Spanish, stumbled out of my mouth with a Spanish accent. To the bewilderment of my friends, I write out lists of Spanish verbs for fun. Simply put, Spanish consumed my life.

However, in the spring of my freshman year, it wasn’t Spanish exhausting my brain; instead, it was the brain abscess pressing on my mom’s. Spending my evenings in the hospital, I watched as the abscess paralyzed the left fingers she had intertwined with mine, weaken the legs she had ran marathons with, and constrained my shopping partner to a hospital bed. For a month, I was sullen, the world whisking around me, while I ached with pain of the possibility of losing my mother.

I used my love of Spanish to ease the pain. The phrase, el pollo es mi comida favorita, a skipping track, prevented me from thinking about the situation, while conjugating verbs into different tenses restrained the shakiness of my voice and the tears forming in my eyes. Whereas before counting to ten bored me, I now counted to 100 to coax my fingers from trembling. Sitting beside my ailing mother, I struggled for the right words in English, but knew them all in Spanish. Spanish was my savior. While a surgeon cured my mother, Spanish fixed me.

Sitting in my seventh grade classroom, I would have never thought that something so basic as numbers could stave off the misery of my situation, nor could I ever have guessed that Spanish would become my holy grail. But, like my mom’s brain abscess, one cannot foresee the impact any one thing has upon their life. Through the years, Spanish has become my best friend, calming me when my blood pressure starts to rise and assuring me that everything will be alright.

While I matured into una mujer (woman) in that hospital room, I learned that salvation negates translation and that esperanza (hope) can be found in the strangest of words. -Kelly Porter, 2015

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What I’ve Learned From My Students’ College Essays

The genre is often maligned for being formulaic and melodramatic, but it’s more important than you think.

An illustration of a high school student with blue hair, dreaming of what to write in their college essay.

By Nell Freudenberger

Most high school seniors approach the college essay with dread. Either their upbringing hasn’t supplied them with several hundred words of adversity, or worse, they’re afraid that packaging the genuine trauma they’ve experienced is the only way to secure their future. The college counselor at the Brooklyn high school where I’m a writing tutor advises against trauma porn. “Keep it brief , ” she says, “and show how you rose above it.”

I started volunteering in New York City schools in my 20s, before I had kids of my own. At the time, I liked hanging out with teenagers, whom I sometimes had more interesting conversations with than I did my peers. Often I worked with students who spoke English as a second language or who used slang in their writing, and at first I was hung up on grammar. Should I correct any deviation from “standard English” to appeal to some Wizard of Oz behind the curtains of a college admissions office? Or should I encourage students to write the way they speak, in pursuit of an authentic voice, that most elusive of literary qualities?

In fact, I was missing the point. One of many lessons the students have taught me is to let the story dictate the voice of the essay. A few years ago, I worked with a boy who claimed to have nothing to write about. His life had been ordinary, he said; nothing had happened to him. I asked if he wanted to try writing about a family member, his favorite school subject, a summer job? He glanced at his phone, his posture and expression suggesting that he’d rather be anywhere but in front of a computer with me. “Hobbies?” I suggested, without much hope. He gave me a shy glance. “I like to box,” he said.

I’ve had this experience with reluctant writers again and again — when a topic clicks with a student, an essay can unfurl spontaneously. Of course the primary goal of a college essay is to help its author get an education that leads to a career. Changes in testing policies and financial aid have made applying to college more confusing than ever, but essays have remained basically the same. I would argue that they’re much more than an onerous task or rote exercise, and that unlike standardized tests they are infinitely variable and sometimes beautiful. College essays also provide an opportunity to learn precision, clarity and the process of working toward the truth through multiple revisions.

When a topic clicks with a student, an essay can unfurl spontaneously.

Even if writing doesn’t end up being fundamental to their future professions, students learn to choose language carefully and to be suspicious of the first words that come to mind. Especially now, as college students shoulder so much of the country’s ethical responsibility for war with their protest movement, essay writing teaches prospective students an increasingly urgent lesson: that choosing their own words over ready-made phrases is the only reliable way to ensure they’re thinking for themselves.

Teenagers are ideal writers for several reasons. They’re usually free of preconceptions about writing, and they tend not to use self-consciously ‘‘literary’’ language. They’re allergic to hypocrisy and are generally unfiltered: They overshare, ask personal questions and call you out for microaggressions as well as less egregious (but still mortifying) verbal errors, such as referring to weed as ‘‘pot.’’ Most important, they have yet to put down their best stories in a finished form.

I can imagine an essay taking a risk and distinguishing itself formally — a poem or a one-act play — but most kids use a more straightforward model: a hook followed by a narrative built around “small moments” that lead to a concluding lesson or aspiration for the future. I never get tired of working with students on these essays because each one is different, and the short, rigid form sometimes makes an emotional story even more powerful. Before I read Javier Zamora’s wrenching “Solito,” I worked with a student who had been transported by a coyote into the U.S. and was reunited with his mother in the parking lot of a big-box store. I don’t remember whether this essay focused on specific skills or coping mechanisms that he gained from his ordeal. I remember only the bliss of the parent-and-child reunion in that uninspiring setting. If I were making a case to an admissions officer, I would suggest that simply being able to convey that experience demonstrates the kind of resilience that any college should admire.

The essays that have stayed with me over the years don’t follow a pattern. There are some narratives on very predictable topics — living up to the expectations of immigrant parents, or suffering from depression in 2020 — that are moving because of the attention with which the student describes the experience. One girl determined to become an engineer while watching her father build furniture from scraps after work; a boy, grieving for his mother during lockdown, began taking pictures of the sky.

If, as Lorrie Moore said, “a short story is a love affair; a novel is a marriage,” what is a college essay? Every once in a while I sit down next to a student and start reading, and I have to suppress my excitement, because there on the Google Doc in front of me is a real writer’s voice. One of the first students I ever worked with wrote about falling in love with another girl in dance class, the absolute magic of watching her move and the terror in the conflict between her feelings and the instruction of her religious middle school. She made me think that college essays are less like love than limerence: one-sided, obsessive, idiosyncratic but profound, the first draft of the most personal story their writers will ever tell.

Nell Freudenberger’s novel “The Limits” was published by Knopf last month. She volunteers through the PEN America Writers in the Schools program.

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WowEssays.com paper writer service proudly presents to you a free directory of Bilingual College Essays intended to help struggling students tackle their writing challenges. In a practical sense, each Bilingual College Essay sample presented here may be a guidebook that walks you through the important phases of the writing process and showcases how to develop an academic work that hits the mark. Besides, if you need more visionary assistance, these examples could give you a nudge toward a fresh Bilingual College Essay topic or inspire a novice approach to a banal issue.

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RE; MY VIEW ON BILINGUAL/ELL EDUCATION Bilingual education entails teaching academic content in two different languages. One of which is a native and a learned language. The two languages are taught in variance to each other and, in accordance, with the model of the program.

The Bilingual Common Core Initiative has published few samples for the review of the public:

- NLAP 9-10 Grade Speaking and Listening - NLAP 6th Grade Reading for Information - NLAP 3rd Grade Writing Sample

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Questions exist as to how children master and develop different skills. One of the areas of interest is the ability of the children to acquire language. More so, the situation is more confusing when the children have to learn and differentiate between two languages. The essay below looks at this issue in greater detail.

How Babies Sort Out Language

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Court proceedings are sensitive especially for the defendants and the victims. There needs to be clarity in the minds of all the participants on what is being said and decided. There have been efforts towards better language interpretation practices for the benefits of bilingual or multilingual participants. The victim’s rights should also be respected as it is through them that defendants are arrested and prosecuted.

Language Interpretation and Victim Rights

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In an article titled: “Sensitive and advantageous periods in first language learning: What are the implications for very young Japanese learners of English?” As obtained from the International Journal of language, society and culture issue 16-2006 lays emphasis on the importance of exposing learners of English as a second language to the second language at their critical period.

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Half of Latinas Say Hispanic Women’s Situation Has Improved in the Past Decade and Expect More Gains

Government data shows gains in education, employment and earnings for Hispanic women, but gaps with other groups remain

Table of contents.

Assessing the progress of Hispanic women in the last 10 years
Views of Hispanic women’s situation in the next 10 years
Views on the gender pay gap
Latinas’ educational attainment
Latinas’ labor force participation
Latinas’ earnings
Latinas as breadwinners in their relationships
Bachelor’s degrees among Latinas
Labor force participation rates among Latinas
Occupations among working Latinas
Earnings among Latinas
Latinas as breadwinners in 2022
Appendix: Supplemental charts and tables
Acknowledgments
The American Trends Panel survey methodology
Methodology for the analysis of the Current Population Survey

This report explores Latinas’ economic and demographic progress in the last two decades – and their perceptions of that progress – using several data sources.

The first is a Pew Research Center survey of 5,078 Hispanic adults, including 2,600 Hispanic women. Respondents were asked whether U.S. Latinas saw progress in their situation in the last decade, whether they expected any in the future decade, and how big a problem the U.S. gender pay gap is. The survey was conducted from Nov. 6 to 19, 2023, and includes 1,524 respondents from the American Trends Panel (ATP) and an additional 3,554 from Ipsos’ KnowledgePanel .

Respondents on both panels are recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. Recruiting panelists by mail ensures that nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. This gives us confidence that any sample can represent the whole population, or in this case the whole U.S. Hispanic population. (For more information, watch our Methods 101 explainer on random sampling.) For more information on this survey, refer to the American Trends Panel survey methodology and the topline questionnaire .

The second data source is the U.S. Census Bureau’s and Bureau of Labor Statistics’ 2003, 2008, 2013, 2018 and 2023 Current Population Survey (CPS) Monthly and Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC) data series, provided through the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) from the University of Minnesota.

The CPS Monthly microdata series was used only to calculate median hourly earnings for those ages 25 to 64 years old and who were not self-employed. Medians were calculated for the whole year by considering all wages reported in that year, regardless of month. Median wages were then adjusted to June 2023 dollars using the Chained Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers for June of each year. For more information on the demographic analysis, refer to the methodology for the analysis of the Current Population Survey .

The terms Hispanic and Latino are used interchangeably in this report.

The terms Latinas and Hispanic women are used interchangeably throughout this report to refer to U.S. adult women who self-identify as Hispanic or Latino, regardless of their racial identity.

Foreign born refers to persons born outside of the 50 U.S. states or the District of Columbia. For the purposes of this report, foreign born also refers to those born in Puerto Rico. Although individuals born in Puerto Rico are U.S. citizens by birth, they are grouped with the foreign born because they are born into a Spanish-dominant culture and because on many points their attitudes, views and beliefs are much closer to those of Hispanics born outside the U.S. than to Hispanics born in the 50 U.S. states or D.C., even those who identify themselves as being of Puerto Rican origin.

The terms foreign born and immigrant are used interchangeably in this report. Immigrants are also considered first-generation Americans.

U.S. born refers to persons born in the 50 U.S. states or D.C.

Second generation refers to people born in the 50 U.S. states or D.C. with at least one immigrant parent.

Third or higher generation refers to people born in the 50 U.S. states or D.C., with both parents born in the 50 U.S. states or D.C.

Throughout this report, Democrats are respondents who identify politically with the Democratic Party or those who are independent or identify with some other party but lean toward the Democratic Party. Similarly, Republicans are those who identify politically with the Republican Party and those who are independent or identify with some other party but lean toward the Republican Party.

White, Black and Asian each include those who report being only one race and are not Hispanic.

Civilians are those who were not in the armed forces at the time of completing the Current Population Survey.

Those participating in the labor force either were at work; held a job but were temporarily absent from work due to factors like vacation or illness; were seeking work; or were temporarily laid off from a job in the week before taking the Current Population Survey. In this report, the labor force participation rate is shown only for civilians ages 25 to 64.

The phrases living with children or living with their own child describe individuals living with at least one of their own stepchildren, adopted children or biological children, regardless of the children’s ages. The phrases not living with children or not living with their own child describe individuals who have no children or whose children do not live with them.

Occupation and occupational groups describe the occupational category of someone’s current job, or – if unemployed – most recent job. In this report we measure occupation among civilians participating in the labor force. Occupational groups are adapted from the U.S. Census Bureau’s occupation classification list from 2018 onward .

Hourly earnings , hourly wages and hourly pay all refer to the amount an employee reported making per hour at the time of taking the Current Population Survey where they were employed by someone else. Median hourly wages were calculated only for those ages 25 to 64 who were not self-employed. Calculated median hourly wages shared in this report are adjusted for inflation to 2023. (A median means that half of a given population – for example, Hispanic women – earned more than the stated wage, and half earned less.)

Breadwinners refer to those living with a spouse or partner, both ages 25 to 64, who make over 60% of their and their partner’s combined, positive income from all sources. Those in egalitarian relationships make 40% to 60% of the combined income. For those who make less than 40% of the combined income, their spouse or partner is the breadwinner . This analysis was conducted among both opposite-sex and same-sex couples.

Half of Latinas say the situation of Hispanic women in the United States is better now than it was 10 years ago, and a similar share say the situation will improve in the next 10 years.

Bar charts showing that half of Latinas say the situation of U.S. Hispanic women has improved, yet two-thirds say the gender pay gap is a big problem for Hispanic women today. Half of Latinas also say they expect the situation of Hispanic women in the country to improve in the next ten years.

Still, 39% of Latinas say that the situation has stayed the same, and 34% say it will not change in the next 10 years. Two-thirds (66%) say the gender pay gap – the fact that women earn less money, on average, than men – is a big problem for Hispanic women today, according to new analysis of Pew Research Center’s National Survey of Latinos.

At 22.2 million, Latinas account for 17% of all adult women in the U.S. today. Their population grew by 5.6 million from 2010 to 2022, the largest numeric increase of any major female racial or ethnic group. 1

Latinas’ mixed assessments reflect their group’s gains in education and at work over the last two decades, but also stalled progress in closing wage gaps with other groups.

Hispanic women are more likely to have a bachelor’s degree today (23% in 2023) than they were in 2013 (16%). More Hispanic women than ever are also completing graduate degrees .
Hispanic women have increased their labor force participation rate by 4 percentage points, from 65% in 2013 to 69% in 2023.
The median hourly wage of Hispanic women has increased by 17% in the last decade. In 2023, their median hourly wage was $19.23, up from $16.47 in 2013 (in 2023 dollars).

Despite this progress, Hispanic women’s pay gaps with their peers haven’t significantly improved in recent years:

The gender pay gap among Hispanics persists with no significant change. In 2023, Hispanic women earned 85 cents (at the median) for every dollar earned by Hispanic men, compared with 89 cents per dollar in 2013 (and 87 cents per dollar in 2003).
Hispanic women continue to lag non-Hispanic women in earnings , with no significant improvement in the past decade. In 2023, the median Hispanic woman made 77 cents for each dollar earned by the median non-Hispanic woman, compared with 75 cents per dollar in 2013.
The pay gap between Hispanic women and White men has changed only slightly . In 2023, Hispanic women earned 62 cents of every dollar earned by non-Hispanic White men, up from 59 cents per dollar in 2013.

In addition, Hispanic women lag Hispanic men and non-Hispanic women in labor force participation, and they lag non-Hispanic women in educational attainment. Read more in Chapter 2 .

Among Latinas who are employed, about half (49%) say their current job is best described as “just a job to get them by.” Fewer see their job as a career (30%) or a steppingstone to a career (14%).

Pew Research Center’s bilingual 2023 National Survey of Latinos – conducted Nov. 6-19, 2023, among 5,078 Hispanic adults, including 2,600 Hispanic women – explores what it’s like to be a Latina in the U.S. today. This report uses findings from our 2023 survey as well as demographic and economic data from the Current Population Survey.

The following chapters take a closer look at:

How Latinas view the progress and future situation of Hispanic women in the U.S.
What government data tells us about Latinas’ progress in the labor market, earnings and educational attainment
How Latinas’ educational and economic outcomes vary

For additional survey findings on what it means to be a Latina in the U.S. today and the daily pressures they face, read our report “A Majority of Latinas Feel Pressure To Support Their Families or To Succeed at Work.”

Latinas’ population size and growth rate from 2010 to 2022 were calculated using the 2010 and 2022 American Community Surveys, accessed through IPUMS. The rest of the demographic analysis in this post uses data from the Current Population Survey. ↩

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ABOUT PEW RESEARCH CENTER Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts .

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