For a long time, there have been claims surrounding the role that bilingualism has on intelligence, creativity, attention, and many other areas of neuroscience. Many of those claims are positive, but some are negative. Bilingualism, in plain words, is mastering two languages, and in many cases, this is achieved through being raised in a dual-language household. Very many people are born into bilingual households, but bilingual individuals don’t always see the effects that speaking multiple languages has on them. Being a bilingual individual, I never understood why I was told to have an advantage in certain areas of life until I entered high school and college, as flipping between Bosnian and English was second nature to me, and not something that I thought about often. After Dr. Chung-Fat-Yim’s talk about the relationship between bilingualism and attention, I wanted to find out more about the claims for bilingual individuals, and in what ways I differ from my monolingual peers.
I aimed to find out if these claims could also apply to students who learned English as a second language. Many schools have ESL/EFL programs, which are English as a Second (or Foreign) Language, which look to guide students through their education while also helping them improve their English. Many scientists have researched how bilingualism affects cognition and executive function, however, one surprisingly under-researched area is the effect that bilingualism has on academic success and intelligence, especially in ESL programs. Because of the limited amount of research on ESL students, Shahnaz Jumani, Dr. Saira Maqbool, and Azeem Alphonce decided to perform a study on the academic success of EFL learners, and the effect that bilingualism has on their success in school.
Many different factors can influence how big of an effect being bilingual has on an individual. One big factor is the age at which the second language is learned. On average, the earlier bilinguals, meaning individuals who learned the second language at a younger age, show stronger and more noticeable benefits. This is also something to note, as for ESL learners, the age at which they learn English can vary, which means that the effects could be harder for the researchers to find.
The researcher’s study was qualitative and consisted of students who were part of the ESL program, and instructors as well. They all attended the National University of Modern Languages in Hyderabad, Sindh Pakistan. The study had some very insightful results, both on cognition and executive function, and on the effects on academic success. Most of the results from this research came from input from ESL teachers, and from the academic interactions they have had with bilingual and monolingual students in their programs. The ESL students themselves were also able to offer. It was found that bilingualism had a positive correlation with academic success from the instructors' perspectives. In reading comprehension and writing the bilingual students outperformed the monolingual students, according to the instructors. The students also felt that being bilingual helped them understand language better as a whole, and it gave them the skills to understand concepts such as language patterns. They also claimed that it extended the range of their vocabulary, allowing them to use more colorful words to express themselves.
Understanding bilingualism’s effects on individuals was also something that Dr. Chung-Fat-Yim explored, where she explored the effect that it has on different areas of attention. Her studies found that bilingual individuals had stronger selective attention and a faster disengagement of attention when faced with irrelevant stimuli. Her research helped me understand another important advantage that bilingualism gives individuals, which can also contribute to academic success in many ways. Attention is important for students, especially once they enter higher education. This research, along with the research of Shahnaz Jumani et.al. shows the extent to which knowing languages can influence students and can help breach some of the negative claims made towards ESL students, as bilingualism is very clearly associated with many benefits in the academic world.
References:
Jumani, S., Maqbool, S., & Alphonce, A. (2024). Effect of Bilingualism on Intelligence and Academic Achievement of EFL Learners. Pakistan Languages and Humanities Review, 8(1), 195–204. https://doi.org/10.47205/plhr.2024(8-I)17
Chung-Fat-Yim, A., Calvo, N., & Grundy, J. G. (2022, May 12). The multifaceted nature of bilingualism and attention. Frontiers. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.910382/full
No comments:
Post a Comment