6.1 The Advantages of Bilingualism
Bilingualism doesn’t appear to have any linguistic disadvantages (Snow, 1993). There have be cases of initial delay in vocabulary acquisition in one language but this soon passes. Bilinguals tend to have a slight deficit in working memory tasks in L2. However, they have greater metalinguistic awareness and verbal fluency (Ben-Zeev, 1977; Bialystock, 2001; Cook, 1997). For example, children in Canadian French immersion programs tended to score highly on creativity tests than monolinguals (Lambert, Tucker & d’Anglejan, 1973).
Being a bilingual gives you the awareness that words are arbitrary symbols for things. There are some researchers who have found interference between L1 and L2 (Harley & Wang, 1997). However, there is evidence to suggest that bilingualism provides a general cognitive advantage. There is even some data that indicates that bilingualism protects individuals from the development of Alzheimer’s disease by slowing down cognitive aging (Bialystok, Craik, & Luk, 2012).
The phenomenon of speaking two languages.
A person who speaks two languages.
The language acquired before the end of the critical language acquisition period.
The language acquired after the end of the critical language acquisition period. Usually results in an inability to acquire native fluency without great effort.