advantages of bilingualism essay

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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 .

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5 Million Voices

6 potential brain benefits of bilingual education.

Anya Kamenetz

Part of our ongoing series exploring how the U.S. can educate the nearly 5 million students who are learning English.

Brains, brains, brains. One thing we've learned at NPR Ed is that people are fascinated by brain research. And yet it can be hard to point to places where our education system is really making use of the latest neuroscience findings.

But there is one happy nexus where research is meeting practice: bilingual education. "In the last 20 years or so, there's been a virtual explosion of research on bilingualism," says Judith Kroll, a professor at the University of California, Riverside.

Again and again, researchers have found, "bilingualism is an experience that shapes our brain for a lifetime," in the words of Gigi Luk, an associate professor at Harvard's Graduate School of Education.

At the same time, one of the hottest trends in public schooling is what's often called dual-language or two-way immersion programs.

How We Teach English Learners: 3 Basic Approaches

Traditional programs for English-language learners, or ELLs, focus on assimilating students into English as quickly as possible. Dual-language classrooms, by contrast, provide instruction across subjects to both English natives and English learners, in both English and in a target language.

The goal is functional bilingualism and biliteracy for all students by middle school.

New York City, North Carolina, Delaware, Utah, Oregon and Washington state are among the places expanding dual-language classrooms.

The trend flies in the face of some of the culture wars of two decades ago, when advocates insisted on "English first" education. Most famously, California passed Proposition 227 in 1998. It was intended to sharply reduce the amount of time that English-language learners spent in bilingual settings.

Proposition 58 , passed by California voters on Nov. 8, largely reversed that decision, paving the way for a huge expansion of bilingual education in the state that has the largest population of English-language learners.

Bilingual Education Returns To California. Now What?

Some of the insistence on English-first was founded in research produced decades ago, in which bilingual students underperformed monolingual English speakers and had lower IQ scores.

Today's scholars, like Ellen Bialystok at York University in Toronto, now say that research was "deeply flawed."

"Earlier research looked at socially disadvantaged groups," agrees Antonella Sorace at the University of Edinburgh, in Scotland. "This has been completely contradicted by recent research" that compares more similar groups to each other.

So what does recent research say about the potential benefits of bilingual education? NPR Ed called up seven researchers in three countries — Sorace, Bialystok, Luk, Kroll, Jennifer Steele, and the team of Wayne Thomas and Virginia Collier — to find out.

It turns out that, in many ways, the real trick to speaking two languages consists in managing not to speak one of those languages at a given moment — which is fundamentally a feat of paying attention.

Saying "Goodbye" to mom and then " Guten tag " to your teacher, or managing to ask for a crayola roja instead of a red crayon, requires skills called "inhibition" and "task switching." These skills are subsets of an ability called executive function.

People who speak two languages often outperform monolinguals on general measures of executive function. "[Bilinguals] can pay focused attention without being distracted and also improve in the ability to switch from one task to another," says Sorace.

Do these same advantages accrue to a child who begins learning a second language in kindergarten instead of as a baby? We don't yet know. Patterns of language learning and language use are complex. But Gigi Luk at Harvard cites at least one brain-imaging study on adolescents that shows similar changes in brain structure when compared with those who are bilingual from birth, even when they didn't begin practicing a second language in earnest before late childhood.

Young children being raised bilingual have to follow social cues to figure out which language to use with which person and in what setting. As a result, says Sorace, bilingual children as young as age 3 have demonstrated a head start on tests of perspective-taking and theory of mind — both of which are fundamental social and emotional skills.

Reading (English)

About 10 percent of students in the Portland, Ore., public schools are assigned by lottery to dual-language classrooms that offer instruction in Spanish, Japanese or Mandarin, alongside English.

Jennifer Steele at American University conducted a four-year, randomized trial and found that these dual-language students outperformed their peers in English-reading skills by a full school year's worth of learning by the end of middle school.

Such a large effect in a study this size is unusual, and Steele is currently conducting a flurry of follow-up studies to tease out the causality: Is this about a special program that attracted families who were more engaged? Or about the dual-language instruction itself?

"If it's just about moving the kids around," Steele says, "that's not as exciting as if it's a way of teaching that makes you smarter."

'Invisible' Children: Raised In The U.S., Now Struggling In Mexico

Steele suspects the latter. Because the effects are found in reading, not in math or science where there were few differences, she suggests that learning two languages makes students more aware of how language works in general, aka "metalinguistic awareness."

The research of Gigi Luk at Harvard offers a slightly different explanation. She has recently done a small study looking at a group of 100 fourth-graders in Massachusetts who had similar reading scores on a standard test, but very different language experiences.

Some were foreign-language dominant and others were English natives. Here's what's interesting. The students who were dominant in a foreign language weren't yet comfortably bilingual; they were just starting to learn English. Therefore, by definition, they had much weaker English vocabularies than the native speakers.

Yet they were just as good at decoding a text.

"This is very surprising," Luk says. "You would expect the reading comprehension performance to mirror vocabulary — it's a cornerstone of comprehension."

How did the foreign-language dominant speakers manage this feat? Well, Luk found, they also scored higher on tests of executive functioning. So, even though they didn't have huge mental dictionaries to draw on, they may have been great puzzle-solvers, taking into account higher-level concepts such as whether a single sentence made sense within an overall story line.

They got to the same results as the monolinguals, by a different path.

School performance and engagement.

Wayne Thomas and Virginia Collier, a husband and wife team of professors emeritus at George Mason University in Virginia, have spent the past 30 years collecting evidence on the benefits of bilingual education.

"Wayne came to our research with skepticism, thinking students ought to get instruction all day in English," says Virginia Collier. "Eight million student records later, we're convinced," Wayne Thomas chimes in.

In studies covering six states and 37 districts, they have found that, compared with students in English-only classrooms or in one-way immersion, dual-language students have somewhat higher test scores and also seem to be happier in school. Attendance is better, behavioral problems fewer, parent involvement higher.

Diversity and integration.

American public school classrooms as a whole are becoming more segregated by race and class. Dual-language programs can be an exception. Because they are composed of native English speakers deliberately placed together with recent immigrants, they tend to be more ethnically and socioeconomically balanced. And there is some evidence that this helps kids of all backgrounds gain comfort with diversity and different cultures.

Several of the researchers I talked with also pointed out that, in bilingual education, non-English-dominant students and their families tend to feel that their home language is heard and valued, compared with a classroom where the home language is left at the door in favor of English.

This can improve students' sense of belonging and increase parent involvement in their children's education, including behaviors like reading to children.

"Many parents fear their language is an obstacle, a problem, and if they abandon it their child will integrate better," says Antonella Sorace of the University of Edinburgh. "We tell them they're not doing their child a favor by giving up their language."

Protection against cognitive decline and dementia.

File this away as a very, very long-range payoff. Researchers have found that actively using two languages seems to have a protective effect against age-related dementia — perhaps relating to the changes in brain structure we talked about earlier.

Specifically, among patients with Alzheimer's in a Canadian study, a group of bilingual adults performed on par with a group of monolingual adults in terms of cognitive tests and daily functioning. But when researchers looked at the two groups' brains, they found evidence of brain atrophy that was five to seven years more advanced in the bilingual group. In other words, the adults who spoke two languages were carrying on longer at a higher level despite greater degrees of damage.

The coda, and a caution

One theme that was striking in speaking to all these researchers was just how strongly they advocated for dual-language classrooms.

Thomas and Collier have advised many school systems on how to expand their dual-language programs, and Sorace runs " Bilingualism Matters ," an international network of researchers who promote bilingual education projects.

This type of advocacy among scientists is unusual; even more so because the "bilingual advantage hypothesis" is being challenged once again. A review of studies published last year found that cognitive advantages failed to appear in 83 percent of published studies, though in a separate meta-analysis, the sum of effects was still significantly positive.

One potential explanation offered by the researchers I spoke with is that advantages that are measurable in the very young and very old tend to fade when testing young adults at the peak of their cognitive powers.

And, they countered that no negative effects of bilingual education have been found. So, they argue that even if the advantages are small, they are still worth it.

Not to mention one obvious, outstanding fact underlined by many of these researchers: "Bilingual children can speak two languages! That's amazing," says Bialystok.

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Is Bilingualism Really an Advantage?

By Maria Konnikova

In 1922, in “ Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus ,” the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote, “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” The words that we have at our disposal affect what we see—and the more words there are, the better our perception. When we learn to speak a different language, we learn to see a bigger world.

Many modern language researchers agree with that premise. Not only does speaking multiple languages help us to communicate but bilingualism (or multilingualism) may actually confer distinct advantages to the developing brain. Because a bilingual child switches between languages, the theory goes, she develops enhanced executive control, or the ability to effectively manage what are called higher cognitive processes, such as problem-solving, memory, and thought. She becomes better able to inhibit some responses, promote others, and generally emerges with a more flexible and agile mind. It’s a phenomenon that researchers call the bilingual advantage .

For the first half of the twentieth century, researchers  actually thought that bilingualism  put a child at a _dis_advantage, something that hurt her I.Q. and verbal development. But, in recent years, the notion of a bilingual advantage has emerged from research to the contrary, research that has seemed both far-reaching and compelling, much of it coming from the careful work of the psychologist Ellen Bialystok. For many tasks, including ones that involve working memory, bilingual speakers seem to have an edge. In a 2012 review of the evidence, Bialystok showed that bilinguals did indeed show  enhanced executive control , a quality that has been linked, among other things, to better academic performance. And when it comes to qualities like sustained attention and switching between tasks effectively, bilinguals often come out ahead. It seems fairly evident then that, given a choice, you should raise your child to speak more than one language. Indeed, papers touting “ Creativity and Bilingualism ,” “ Cognitive Advantages of Bilingual Five-Year-Olds ,” “ A Bilingual Advantage in Task-Switching ,” “ Bilingualism Reduces Native-Language Interference During Novel-Word Learning ,” and “ Good Language-Switchers Are Good Task-Switchers ”—and the resulting books with provocative titles such as “ The Bilingual Edge ” and “ Bilingual Is Better ”—suggest that raising a bilingual child is, in large part, a recipe for raising a successful child.

From the age of eleven, Angela de Bruin spoke two languages. Born in the nineteen-eighties in Nijmegen, a small town in the Netherlands, de Bruin spoke Dutch at home, and, in school, immersed herself in English. She became fascinated by bilinguals, and read avidly about the cognitive advantages that being fluent in more than one language was supposed to provide. In college, she took up linguistics and neuroscience. And, in 2012, de Bruin enrolled in the psychology graduate program at the University of Edinburgh to further pursue the link between bilingualism and cognition.

She came to the program fully expecting to study the extent to which her bilingual brain was adapted to succeed. “I had the impression that there’s a really strong effect of bilingualism on executive function,” de Bruin told me recently. Then, she carried out her first study. Normally, to test for an edge in executive function, you give a version of a task where people have to ignore certain stimuli while selectively focussing on others. For instance, in the commonly used Simon task, you are shown pictures (often arrows) on either the left or right side of a screen. If you see a right-pointing arrow, you press the right key. It doesn’t matter on which side of the screen the arrow appears; the only thing that matters is the direction in which it points. Typically, people have faster reaction times on congruent trials—when the right-pointing arrow actually appears on the right, and vice-versa. Bilinguals are supposed to have an advantage in the incongruent trials: when the left arrow appears on the right, and the right arrow appears on the left.

When de Bruin looked at the data, though, in three of the four tasks testing inhibitory control, including the Simon task, the advantage wasn’t there. Monolinguals and bilinguals had performed identically. “We thought, Maybe the existing literature is not a full, reliable picture of this field,” she said. So, she  decided to test it further .

Systematically, de Bruin combed through conference abstracts from a hundred and sixty-nine conferences, between 1999 and 2012, that had to do with bilingualism and executive control. The rationale was straightforward: conferences are places where people present in-progress research. They report on studies that they are running, initial results, initial thoughts. If there were a systematic bias in the field against reporting negative results—that is, results that show no effects of bilingualism—then there should be many more findings of that sort presented at conferences than actually become published.

That’s precisely what de Bruin found. At conferences, about half the presented results provided either complete or partial support for the bilingual advantage on certain tasks, while half provided partial or complete refutation. When it came to the publications that appeared after the preliminary presentation, though, the split was decidedly different. Sixty-eight per cent of the studies that demonstrated a bilingual advantage found a home in a scientific journal, compared to just twenty-nine per cent of those that found either no difference or a monolingual edge. “Our overview,” de Bruin concluded, “shows that there is a distorted image of the actual study outcomes on bilingualism, with researchers (and media) believing that the positive effect of bilingualism on nonlinguistic cognitive processes is strong and unchallenged.”

De Bruin isn’t refuting the notion that there are advantages to being bilingual: some studies that she reviewed really did show an edge. But the advantage is neither global nor pervasive, as often reported . After her meta-analysis was complete, de Bruin and her adviser ran an additional series of studies, which they have just submitted for publication, hoping to find where the limits of bilingual advantage lie, and what the real advantage may actually look like. To test for a possible boost, they examined three different groups (English monolinguals, active English-Gaelic bilinguals who spoke Gaelic at home, and passive English-Gaelic bilinguals who no longer used Gaelic regularly). They had each group take part in four tasks—the Simon task, a task of everyday attention (you hear different tones and must count the number of low ones while filtering out the high ones), the Tower of London (you solve a problem by moving discs around on a series of sticks to match a picture of what the final tower looks like), and a simple task-switching paradigm (you see circles and squares that are either red or blue, and must pay attention to either one color or one shape, depending on the part of the trial).

In the first three tasks, they found no difference between the groups. On the last, they thought they’d finally detected an advantage: on the switch trials—the trials immediately after a change from shape to color or color to shape—the bilinguals, both active and passive, seemed to be quicker. But when the researchers dug deeper, they found that it wasn’t so much a case of switching faster as it was being slower at the non-switch trials, where shape followed shape and color followed color.

So does that mean that there’s no such thing as a bilingual advantage? No. It’s just one study. But it adds further evidence to the argument that the bilingual advantage is sometimes overstated. “I’m definitely not saying there’s no bilingual advantage,” de Bruin says. But the advantage may be different from the way many researchers have described it: as a phenomenon that helps children to develop their ability to switch between tasks and, more broadly, enhances their executive-control functions. The true edge, de Bruin believes, may come far later, and in a form that has little to do with task-switching and executive control; it may, she says, be the result of simple learning.

One of the areas where the bilingual advantage appears to be most persistent isn’t related to a particular skill or task: it’s a general benefit that seems to help the aging brain. Adults who speak multiple languages  seem to resist the effects of dementia  far better than monolinguals do. When Bialystok examined the records for a group of older adults who had been referred to a clinic in Toronto with memory or other cognitive complaints, she found that, of those who eventually developed dementia, the lifelong bilinguals showed symptoms more than four years later than the monolinguals. In a follow-up study, this time with a different set of patients who had developed Alzheimer’s, she and her colleagues found that, regardless of cognitive level, prior occupation, or education,  bilinguals had been diagnosed  4.3 years later than monolinguals had. Bilingualism, in other words, seems to have a protective effect on cognitive decline. That would be consistent with a story of learning: we know that keeping cognitively nimble into old age is one of the best ways to protect yourself against dementia. (Hence the rise of the crossword puzzle.) When the brain keeps learning, as it seems to do for people who retain more than one language, it has more capacity to keep functioning at a higher level.

That, in and of itself, is reason enough to learn a second, third, fourth, or fifth language—and to keep learning them as long as you’re able. The bilingual advantage may not appear in the exact guise researchers think of it today. But, on a fundamental level, bilingualism’s real benefits could be far more important.

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15 Benefits of Being Bilingual

There are many, many advantages to speaking two languages —especially if you grew up doing just that.

Of course, if you have the desire and dedication to become bilingual, there are plenty of perks to inspire you to start learning your second language now .

Read on to learn what current research tells us about the best 15 benefits of being bilingual.

1. Cognitive Advantages During Childhood

2. being bilingual strengthens your brain, 3. provides unique perspectives about the world , 4. provides new perspectives about yourself, 5. social advantages, 6. improved your career options, 7. makes you more competitive in the job market, 8. literally pays off with higher earning power, 9. slows the effects of aging on the brain, 10. makes you more attractive, 11. makes travel easier, 12. makes you more empathetic, 13. improves memory, 14. improves flexible thinking, 15. makes it easier to learn a third language, and one more thing....

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Bilingual children have a host of other advantages alongside their double language abilities.

One study shows that bilingual children can better interpret an adult’s intended meaning than monolingual children.

It’s thought that the ability to select which language to use in different contexts makes bilingual kids better at considering the perspectives of others.

Since early studies in the field, bilingual children have demonstrated to scientists, time and time again, that they excel at critical thinking. They also have better focus .

Children who speak two languages show special cognitive advantages when it comes to problem solving .

In fact, a study in Scotland and Italy found that bilingual children were “significantly more successful” than their monolingual peers in tasks involving problem-solving and creativity skills.

Bilingual students may also score higher than monolingual students on standardized tests .

And of course, being a bilingual kid yourself makes it easier to raise your own kids the same way!

The benefits of bilingualism aren’t just limited to childhood.

A study from Northwestern University found that people who speak more than one language can process information easier and more efficiently.

Constantly choosing which language to use makes it easier for you to ignore extraneous details, even in adulthood.

Several studies required bilinguals and non-bilinguals to perform special tests— like spatial memory tasks . The results showed a correlation between being bilingual and having better brain functionality.

Another study showed that those who grow up naturally bilingual are better at convergent thinking, or producing one correct answer. (However, later-in-life bilinguals are better at divergent thinking, or giving a variety of possible correct answers.)

It’s clear your multilingual abilities are good for your brain!

Knowing multiple languages gives you a special view of the world.

Beyond cultural knowledge, research  has found that bilinguals literally see the world differently. For example, people who regularly speak a second language perceive differences in color variations that are not recognized by monolinguals!

These researchers interviewed Hispanic women who were fluent in Spanish and English and found that many classified themselves as more assertive when they spoke Spanish.

So knowing a second language not only gives you an enhanced perspective of the world, but also of yourself .

Many people who speak more than one language also report feeling “like a different person” when they speak each language.

Research by a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has found that bilinguals emphasize different character traits depending on which language they’re speaking.

Yet another study found significant levels of “frame-shifting,” or changes in self-perception, among bilingual participants.

Maybe you’re a social butterfly who enjoys talking to people from all walks of life. Or perhaps you prefer to keep to yourself except for a small group of friends.

No matter what type of person you are socially, being bilingual gives you an advantage when it comes to communicating with people.

There’s simply more people out there that you can interact with and include in your circle.

Further, your bilingualism gives you innate knowledge of both language’s communication styles.  Later-in-life language learners must include cultural and communicative learning into their studies—but not you!

You won’t struggle with the proper ways to express politeness or directness or anything else, because you already understand how to do that.

Speaking with other bilinguals who know your particular language pair will be a special treat too.

You’ll have the luxury of mixing up your languages in whichever manner best expresses your thoughts and feelings. You may end up feeling like they’re the best friends you ever had—who else could possibly understand you so well?

Multiple language skills can be particularly beneficial in the workforce, especially if you’re interested in new or growing fields.

For instance, jobs as translators and interpreters are some of the fastest-growing occupations in the United States. Roughly 9,200 positions are expected to be available each year until 2031.

Additionally, the US military actively recruits people with a variety of language skills .

Other rapidly growing fields—like travel and tourism, healthcare and national security —need employees with bilingual language skills and the ability to work across cultures.

Still other fields like journalism, education and international development are always in search of bilingual employees as well.

And knowing a second language may also give you an edge if you want to apply for the Peace Corps or become a  Foreign Service Officer .

Not only does being bilingual give you more job opportunities, it also makes you stand out to potential employers who don’t require extra language skills.

Companies today serve increasingly diverse, multilingual populations all around the world. Good business owners know the power of a multinational consumer base.

One report says: “Marketers and advertisers who grasp and activate the multicultural edge will be poised to thrive in an increasingly multicultural mainstream.”

Even if it’s not a requirement for the job position, knowing another language will give you an edge. Companies want to hire versatile employees who can navigate different cultural expectations.

Having another fluent language under your belt could mean you’ll be fighting off job offers!

Perhaps the best part of all this bilingual career advantage means that you can earn more money.

The financial returns of knowing a foreign language vary by language and job, but they can add up to a lot.

In jobs with pay differentials, being fluent in another language in addition to English can get bilingual employees 5-20% higher salaries, according to this report . 

But MIT economist Albert Saiz discovered in 2005 that college graduates who speak two languages already make an average of 2% more than those who do not.

This extra percentage can add up to a lot over time, as a 2014 article in The Economist   points out. At retirement, the extra earnings could mean an additional $67,000 in your retirement account!

The brain-related benefits of being bilingual are lifelong. And they’re especially helpful in old age.

Cognitive flexibility —the ability to adapt to unfamiliar or unexpected circumstances—tends to decline as we age, but speaking a second language can block that decline , or at least significantly delay it.

Bilingualism particularly helps with cognition and reading abilities . It can also help stave off  dementia .  And while being bilingual cannot prevent Alzheimer’s disease, it can delay the onset of symptoms as much as five years.

One study found that the brains of people who suffered from Alzheimer’s show the same physical deterioration whether they were monolingual or bilingual.

But the people who spoke two languages did not exhibit symptoms of Alzheimer’s until much later than those who spoke only one language.

Clearly, your bilingual ability will help you out with memory, problem-solving and planning skills for a long, long time.

It’s true. Being bilingual does make you more attractive, research suggests .

Being bilingual can enhance attractiveness due to the perceived qualities of cultural sensitivity, effective communication skills, intellectual appeal, global perspective, adaptability, potential career advantages and potential benefits in relationships and family life.

When you land in Rome or Mexico City or Tokyo, being able to hail a taxi or order lunch in the country’s language makes travel much easier.

On top of making travel easier and more convenient, being able to talk to locals makes your travel experience much deeper, too. Imagine being able to talk to anyone on the street, from grandmothers to children, and ask them questions about culture, cuisine and traditions.

Being bilingual actually makes people more empathetic. 

Knowing more than one language means that you have insights into more than one culture. This provides perspective that allows you to empathize with all people more.

The ability to navigate and communicate in multiple languages encourages individuals to appreciate diverse experiences, and allows for a more nuanced comprehension of various viewpoints, fostering connections and empathy across cultural boundaries.

You know that saying “use it or lose it”? This is particularly true with memory. All that time you spent memorizing vocabulary and verb conjugation charts is actually a really effective workout for your memory.

The constant need to manage and switch between two languages may enhance cognitive control and working memory.

And bilingual individuals often engage in mental exercises, such as language switching and inhibition of one language while using another, which can strengthen the brain’s executive functions.

This cognitive stimulation may contribute to better memory performance, both in terms of short-term and long-term memory. 

Being bilingual gives you a huge boost in mental flexibility and the ability to multitask effectively .

Being bilingual is associated with enhanced flexible thinking, primarily due to the constant mental juggling required to switch between languages.

The ability to effortlessly switch between languages fosters cognitive flexibility, which is the capacity to adapt thoughts and behaviors to changing environments or demands.

Bilingual individuals develop stronger executive functions, including cognitive control and task-switching abilities. This heightened cognitive flexibility not only aids in linguistic adaptation but also extends to non-verbal tasks, problem-solving and creativity. 

Why stop with two languages? Once you’re bilingual, it’s way easier to learn a third or even a fourth language. Then you’re soaring into the realm of the polyglots .

The cognitive benefits of bilingualism, such as improved executive functions and heightened metalinguistic awareness, create a solid foundation for acquiring additional languages.

Bilingual individuals have already developed language learning strategies and an understanding of grammatical structures, which can be transferable to a new language. They are often more adept at recognizing language patterns and making connections between words and concepts.

Additionally, the experience of managing two languages provides a sense of comfort with language learning itself, making the task of acquiring a third language seem less daunting. 

Want to hear a great TED talk about the revolutionary power of being bilingual? Then check this out:

There are numerous benefits of being bilingual, from professional and personal to health and career. 

Enjoy your multilingual skills and advantages, but of course…Don’t forget to thank your parents!

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Home — Essay Samples — Science — Bilingualism — The Importance of Being Bilingual in a Globalized World

The Importance of Being Bilingual in a Globalized World

• Categories: Bilingualism

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Words: 440 |

Published: Mar 6, 2024

Words: 440 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Table of contents

Cognitive benefits of bilingualism, professional opportunities for bilingual individuals, cultural understanding and empathy.

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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.

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Cultivating Bilingualism: The Benefits of Multilingual Classrooms

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What slows cognitive decline in old age, increases earning potential throughout adulthood, and is best started in early childhood? Learning a second (or third!) language.

For decades, educators, researchers, and policy makers across the United States engaged in heated debates about how to ensure English proficiency. Some thought that learning two languages was somehow confusing to children and detrimental to their education. Far too often, debaters showed little regard for how a child’s home language tied him to his family, community, and culture.

Thanks to new research on the cognitive, social, and economic benefits of bilingualism, that debate has largely ended. Now we can focus our energy on supporting children whose first language is not English by building on their linguistic strengths—and on harnessing those strengths to help their peers who only speak English learn a second language too.

This issue of  Young Children  takes you inside several multilingual classrooms for in-depth, practical examples of how to enhance social, emotional, scientific, language, and literacy development with children who are learning more than one language.

Because a strong social and emotional foundation supports all other learning, we begin with “ Paired Learning: Strategies for Enhancing Social Competence in Dual Language Classrooms ,” by Iliana Alanís and María G. Arreguín-Anderson. The authors observed teachers in preschool through first grade Spanish-English dual language classrooms; based on their observations, they share detailed accounts of highly effective ways to help children learn to cooperate and collaborate. They emphasize learning in pairs as a way to create many low-pressure opportunities for dual language learners to engage in conversations.

Next, we step inside a dual language Head Start classroom where the teachers alternate the language of instruction (Spanish or English) weekly and offer multilingual supports throughout each day. Wanting to teach more science but not having enough time, the teachers join a professional development collaborative to learn how to incorporate science into their language and literacy activities. The impressive results are captured by Leanne M. Evans in “ The Power of Science: Using Inquiry Thinking to Enhance Learning in a Dual Language Preschool Classroom .” As the teachers’ new lesson plans demonstrate, “science education offers [children] discovery-oriented play, vocabulary-rich content, and abundant opportunities to explore oral and written language.”

Although dual language models are a wonderful way to cultivate bilingualism—along with biliteracy, biculturalism, and a whole new lens on the world—they are not always feasible. Many classrooms are multilingual, so teachers are seeking ways to foster first-, second-, and even third-language development (along with progress in all other domains), even when they don’t speak all of the children’s first languages.

In “ Five Tips for Engaging Multilingual Children in Conversation ,” E. Brook Chapman de Sousa offers research-based and teacher-refined strategies to take on this challenge. With examples from a preschool in which over 30 languages are spoken, Chapman de Sousa demonstrates how children benefit when their teachers “use children’s home languages as a resource; pair conversations with joint activities; coparticipate in activities; use small groups; and respond to children’s contributions.” Active listening and gesturing are key ways teachers can be responsive and communicate caring when they do not speak a child’s first language.

Cristina Gillanders and Lucinda Soltero-González help teachers craft a strengths-based instructional approach in “ Discovering How Writing Works in Different Languages: Lessons from Dual Language Learners .” This article carefully examines children’s emergent writing, with examples from prekindergarten through first grade, asking teachers to consider how a child’s knowledge of and ideas about her first language impact her writing in her second language. Teachers can then build on what the children already know and support children’s progress in both languages.

We close the cluster with “ Can We Talk? Creating Opportunities for Meaningful Academic Discussions with Multilingual Children ,” by Mary E. Bolt, Carmen M. Rodriguez, Christopher J. Wagner, and C. Patrick Proctor. Teachers and researchers together develop a structured approach for building multilingual children’s academic vocabulary, knowledge, oral language skills, and writing as they extend an existing unit on ocean animals to create far more opportunities for meaningful conversations. The authors describe how they helped the children develop the social skills, like turn taking, that are necessary for authentic discussions.

While this cluster focuses on children whose first language is not English, all children benefit from the rich, intentional, language-building instruction described in these articles.

Is your classroom full of children’s artwork? 

To feature it in  Young Children , see the link at the bottom of the page or email  [email protected]  for details.

These masterpieces, inspired by van Gogh’s  Starry Night  and  Sunflowers , were created by first and second graders in Ms. Bridget’s class at Plato Academy in Des Plaines, Illinois.

We’d love to hear from you!

Send your thoughts on this issue, as well as topics you’d like to read about in future issues of  Young Children , to  [email protected] .

Lisa Hansel, EdD, is the editor in chief of NAEYC's peer-reviewed journal, Young Children .

Vol. 74, No. 2

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Home / Essay Samples / Science / Bilingualism / Benefits Of Bilingualism

Benefits Of Bilingualism

• Category: Science , Education
• Topic: Bilingualism , Education System

Pages: 4 (1661 words)

Views: 1645

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Benefits of bilingualism.

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