Pre-Script: My blogging frequency has been abysmal lately. I am adjusting to living in a three brain patient household - or living in a household at all, for that matter. Not to mention catering a muffin brunch as we speak with an oven that only grills. Note that I didn't say anything about adjusting well: adjusting at all is accomplishment enough. I trust quality can compensate for the quantity.
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| Fourskills Island by mtcleroux: A Visual Representation of the Four Skills Learned in a New Language |
While browsing through the visionary Lifehacker blog (notable for being founded by one of my girl geek heroes, Gina Trapani), a post on the benefits of bilingualism caught my attention. Now as a language educator and lifelong bilingual, I am no stranger to advocating bilingualism and multilingualism for a host of reasons that take little imagination to guess at. Knowing an additional language obviously improves one's personal and professional prospects by increasing understanding of people, world affairs and information. In the case of learning English as an additional language, doors to the Global Village are flung open wide. More recently learning a new language has been advocated as a way of promoting mental fitness and preventing mental degeneration.
The post, commenting on a New York Times article that tracks research published in the journal Developmental Science, points out yet further surprise benefits. The first, labelled inhibition, refers to the ability to suppress irrelevant information and focus on the task at hand - as bilinguals do whenever working in one language. The second involves the heightened perception and parallel thought processes that bilinguals use to constantly monitor the language requirements in their environments, which is thought to expand their mental abilities. Finally, further evidence was provided that the extended brain activity required by bilingualism promoted resistance against age-related onset of dementia.
An expert could honestly argue that the post and article offer very little that is new: the research dates as far back as 2004. However, the three benefits are a neat synthesis of what linguists and neuroscientists have, between them, suspected and even known for some time. What is encouraging to those of us in the field is that this awareness has reached beyond academia to an established medium like the New York Times, and beyond to a dynamic new medium like Lifehacker. As an aside, I tip my hat to anyone who encourages native speakers of English (the main audience of both publications) to learn another language - but that is a whole different can of worms.
The bottom line is that knowing another language - even if it is just a smidgeon - is such a powerful ice-breaker, bridge-builder and rocket launcher. Learners of English already know this. It would be good if native speakers of English could discover its pleasures too.
