Bilingual Mind

Hi,
Welcome back to the three text journey!

In the third text, “Bilingual Mind” by Jeffrey Kluger, the author is talking about how interesting and complex language is and about how learning two or more languages can bring some advantages to the speaker. These advantages are not related only to the ability of expressing your thoughts in two or more ways but to the benefits that those extra languages are bringing to your mind’s health. In the beginning, we are informed about the way in which we learn our first language, starting from zero and building our way with approximately three new words per day for a length of time of six years. After this process, we continue learning until we reach a great number of 50.000 words that combined with syntax and other grammar rules help us master the language and become fluent. The text continues with studies that have been conducted by language researchers in order to see if knowing two or more languages can affect the way you are thinking and your perception of the world. One test that has been presented is the Stroop test which implies writing the name of a colour using ink with a different colour. The participants who were asked to say the colour of the ink experienced a “lag” but it proved that the participants who were bilingual, trilingual and so on needed a shorter period of time to think about it. We are also informed about studies which showed how bilingual kids were beginning socializing earlier than monolingual kids, and about how being bilingual can delay the “aged-related dementia” with up to 4.1 years and the apparition of Alzheimer by up to 5.1 years. Some researchers showed that being bilingual had some potential disadvantages as well. One study showed how kids who were raised by bilingual parents in families where the “code-switching” was used had a less developed vocabulary than kids who were raised in families of monolingual parents. However this was proved to be only a temporary problem and those kids would eventually catch up.

Overall, this text contains some common points with the texts that have been covered so far and these points are marked by two key words: language and code switching. First, it is related to language and to be more specific to how it is learnt, how it changes our way of viewing the world around us and the possible advantages of knowing two or more languages and this is the focus of most of the texts that have been covered. One example could be “Bilingual Sestina” in which the author talks about learning a language as a kid, how kids learn by playing and how important it is for them to associate one object with a specific word. Another example could be “Me Talk Pretty One Day” by David Sedaris in which the advantage of learning a new language is represented by the possibility of understanding others. The author describes his experience in a French school where he has to learn French better in order to be able to understand his teacher who is not a good speaker of English.  Second, the text “Bilingual Mind” contains information about code switching and how it can increase the time in which the kid learns new words and becomes fluent in the languages that he uses. This concept of code switching can be directly linked to the text “Bilingual” by Rhina P. Espaillat in which the author talks about how language was changed in the family from Spanish to English and about how “My father liked them separate, one there/ one here (allá y aquí), as if aware/ that words might cut in two his daughter's heart”.