Bilingualism: The Costs and the Benefits, but Mostly the Benefits

Fresh off the press (just published yesterday), this New York Times article discusses the desire for many New York City families to expose their children to foreign languages early on. The costs and benefits, but mostly benefits are highlighted.

It connects nicely to our multicultural and multilingual program where our little students are exposed to Mandarin, Spanish, and Hindi throughout the day. Children are exposed to different languages during structured language classes throughout the week (see calendar; Hindi class in the works).

We learn classic Spanish nursery songs, rhymes, and finger plays during Spanish class (see above). All this new vocabulary we learn is reinforced throughout the day.

Our staff, using their understanding and observations of the children (that are under their care almost every single day, not just during a language class twice a week), is given time to develop the curriculum for and lead these language classes. Exposure to foreign languages is not a separate extra-curricular activity. By maintaining a diverse staff, multilingualism is built into our curriculum and part of what is already offered.

Further, and perhaps most importantly, having staff members teach language allows for informal reinforcement and exposure over the course of the whole day rather than during isolated language times with a language teacher.


Interesting tidbits:

At the same time, bilingual children do better at complex tasks like isolating information presented in confusing ways. In one test researchers frequently use, words like “red” and “green” flash across a screen, but the words actually appear in purple and yellow. Bilingual children are faster at identifying what color the word is written in, a fact researchers attribute to a more developed prefrontal cortex (the part of the brain responsible for executive decision-making, like which language to use with certain people).

In recent years, a number of neuroscientists and psychologists have tried to untangle the impact of bilingualism on brain development. “It doesn’t make kids smarter,” said Ellen Bialystok, a professor of psychology...

Bilingualism carries a cost, and the cost is rapid access to words,” Ms. Bialystok said. In other words, children have to work harder to access the right word in the right language, which can slow them down — by milliseconds, but slower nonetheless.


“Once you are trilingual,” she said, “your brain can break down new languages that make it so much easier to learn your fourth, fifth and sixth languages.”

In fact, research shows that learning a second language makes it easier to learn additional languages.