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In recent years many U.S. states have passed laws outlawing bilingual education in schools.
These laws are in part based on the idea that students will have a stronger identity with the
school, the culture, and the government if they speak only English, and in part based on the idea
that speaking two languages may interfere with cognitive development.
Some early psychological research showed that, when compared with monolingual children,
bilingual children performed more slowly when processing language, and their verbal scores
were lower. But these tests were frequently given in English, even when this was not the child’s
first language, and the children tested were often of lower socioeconomic status than the
monolingual children (Andrews, 1982). [22]
More current research that has controlled for these factors has found that, although bilingual
children may in some cases learn language somewhat slower than do monolingual children
(Oller & Pearson, 2002), [23] bilingual and monolingual children do not significantly differ in the
final depth of language learning, nor do they generally confuse the two languages (Nicoladis &
Genesee, 1997). [24] In fact, participants who speak two languages have been found to have better
cognitive functioning, cognitive flexibility, and analytic skills in comparison to monolinguals
(Bialystok, 2009). [25] Research (Figure 9.15 "Gray Matter in Bilinguals") has also found that
learning a second language produces changes in the area of the brain in the left hemisphere that
is involved in language, such that this area is denser and contains more neurons (Mechelli et al.,
2004). [26] Furthermore, the increased density is stronger in those individuals who are most
proficient in their second language and who learned the second language earlier. Thus, rather
than slowing language development, learning a second language seems to increase cognitive
abilities.