BEFORE READING QUESTIONS

Cambridge English Dictionary defines being smart as being “intelligent, or able to

think quickly or intelligently in difficult situations”. In this sense, we have seen in class
that biliterate individuals obtain higher scores when taking cognitive ability tests.
Moreover, students who are able to read and write in two languages present better
“executive thinking skills, working memories and attention spans, abstract thinking skills,
multitasking, conflict resolution skills” (“Why Bilingual Students Have a Cognitive
Advantage for Learning to Read,” 2009, n.p.). In addition, it has been thought that early
exposure to two linguistic systems may improve their computational strength and
processing agility in speed and accuracy, and, therefore, present higher cognitive
computational and processing advantages. (Berens, Kovelman, and Petitto, “Should
Bilingual Children?,” p. 3).
These are undoubtedly points in favour of the learning of two languages since an
early age. However, for me, the gist of the matter is that being smart involves much more
than that. Going back to the definition of smart, it said “able to think quickly or
intelligently in difficult situations”. And this is not only getting good marks. Human
beings are social, and human life implies social living. In class we learnt that biliterate
individuals are more empathic, which can be applied to all aspects of their social
interactions. They are able to interpret a single event in more than one way, considering
different connotations that different languages may have. That is why I do agree that
learning two languages might make you smarter, since these skills are vital for our whole
personal and professional development.
Furthermore, I am not sure that learning two languages can be confusing for
children. Obviously, the learning process of a child learning more than one language
should be more complex. As I see it, the confusions that may arise could be similar to the
ones of a child learning only one language, considering that any learning process implies
making mistakes and learning from them.
Also, as we learnt in class, it is said that young children learn best from building
foundations of knowledge in multiple domains simultaneously, and they can acquire
similar knowledge in two domains at the same time. Surprisingly –or not, acquiring
similar knowledge across different domains can actually help a young child build stronger
and more distinct representations.
As for the language used by parent, in my opinion, children will not get confused
by listening to their parents in more than one language. I do not think that the person who
speaks one particular language each time has to do with any kind of confusion.
However, I would like to highlight that this distinction should be taken into account
in the case that one parent is a native speaker of the language and the other parent’s level
of the language is lower. In this case, it would be a good idea that the amount of time that
the native speaker parent speaks to the child would be greater, because until children are
one year old, they are able to hear and tell apart all the sounds, but later, it is harder for
them to distinguish between similar sounds of both languages. English /a/ sound from a
Spanish one, as they hear foreign sounds according to the sounds of their native language.
So, the sooner, the better.
In a similar vein of what was already said, it would be recommendable to take
advantage of the distinction of sounds that young children are able to make before they
are one year old.

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 Moreover, as acquiring akin knowledge in different domains is good for children to
build stronger and more distinct representations, I would conclude that the sooner, the
better when learning a second language. I personally regret not having started to learn
languages before.
The learning theory assumption that young children learn best from building
foundations of knowledge in multiple domains at the same time, and they can acquire
similar knowledge in two domains simultaneously. Notably, acquiring similar knowledge
across different domains can actually help a young child build stronger and more distinct
representations.
That is, children from homes in which only the minority language is spoken, learn
reading best by building their skills in their mother tongue, and, then, by transferring these
skills to learning the second language.
Research demonstrates that exposure to two languages increases phonological
awareness, and it is one of the best predictors of reading ability (Bilaystok, Luk, &
Kwan,2005; Eviatar & Ibrahim, 2000). Bilingual children acquire two phonological
systems and thus receive additional “practice” manipulating the sounds of language.
Importantly, studies reliably show that phonological awareness skills in bilingual children
easily transfer from one language to another. This has been shown for English-Spanish
bilinguals (Lindsey, Manis, & Bailey, 2003),
At first, it is clear that children employ their native language (L1) skills when
learning their second language (L2). This process is called forward transfer. In forward
transfer, a native speaker of Spanish uses Spanish phonemes rather than English ones.
For instance, they may pronounce zoo with /s/, not /z/ or pronounce cat with the same
vowel sound as in Spanish.
Before phonics instruction begins, students must have the phonemic awareness
skills they need in order to perceive individual sounds in words. This is particularly
important for sounds that are problematic because of the native language.

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 AFTER READING QUESTIONS
Clearly, this text sheds light on some important common questions of those related
to early bilingualism in some way. As a matter of fact, the previous ideas and thoughts I
had were confirmed after reading the text. However, I find it quite helpful, since it is
necessary to have some supportive scientific and research, and not only what we are used
to hearing. The great benefits of becoming bilingual at an early age, and the confusions
that it produces to children are examples of the most common statements people say. The
article clears all this affirmations up by gathering multiple authors and scholars whose
research supports their ideas. Additionally, although my ideas were similar than the ones
of the text, it present such an enriching vision of some aspects of bilingualism I did not
know.
I felt amazed by the capacity babies and toddlers have to discriminate and distinguish
languages. “Even 2-year olds show some ability to modulate their language according to
the language used by their conversational partner (Genesee, Boivin, & Nicoladis, 1996)”.
That is impressive, but as I kept on reading, I was astonished when I read that infants, at
birth, can distinguish rhythmically dissimilar languages (Byers-Heinlein, Burns, &
Werker, 2010; Mehler et al., 1988). This ability develops quickly, and babies aged 4
months are able to discriminate even rhythmically similar languages like French and
Spanish (Bosch & Sebastián-Gallés, 1997, 2001; Nazzi, 2000). At this same age, both
monolingual and bilingual infants are able to discriminate silent talking faces speaking
different languages, as research shows (Weikum et al., 2007). Nevertheless, when they
reach 8 months of age, only bilingual infants are still sensitive to this distinction, whereas
the monolingual ones stop paying attention to those facial movements.
Furthermore, I do not think that this article will change my way of teaching or
parenting, but rather it will reinforce my ideas, especially in terms of exposure to the
second language.
Perhaps, after reading the text, I will be more flexible than before when code-
mixing arises in class. The school where I work is not bilingual, so in my case I only teach
English as a second language. This makes the amount of exposure to the language quite
limited, with only four sessions of 45 minutes each. For this reason, students are not very
fluent in English, thus they tend to code-mix in their utterances. In addition, I will attempt
to improve the quality of the exposure to the second language they have, considering that
not only the quantity is important, but also the quality (DeLoache et al., 2010; Kuhl, Tsao,
& Liu, 2003).
As for parenting, I do not have children, so I do not know the type of parenting I
would choose or try to follow. In any case, once I have seen the advantages of being
bilingual and learning and second language from such an early age, I feel encouraged to
try to expose my children to the languages as soon as possible. In addition, I think I will
care about the amount of exposure to both languages, taking into consideration the
languages they speak both at home and outside.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bosch, L., & Sebastián-Gallés, N. (1997). Native-language recognition abilities in
4-month-old infants from monolingual and bilingual environments. Cognition, 65(1),
33–69.
Byers-Heinlein, K., Burns, T. C., & Werker, J. F. (2010). The roots of bilingualism
in new-borns. Psychological Science, 21(3), 343–348.
Byers-Heinlein, K., Fennell, C.T., & Werker, J.F. (2013). The development of
associative word learning in monolingual and bilin-gual infants. Bilingualism: Language
and Cognition, 16(1), 198–205.
Byers-Heinlein, Krista & Lew-Williams, Casey. (2013). Bilingualism in the Early
Years: What the Science Says. LEARNing Landscapes. 7. 95-112.
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https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/smart
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Comeau, L., Genesee, F., & Mendelson, M. (2010). A comparison of bilingual
monolingual children’s conversational repairs. First Language, 30(3–4), 354–374
DeLoache, J. S., Chiong, C., Sherman, K., Islam, N., Vanderborght, M., Troseth,
G. L., et al. (2010). Do babies learn from baby media? Psychological Science, 21(11),
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Weikum, W. M., Vouloumanos, A., Navarra, J., Soto-Faraco, S., Sebastián-Gallés,
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Why Bilingual Students Have a Cognitive Advantage for Learning to Read |
Waterford.org. (2020). Retrieved 23 January 2020, from
https://www.waterford.org/education/why-bilingual-students-have-a-cognitive-
advantage-for-learning-to-read/
Why Bilingual Students Have a Cognitive Advantage for Learning to Read |
Waterford.org. (2020). Retrieved 23 January 2020, from
https://www.waterford.org/education/why-bilingual-students-have-a-cognitive-
advantage-for-learning-to-read/