7 Reasons Why Learning A Second Language Makes You A Better Person

I recently discovered numerous scientific reasons why you seem to appear smarter, more creative, or attractive, when you can speak more than one language. Here are the top reasons why:

1. You Develop Better Memory

Researchers have found numerous positive impacts that being bilingual has on our brain. First of all, knowing two languages helps you process information about the surrounding environment more effectively, meaning you become a faster learner. Next, children who speak a second language typically have much better working memories, compared to monolingual peers. Adults, fret not! Though our working memories are developed early in life and it may be harder to master a new language once we’re grown-up, you can still reap the positive benefits.

2. You Strengthen Your Brain

Being fluent in more than one language improves your brain’s functionality by challenging it to operate within different language systems, hence boosting your ability to negotiate meaning in other problem-solving tasks as well. From a scientific standpoint, switching between different languages triggers the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (the part of the brain responsible for problem-solving, multi-tasking, and focusing on important things while filtering out irrelevant information).

Bilingual people are also better at paying attention to their environment and analyzing it. This skill comes from being able to tell which language is spoken, so that one can quickly switch between different languages.

Knowing two languages also makes you more creative as you are more capable of understanding things like language syntax, metaphors, and figurative speech, which boost our creative skills and allows us to respond to obstacles in an out-of-the-box manner. In general, being bilingual allows you to tap into the unused creative parts of our brain unlike those who are monolingual.

Another study, from the National Academy of Sciences, discovered additional cognitive gains from being bilingual since birth. Scientists tested 7-month-old infants using audio and changing visuals to analyze their cognitive performance in comparison to monolinguals. They were given an audio cue before being showed a visually stimulating reward (a puppet popping up on their screen). The action was repeated, so that the babies would anticipate the reward. The rewards were also displayed on the opposite sides of the screen after the audio was played. The experiment’s results proved that bilingual babies were faster to adapt to switching screens and showed faster reactions.

Another group of adults were tested to learn Spanish with lyrics in Spanish and English. Participants who already knew another language apart from English and Spanish, proved to pick up and remember the lines faster, compared to those who knew one of the languages, once again proving the positive impact of being bilingual in regards to our memory and cognitive performance in general.

3. You Stave Off Dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease For a Few Years

According to Brian Gold, a neuroscientist at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine in Lexington, knowing two languages can reduce the risks of Alzheimer’s and postpone dementia.

When conducting a test with bilingual seniors, researchers discovered they were better at tasks that required them to sort out colors and shapes, when compared to monolingual peers. They also monitored the processes happening inside their brains with a scanner. It turned out that the brains of a monolingual worked much harder to accomplish the task, while the bilingual’s brains were more efficient and could be compared to those of young adults. Having more reserve of brain power when you age can help you stay protected against the losses caused by Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia.

4. You Become Better At Building Relationships With Others

Apart from the obvious fact that being capable of conversing in different languages makes it easier to create social ties with people around the globe and win attraction more easily, there’s also a more subtle level of impact behind that.

Susan Ervin-Tripp from the University of California noted in her report, “When we are in situations demanding a change in language, we may have a strong sense of a shift in values and feelings. Some bilinguals even report they have two personalities.” Indeed, a lot of bilinguals admit they feel like having two different personalities for operating one or another language. Mainly, this is due to the fact that different languages influence the way we think, from how we choose the vocabulary to describe the world around us to getting influenced by the different cultures you are operating in. Actually, that’s a great thing, as the ability to switch between different languages improves your ability to understand others, be more empathetic, and communicate better; therefore, drastically improving your relationships with others.

Language is the core tool to help us better understand morals, beliefs, passions, and woes of other people.

5. You Have More Career Prospects

Having more than one language in your resume can drastically improve your chances of getting hired. In fact, a recent survey proved that bilinguals in the US also tend to earn at least $7.000 more annually compared to monolingual peers with the same kind of work experience. The reason is simple: there are fewer bilinguals to choose from, hence each one has a higher “value”. However, in Canada (a bilingual country), many people speak the two official languages of English and French. They tend to earn 7-8% more than monolingual counterparts. Foreign languages that will currently make you the most money include German, French, Spanish, Mandarin, and Arabic.

6. You Seem To Appear More Attractive

There’s something special about your friend who’s capable of switching between languages, right? Well, a recent international survey has just confirmed that bilingual people tend to appear more attractive compared to monolinguals. Over 79% of survey respondents from around the globe agreed that a person speaking a second language instantly seems more appealing. However, there’s a catch. Only certain languages cast this magical effect. The languages on top of this list are no surprise: French, Italian, Spanish, and English. The least sexy language turned out to be Korean.

7. You Become a Better Traveler

One of the biggest differences between a traveler and a mere tourist is that the first one is capable of making genuine connections with the locals and getting to know the culture deeper, while the first one simply enjoys a quick and superficial familiarity. Speaking the local language, at least just a few words, will open more doors to you and will help you connect to the locals on a new level.

Obviously, navigating around a foreign land gets much easier. The locals will often make an additional effort for you if you manage to crunch just a few local phrases. At least, that’s what my travel experience has proven so far!

Repost from Lifehack.

Learning Mandarin from birds

Scholars of the Mandarin Chinese language can learn a lot from birds.

That’s the premise of a new language learning game designed by a Michigan State University researcher and an interdisciplinary team of students.

Inspired by the varying tones of bird species, Picky Birds teaches students the four main Mandarin tones by helping them associate each tone with a corresponding colored bird, said Catherine Ryu, associate professor of Japanese literature and culture, who recently received a patent for the technology on which the game is based.

Catherine Ryu, associate professor of Japanese literature and culture, has received a patent for the technology behind her language learning game, Picky Birds. Photo by Kurt Stepnitz

“Mandarin Chinese is a tonal language, which means the same word can mean something entirely different depending on the tone used,” Ryu said. “And this is fundamentally different than how we use tonal inflections in English.”

For example, in Mandarin the word “ma” (English sound equivalent) can mean “mother,” “flax,” “horse” or “to yell” depending on the tonal inflection used.

Picky Birds is based on research showing brains are wired to associate high pitches with lighter hues, Ryu said. So the birds in her game are yellow for the high even tone, green for the rising tone, blue for the dipping tone and red for the falling tone.

The app is an outcome of Ryu’s Tone Perception Efficacy Study, which she conducted with Aline Godfroid, assistant professor of second language studies, and Chin-Hsi Lin, assistant professor in the Department of Counseling, Educational Psychology and Special Education. ToPES investigated two related questions regarding language:

• How do people perceive, process and retain tones as a sensory perception, especially when the tones in question are not an integral aspect of their own language backgrounds?
• To what extent can people learn to differentiate tones and retain that information?

Ryu will use Picky Birds next month for a Mandarin tone perception experiment, hoping to recruit 40 students without any prior exposure to Mandarin Chinese to participate.

Once Picky Birds is vetted, Ryu will work with MSU Technologies to market the app to users; they expect to begin commercialization in the fall.

In addition to College of Arts and Letters faculty and students, the Picky Birds team includes media and information majors specializing in game design and development in the College of Communication Arts and Sciences and a computer music composer who teaches at Mott Community College in Flint.

Ryu hopes to expand her research team to include neuroscientists, graphic artists, creative writers, game developers, web developers, mechanical engineers and social media specialists.

“It’s a high-energy group of collaborators,” Ryu said. “When we all get together with linguists, truly exciting conversations take place.”

Development of Picky Birds was supported with funding from MSU’s Office of the Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies under the Targeted Support Grant for Technology Development program.

Repost from MSUtoday.com

PAASSC Kick Off Event: Meet Edward Watson

Congratulations! You have finished juggling your busy summer schedule, back to school shopping, and you have purchased school supplies. Now that you are back in the swing of things we are ready to have our PAASSC Kick Off Event. This year we are having a special guest.

Join us for the PAASSC Back to School Kick Off Event!

For the youth we will have Mandarin Tutors, Obstacle Courses, Games, Treats and Lots of Fun.

For the parents, Ted Watson a PhD Candidate at UC Irvine will be leading discussions with parents to discuss his upcoming research – African American Youth in Mandarin Immersion and Chinese Language programs.

Bring classmates. We will have PAASSC swag for families that bring guests!!

See you on Saturday, August 19th at 2:00pm. Please arrive early to meet Ted and introduce your child to the Mandarin Tutors!

10 Things Bilingual Children Do Really Well

Every child is good at something and as parents we love seeing our children do well. Bilingual children have an added advantage in different situations in their lives – and they often get really good, and – depending on their personality – sometimes cheeky with their language skills.

1. Correct their parents’ language

Children in multilingual families often grow up to become fluent, native-like speakers of the language of the community they live in – and do end up correcting their mums and dads! I have certainly been on the receiving end of this since we moved to England – and I am very thankful for it … really, honest!

2. Get better results at school

Bilingual children on average do better than their monolingual peers at school. Long gone is the myth that speaking more than one language will confuse a child and detract from learning other school subjects.

3. Don’t think being bilingual is anything special

Children growing up acquiring many languages don’t find it unusual or even that special to speak two, three, four or even more languages. It’s just part of their normal daily lives.

4. Amaze adults with their language skills

While they themselves don’t think that speaking many language is a great achievement, adults do find their skills amazing. Especially those who have tried to learn a new language themselves as adults find it difficult to get their head around a five-year-old confidently switching between three languages.

5. Enjoy it if their language is a school subject

Bilingual children get a “free ride” if one of their languages is a subject they have to study at school – you may think that your kid is using this time to learn something new, but actually, they are just enjoying a class where they can do well without much effort at all. I remember myself relaxing during the Finnish lessons at my Swedish-speaking school.

6. Giving cheeky incorrect translations

“How do you say it in your language?” – children can sometimes be really cheeky and give a translation which is not quite right. My Finnish-speaking aunt and her friends used to help a Swedish-speaking farmer when they were teenagers. The farmer thought that the girls could possibly work a bit harder and asked how to say that in Finnish. My aunt told him to say “Huilata! Huilata!” which actually means “Take a rest!”

7. Pretend not to know a language

Adults tend to forget that children can be bilingual, and children may well pretend not to know a language … and then secretly listen in on conversations. Remember this when you next time say something in your language when you are out and about.

8. Use a secret language

Bilingual siblings have the advantage of having a common secret language when they are among monolinguals. Not only does this help to convey “important” messages between them, but it also adds to their bond with each other and the language.

9. Make their parents proud

Language is an important part of every person’s identity and parents would normally want their children to learn the language they themselves have grown up with. Experiencing your child switching languages when speaking to different relatives in the extended family fills your heart with joy and pride.

10. Grow up with many additional benefits

Thanks to how bilinguals use their brain when speaking more than one language and switching between them they have found to be more creative, more open-minded, more flexible in their thinking and culturally more aware than monolinguals. Fantastic attributes to look forward to in the bilingual adults our children grow up to become!

Reposted by Multilingual Parenting.

Being Bilingual leads to Increased Brain Activity

Dartmouth researchers have found areas in the brain that indicate bilingualism. The finding sheds new light on decades of debate about how the human brain’s language centers may actually be enhanced when faced with two or more languages as opposed to only one.

When bilinguals were simultaneously processing each of their two languages and rapidly switching between them (that is, in “bilingual mode”), they showed an increase in brain activity in both the left and the right hemisphere, with greater activation in the right. This seems to be a key indicator of the brain’s bilingual signature.

The researchers examined 20 people ranging from 18 to 30 years old (average age was 21.1 years). The monolingual speakers’ behavioral and brain activity were then compared to the bilingual speakers’ behavioral and brain activity while performing identical language processing tasks in “monolingual mode” (that is, in Spanish, and in English) or in “bilingual mode” (that is, when simultaneously processing and rapidly switching between their two languages). The Dartmouth team used the Hitachi ETG-4000 NIRS system.

“For decades, people have wondered whether the brains of bilingual people are different from monolinguals. People also worry that the brains of bilingual children are somehow negatively impacted by early experience with two languages,” explains Petitto, who also holds the John Wentworth Endowed Chair in the Social Sciences. “The present findings are significant because they show that the brains of bilinguals and monolinguals are similar, and both process their individual languages in fundamentally similar ways. The one fascinating exception is that bilinguals appear to engage more of the neural landscape available for language processing than monolinguals, which is a very good thing.”

The team proposes that bilingual language processing provides a new window into the extent of what nature’s neural architecture for language processing could be, if only we used it. Petitto adds, “The irony is that we may find it is the monolingual that is not taking full advantage of the neural landscape for language and cognitive processing than nature could have potentially made available.”

Too Much Media Consumption? Race/Class…

Creativity and imaginative play are incredibly important for children.

Sometimes I take parenting too seriously but it’s because I truly see it as a gift. An incredible opportunity to nurture and support young little minds that are growing at a rapid pace. In this journey I want my children to be truly inspired. I believe that’s a shared journey in our commitment to raising bilingual children – to stimulate them, to inspire them, and to encourage them to meet their full potential.

I’m hoping I can engage a lively conversation about the ways in which we inspire our children to grow, thrive and excel within environments that are often filled with obstacles to those very goals.

I have heard ongoing conversations by many PAASSC parents about the role of television in their child’s life. While many African American families are making the effort to reduce the amount of television that their children are watching a recent study published by Northwestern University finds that Black youth consume significantly more hours of media a day than their peers. The study identifies three concerning points:

Black and Hispanic youth are more likely to have TV sets in their bedrooms (84% of blacks, 77% of Hispanics compared to 64% of whites and Asians), and to have cable and premium channels available in their bedrooms (42% of blacks and 28% of Hispanics compared to 17% of whites and 14% of Asians).
Minority youth eat more meals in front of the TV set — with 78% of black, 67% of Hispanic, 58% of white and 55% of Asian 8- to 18-year-olds reporting that the TV is “usually” on during meals at home.
Trends such as TV sets in the bedroom and eating meals with the TV on begin at an early age. Black children under 6 are twice as likely to have a TV in their bedroom as whites and more than twice as likely to go to sleep with the TV on. Black children under 6 are almost three times as likely to eat dinner in front of the TV than white children the same age.

The study did not find a significant difference in 1) the time young people spend using a computer for schoolwork and 2) no significant difference in time spent by youth multi-tasking their media (i.e. using another medium while watching TV).

Add to the Discussion…

Should this study have looked at variations based on factors such as family income, parent’s educational levels and even neighborhood demographics (high vs. low-crime communities)?
An inordinate amount of studies highlight the “failures” among Black children and Black parents. How does this information impact your parenting or other’s perception of your parenting.
Does your child watch more than three hours of television each day?
How does your child’s relationship with television impact their overall development?

Please post your comments below.

Research