BILINGUALISM AND COGNITION

Presented by:

Yoseph Payong Safitry Wahyuni Rinda Fitriana Sumirah

Points of Discussion
Bilinguals Varieties

Learning situation

BILINGUALISM & COGNITION

Beneficial or detrimental?

Transfer effect of L1 on L2 learning

Varieties of bilinguals
A bilingual person is if he/she knows: more than one realization of language in the same modality, for instance two sound-based languages, such as spoken English and spoken German, or two sign-based languages such as American Sign Language and Japanese Sign Language, or more two languages based on different modalities, for example spoken German and American Sign Language

Is bilingualism beneficial or detrimental?

Bilingualism is considered as something good. Means, 1. By knowing another language enables us to communicate with people or member of other culture using their language. 2. It is useful in terms of making cooperation and understanding among people and nations. This applies not only between countries but also within countries, where there is more than prevalent or official language like in Switzerland or Canada.

Some cases about bilingualism. 1. There are some countries do not want to learn or acquire the bilingualism. Like North Korea might wish tom curb contact with other people by limiting the teaching any other language at school. 2. Also occur in Soviet. In former Soviet Union regarded that bilingual can destroy the culture. Thats why, Soviet banned the use of many languages. These such situations are regarded as deplorable.

 In fact, Its really fun and cultural benefits of bilingualism. One can go around the world and make everything easy by being able to convey something using the language of the country they visit.

In this case, there is a question. How can one reasonably be against bilingualism? Some of the arguments are not against bilingualism itself, but the early acquisition of the second language. There are two respects of acquiring. Linguistically (retarding the acquisition of the first and the second language). And Intellectually ( retarding to the development of thinking and cognitive abilities as mathematics and reading).

Effects on the development of language

Negative Reports Positive Reports Smith (1930s) Lambert (Canada) The acquiring bilingualism Investigated English native can caused retardation in children in language language development. immersion program Gathered the comparative data in Iowa (English French was spoken and monolinguals) and Hawai exposed to academic children( ethnically diverse). instruction and social Recorded the sentences interaction as L2 uttered by the children from two groups and evaluated in terms of standard usage in the languages.

Effects on the development of language (Cont.)

Negative Reports The result is, bilingual children from Hawai had many more errors compare with children from Iowa. Positive Reports
Bruck et al. (1976) Conducted one long-term study with native Englishspeaking children in French immersion program. By the fourth or fifth grade, the children were as good as the French speaking children (including in writing and reading skills) The immersion group children got better scores on creativity test than monolingual children

Effects on the development of intelligence

Negative Reports
Goddard (1917) Administered English language version of Binet intelligence test to 30 Jewish adults immigrants who recently arrived at Ellis island. The result showed that less than half of the immigrant could provide 60 words, below with a 11 years old American children who could provide 200 words. The Jews adults were called feeble-minded.

Positive Effects
Bain & Yu (1980) Compared bilingual and monolingual (English and French or English and Chinese) young children (6-8 months of age) The bilinguals were raised bilingually either monolingually by their parents as well as the volunteers involved in the study. When the children were 4, they were given some cognitive performance tests (with linguistically complex) and the result showed that bilinguals to be superior to the monolinguals.

Effects on the development of intelligence (Cont.)

Negative Reports Brigham & Florence Goodenough Drew a conclusion that foreigners (especially nonNordic Europeans were inferior in intelligence, proved by their poor performance on intelligence test administered in English. Positive Effects Hakuta (1986) Claimed that the difference of advantageous beliefs and attitudes between monolingual and bilingual parents could have biased the findings.

Another supported research

Diaz and Padilla (1985) Investigated Mexican-American bilingual pre-school students. They were videotaped while performing three different tasks: block design, classification, and story-sequencing task. There was significant portions of performance in both classification and story-sequencing tasks. Yoshida & Smith (2007) Investigated 2-3 years old bilingual children in a novel word-learning task. The children demonstrated greater cognitive flexibility compared with monolingual children.

Conclusion of effects of bilingualism to the development of language and intelligence

From time to time, dozens of studies were conducted on the relationship between learning a second language early in life and cognitive ability. Robinson summarized many of them in one of his articles by concluding: the picture that emerges is ...... a youngster whose experience with two language systems seems to have left him or her with a mental flexibility, a superiority in concept formation, and a more diversified set of mental abilities. The studies also demonstrated that children who have studied a foreign language perform better on standardized tests and tests of basic skills in English, math and social studies.

Conclusion (Cont.)
Researchers have discovered that the cognitive systems of bilingual children differ from those of monolingual children in some remarkable ways. Learning, speaking, and using two languages may affect fundamental aspects of cognitive and neural development, potentially influencing the way those systems learn and represent information (Bialystok, 1999; Bialystok, Craik, Klein, & Viswanathan, 2004; Bialystok & Martin, 2004; Mechelli et al., 2004).

Learning Situation
two languages can be acquired at the same time only occurs in childhood

Simultaneous Acquisition

Sequential Acquisition

L2 can be learned in childhood L2 can be learned after the person has become an adult It can occurs both child or adult

Simultaneous Acquisition
1)1P-1L It is when speakers of different languages use only one language each when talking to a child. For example, a mother speaks only English while the father speaks only French. 2). 1P-2L It is when the same person uses two different languages while speaking to the child. For example the mother and father use both French and English when talking to a child.

Sequential Acquisition
The sequential kind of bilingual situation occurs for a child when parents speak one language and the community speak another. For example When an Indonesian couple move to America, The parents speaks Indonesian to their children at home but when the children play outside, go to school, library or movie they use English. Thus, the children learn two languages sequently.

The children learn two languages sequentially. It is where a second language is introduced after the first language has started being learned. Some of the acquisition of the languages will occur simultaneously. What is sequential is the different starting times for the introduction of each language. In acquiring the second language, speed, proficiency and fluency will be determined by certain psychological and social variable.

SUGGESTION
If parents want to raise their children bilingual so it is better to use 1P 1L pattern. The reason is If the wait one or two years after then the children will experience great psychological difficulty in changing to another

Transfer effect of L1 on L2 learning

SIMILARITY OF SYTAX, VOCABULARY, AND SOUND SYTEM No language is more complex overall than any other language (linguist) No language is easier to learn than any other language (psycholinguist) Not every pair of language can be acquired at the same rate

For example:
After learning English, learning French will be easier rather than learning Japanese. Though English syntax and French syntax is different, there is big differences between syntax of English and Japanese. However, there is similarity on vocabulary between English and French Japanese syntax is similar to Korean syntax English syntax is similar to Chinese syntax, but they are different in sound system. Meanwhile, English speaker will find the Japanese sound system is easier to handle

 So, the acquisition of second language will be more rapid when L1 and L2 have similarity of syntax, vocabulary, and sound system Regarding to importance scale, syntax is the greatest. However, for language success, it is better to have syntax and vocabulary similarity

Facilitation
L1 knowledge may facilitate L2 learning Facilitation is not as noticeable as errors When L1 and L2 have a lot of similarities, such as the article (in English and French), Gender (Masculine and feminine nouns as in French and Italian), a positive transfer from L1 is occurred. Moreover, learners will have no difficulty with the complexity of structure, morphology, and phonology, since they have had them in L1 learning The best facilitation is to give natural situation for L2 learning. Since, L2 will be acquired more quickly

Errors
Errors are as indicators of Learners L2 knowledge L1 interference attributes to minority of errors Most errors are the result of application of L2 strategy and L1 strategy. These strategies apply when L2 knowledge is not yet known or incompletely learned

For examples:
L1 interference: I go yesterday (Indonesian interference) L2 strategy:(overgeneralized L2 rules) Afterwards they ate the dinner I am like Bakpao L1 strategy: use L1 knowledge because learner does not know how to say it in L2 I am chased by dog My finger is hurted by a knife

The Double Trouble Phenomenon

The previous knowledge of particular language will interfere us when learn another language For example: When we try to speak English, our knowledge of Indonesian comes into our mind to construct the sentences.

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