Bilingual education is controversial in the United States.
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, a growing body of research shows that
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speaking two languages comes with certain types of improved mental
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. Being able to use two languages and never knowing which one to be used right now is good to the brain. The attentional executive system, crucial for all higher thought, seems to be
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.
Executive functioning allows us to keep a goal in mind, take
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to achieve that goal, and to ignore other information that might
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us from that goal. The question is: Would it be the case that bilinguals, by the
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need for controlling the two languages, develop a more efficient executive functioning system. The results suggest that bilinguals
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have this positive collateral effect, which is even stronger when it goes to kids and older people. These are ages
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executive functioning is worse.
Bilinguals do better at tests that require multitasking, including ones that
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driving and talking on a phone. And the longer people have spoken multiple languages, the greater the cognitive
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. There are even benefits when languages were
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at later ages.
Certainly, bilingualism comes with some
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. Bilinguals have more "tip-of-the-tongue" problems. There are a couple of milliseconds before they can target. Bilingual children, also, have
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a smaller vocabulary in each of their languages than monolingual children,
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they probably know more words altogether.
Still, all of these findings are
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abstract. It is difficult to take laboratory findings showing better executive functioning in bilinguals and demonstrate that they
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into better performance in the workplace or some other practical
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. The only real-world application preliminarily demonstrated may be that multilingualism can
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health benefits to Alzheimer"s patients. Bilinguals show
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of the disease up to four years later than monolinguals.
A.on occasion B.on average C.on purpose D.on principle