How Do Children Benefit from a Bilingual Education?

  Many children in the UK today grow up speaking another language as well as English. This could be a home nation language (e.g. Welsh or Irish), a language from mainland Europe or southern Asia, or perhaps one from elsewhere. Traditionally, the UK education system has been very much focused on teaching in English, but a growing body of evidence suggests that a bilingual education may have a wide variety of benefits. This doesn't just mean learning a foreign language, but having lessons in all subjects conducted in two languages. So what exactly are these benefits?

Cultural and Career Benefits

 Perhaps the most obvious benefit of a bilingual education is that being fluent in more than one language can be a big bonus when your child comes to pursue a career. In today's joined-up world, skill in languages can be invaluable, and someone who's already proficient in two languages will find it easier to learn others. Besides the language itself, though, a bilingual education helps a child grow up with a deeper appreciation of both cultures. This can be especially important for children from families with an immigrant culture, helping them to integrate into the mainstream culture without losing appreciation of their heritage. Besides the direct benefits, this will prepare the child's state of mind to understand the value of differences between cultures in general.

Cognitive Benefits

 An argument sometimes put forward against bilingual education is that it could confuse and hold back children by creating a conflict between the languages. In fact, the evidence suggests that the reverse is true. As the New York Times puts it, this conflict

"isn’t so much a handicap as a blessing in disguise. It forces the brain to resolve internal conflict, giving the mind a workout that strengthens its cognitive muscles."

Research has suggested that children who've had a bilingual education are better at solving complex puzzles than those who've learnt in a single language. They also appear to be better at processing sound — itself a crucial factor in how much they learn from lessons, whatever the language used.

Academic Benefits

 You'd expect higher cognitive skills to benefit children in their education, but there's evidence that the challenges posed by bilingual education have a wide range of advantages. For example, bilingually educated children appear to have better communication and social interaction. There's also evidence that, in particular, they perform better at maths, reading and vocabulary. They also appear to have better memories. Bilingual children tend to be better at remembering names and directions, and they're more cognitively creative than monolingual children. These facts are becoming widely recognised by universities, meaning that being bilingual can be an extremely valuable item on your child's application, when they reach that point.

Long-Term Health Benefits

 Cognitive and academic benefits might be expected, once we understand the processes at work in the brain of a bilingual child, but more unexpected are the long-term health benefits, extending into old age. This includes, for instance, apparent resistance to both dementia and Parkinson's Disease. Research has discovered that not only are bilingual people less likely to develop Alzheimer's and other types of dementia, but the earlier they became bilingual, the later these diseases develop, if at all. While this process isn't well understood, it may be connected to the greater mental acuity bilingualism offers.

How Can My Child Have a Bilingual Education?

 In general, UK state schools (apart from in Wales) tend not to offer a bilingual education — only lessons in a second language, which don't offer the same benefits. However, that doesn't stop you from hiring a private tutor, whether to home-school your child or to supplement school lessons. Register with TutorExtra to find bilingual tutors who can offer lessons in the languages of your choice.