The Idea of an Essay, Volume 3

Research Writing 159 learned Spanish, then their brains would be able to function faster and more efficiently. In addition, people would develop dementia and Alzheimer’s disease a few years later. These three examples show the benefits of bilingualism on the cognitive processes of the brain. Being able to speak two languages helps with literacy understanding and development. Bilinguals have a wider range of linguistic possibilities to choose from as they assess a situation. The brain is constantly choosing between the two languages, as stated previously. Bilinguals have a greater metalinguistic awareness, which refers to the person’s attention on the meaning or intention of what is being read or spoken. The attention is not on the sounds the words make or the syntactic patterns of the sentences (Cazden 1). Many researchers and scientists claim that when the brain focuses on the meaning and not the sounds the words make, it is an amazing attribute of the mind. The University of France conducted a study where they tested bilingual children to see just how much metalinguistic awareness affected them while taking a given test. The results concluded, “… that children’s performance on a phonological awareness task in a language was affected by their proficiency in the language of testing. A bilingual advantage in phonological awareness occurs in Grade 4 and below” (Reder 688). Bilingual children will learn to read more quickly than their peers because of the way their brain processes the words. The children understand the meaning rather than the way it looks and how it is pronounced. In addition to the bilingual brain processing meaning more quickly, bilingual brains can also understand the rules of language more explicitly. Bilingual brains are better able to control the structure of a language. For example, when attempting to make the word “dog” plural, the brain must process the word “dog” into a compartment of the brain to come up with the formula ‘”dog + s = dogs.” Even though this is a simple example, the brain works the same way with more complex grammatical patterns. A bilingual brain helps with this process because it is able to look at the verb and more quickly, efficiently conjugate it into the correct tense. The bilingual brain is able to recognize grammatical patterns faster that a monolingual brain (Buschweitz, Prat 431). This skill will help American children learning Spanish comprehend the different verb tenses and linguistic patterns easier, especially for younger children just learning to read and write. At young ages, the bilingual brain will more quickly