Students who speak two languages, rather than just one, scored 11 percent better in standardised tests, according to new research published in the International Journal of Innovation in Education. The team conducting the research have built a bilingualism enhanced cognitive competence index (BECCI) model of their results that can predict with more than 90 percent accuracy how well students might do based on their bilingualism.
Soyoun Choi of the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Ellen Choi of the Holy Trinity Episcopal Academy in Melbourne, Florida, USA, suggest that there is much controversy in the fields of education and neurology regarding the effects of bilingualism on academic achievement. Some argue that while speaking two or more languages has many benefits a direct effect on cognitive abilities in areas other than speech itself may be marginal. Others argue the opposite suggesting that the neurological tools gained in learning a second language beyond one’s first sharpen the tools in other parts of the brain. One camp in the debate even argues that having a second language blunts some of those tools during the brain’s childhood developmental stages.
One in five people in the USA now speaks at least two languages the team writes and so it is important for us to try to approach a definitive answer regarding the cognitive boost a second language may or may not bring. This rings especially true given the wide spectrum of arguments seen in the debate.
The team has studied children with one or two languages across the age range 8 to 14 years old. They looked at the students’ grade point averages (GPA) and looked for a correlation with whether they were mono, or bilingual.
“Bilinguals showed a higher overall GPA by 0.19 grade points,” the team reports. “The standardised test scores of bilinguals were 11% higher than their monolingual counterparts.” They add that, “The bilingual cohort had both an average GPA and standardised test score higher than the monolinguals by a factor of approximately 1.06 times for GPA and 1.109 times for standardised test.” The team did, however, find that bilinguals had a lower score in reading tests than their monolingual contemporaries. However, this seemed to be only a temporary deficit, the team points out.
“Bilingualism is a gift to students,” they write. “This study proves that the positive benefits far outweigh the drawbacks.”
Choi, S. and Choi, E. (2021) ‘A novel model of neurocognitive bilingual effect’, Int. J. Innovation in Education, Vol. 7, No. 1, pp.47–66.