Education Talks: Bilingualism in education

Bilingualism in Education

What is Bilingualism?

In my professional work, the definition that we use in England is that every child exposed to two languages is bilingual. So this can be exposure in the family, in the community to a language which is different to English.

What are the main benefits of bilingualism for children's development?

What we know today about building cognitive reserves in terms of staying healthy for longer, having good quality life, we know that learning another language is on the top of the list of activities that you can do to enhance your cognitive potential, and to enhance your cognitive functioning throughout your lifetime.

So if you start with preschool children, early age, evidence shows that there is a better focus, so children who use two languages are able to focus better on tasks and kind of ignore irrelevant disruptions. Especially in subjects like maths where you need to use more of your abstract thinking, because using two languages develops abstract thinking and also metalinguistic skills as well which are then useful for learning further languages.

There is the latest evidence showing that adults who use two languages can put off dementia by 3 to 5 years, so you can look at every stage of our life there are benefits.

What would be your advice for parents and teachers of bilingual pupils?

Parents focus on speaking the language of the house country because they want the children to succeed in their life. If parents are more aware that basically children will perform better across the curriculum, they will be better at the acquisition of any other language if their first language is strong and supported. Then all these arguments are pointing towards it because we are not doing children any service by not working on enhancing the linguistic capital that they already have.

Parents need to hear it from teachers as well, that their first language is important. They need to be given the advice to read in their first language, to do some writing. There are all these different steps that teachers can engage with and take to communicate these messages to children, that their languages are important, their languages are part of teaching and learning and also part of thinking about the future, their employability, and converting that, the linguistic capital that they have into something that is going to be economic capital in the future.

What kind of strategy would you suggest to support bilingualism?

I think we need to develop an approach that supports developing conditions which are language hierarchy-free, so we need to find an approach to languages that says: all these benefits apply to all languages equally and this is where I see the potential of my approach which I call 'Healthy linguistic Diet', because the cognitive benefits that we have evidence for, they apply to all different combination of languages.

What would be the main change that you would like to see in 10 years' time?

We shouldn't only think about things that we do and that we say as teachers, we also need to think about those things that we don't say and don't do because not having displays in other languages, not ever mentioning first languages in our communication with children, with parents, that also communicates big messages, that says: these languages are not part of teaching and learning, they are not part of our environment, they are not important.

I would like to see teachers developing a reflective practice where they frequently ask themselves, does my curriculum, does my teaching reflect the linguistic and cultural capital of my learners?