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The Benefits of Being Bilingual
A
According to the latest figures, the majority of the world’s population is now bilingual or multilingual, having grown up speaking two or more languages. In the past, such children were considered to be at a disadvantage compared with their monolingual peers. Over the past few decades, however, technological advances have allowed researchers to look more deeply at how bilingualism interacts with and changes the cognitive and neurological systems, thereby identifying several clear benefits of being bilingual.
B
Research shows that when a bilingual person uses one language, the other is active at the same time. When we hear a word, we don’t hear the entire word all at once: the sounds arrive in sequential order. Long before the word is finished, the brain’s language system begins to guess what that word might be. If you hear ‘can’, you will likely activate words like ‘candy’ and ‘candle’ as well, at least during the earlier stages of word recognition. For bilingual people, this activation is not limited to a single language; auditory input activates corresponding words regardless of the language to which they belong. Some of the most compelling evidence for this phenomenon, called ‘language co-activation’, comes from studying eye movements. A Russian-English bilingual asked to ‘pick up a marker’ from a set of objects would look more at a stamp than someone who doesn’t know Russian, because the Russian word for ‘stamp’, marka, sounds like the English word he or she heard, ‘marker’. In cases like this, language co-activation occurs because what the listener hears could map onto words in either language.
Questions 27 – 28
TEST: Observing the (27) ……………….. of Russian-English bilingual people when asked to select certain objects.
FINDINGS: Bilingual people engage both languages simultaneously: a mechanism known as (28) ………………..
C
Having to deal with this persistent linguistic competition can result in difficulties, however. For instance, knowing more than one language can cause speakers to name pictures more slowly, and can increase ‘tip-of-the-tongue states’, when you can almost, but not quite, bring a word to mind. As a result, the constant juggling of two languages creates a need to control how much a person accesses a language at any given time. For this reason, bilingual people often perform better on tasks that require conflict management. In the classic Stroop Task, people see a word and are asked to name the colour of the word’s font. When the colour and the word match (i.e. the word ‘red’ printed in red), people correctly name the colour more quickly than when the colour and the word don’t match (i.e., the word ‘red’ printed in blue). This occurs because the word itself (‘red’) and its font colour (blue) conflict. Bilingual people often excel at tasks such as this, which tap into the ability to ignore competing perceptual information and focus on the relevant aspects of the input. Bilinguals are also better at switching between two tasks; for example, when bilinguals have to switch from categorizing objects by colour (red or green) to categorizing them by shape (circle or triangle), they do so more quickly than monolingual people, reflecting better cognitive control when having to make rapid changes of strategy.
Questions 29 – 30
TEST: A test called the (29) ……………….. , focusing on naming colours.
FINDINGS: Bilingual people are more able to handle tasks involving a skill called (30) ………………..
TEST: A test involving switching between tasks
FINDINGS: When changing strategies, bilingual people have superior (31) ………………..
Questions 32-36: Yes, No, Not Given
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 3?
In boxes 32-36 on your answer sheet, write
YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer
NO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
32. Attitudes towards bilingualism have changed in recent years.
33. Bilingual people are better than monolingual people at guessing correctly what words are before they are finished.
34. Bilingual people consistently name images faster than monolingual people.
35. Bilingual people’s brains process single sounds more efficiently than monolingual people in all situations.
36. Fewer bilingual people than monolingual people suffer from brain disease in old age.
- Attitudes towards bilingualism have changed in recent years.
According to the latest figures, the majority of the world’s population is now bilingual or multilingual, having grown up speaking two or more languages. In the past, such children were considered to be at a disadvantage compared with their monolingual peers. Over the past few decades, however, technological advances have allowed researchers to look more deeply at how bilingualism interacts with and changes the cognitive and neurological systems, thereby identifying several clear benefits of being bilingual.
- Bilingual people are better than monolingual people at guessing correctly what words are before they are finished.
Research shows that when a bilingual person uses one language, the other is active at the same time. When we hear a word, we don’t hear the entire word all at once: the sounds arrive in sequential order. Long before the word is finished, the brain’s language system begins to guess what that word might be. If you hear ‘can’, you will likely activate words like ‘candy’ and ‘candle’ as well, at least during the earlier stages of word recognition.
- Bilingual people consistently name images faster than monolingual people.
Having to deal with this persistent linguistic competition can result in difficulties, however. For instance, knowing more than one language can cause speakers to name pictures more slowly,…
- Bilingual people’s brains process single sounds more efficiently than monolingual people in all situations.
It also seems that the neurological roots of the bilingual advantage extend to brain areas more traditionally associated with sensory processing. When monolingual and bilingual adolescents listen to simple speech sounds without any intervening background noise, they show highly similar (not more efficient) brain stem responses. When researchers play the same sound to both groups in the presence of background noise, however (= not ALL situations) the bilingual listeners’ neural response is considerably larger, reflecting better encoding of the sound’s fundamental frequency, a feature of sound closely related to pitch perception.
- Fewer bilingual people than monolingual people suffer from brain disease in old age.
Research also indicates that bilingual experience may help to keep the cognitive mechanisms sharp by recruiting alternate brain networks to compensate for those that become damaged during aging. Older bilinguals enjoy improved memory relative to monolingual people, which can lead to real-world health benefits. In a study of over 200 patients with Alzheimer’s disease, a degenerative brain disease, bilingual patients reported showing initial symptoms of the disease an average of five years later than monolingual patients. In a follow-up study, researchers compared the brains of bilingual and monolingual patients matched on the severity of Alzheimer’s symptoms. Surprisingly, the bilinguals’ brains had more physical signs of disease than their monolingual counterparts, even though their outward behaviour and abilities were the same. If the brain is an engine, bilingualism may help it to go farther on the same amount of fuel.
Questions 37- 40
Match the sentences with the excerpts from the paragraphs below:
37. an example of how bilingual and monolingual people’s brains respond differently to a certain type of non-verbal auditory input
38. a demonstration of how a bilingual upbringing has benefits even before we learn to speak
39. a description of the process by which people identify words that they hear
40. reference to some negative consequences of being bilingual.
B. Research shows that when a bilingual person uses one language, the other is active at the same time. When we hear a word, we don’t hear the entire word all at once: the sounds arrive in sequential order. Long before the word is finished, the brain’s language system begins to guess what that word might be. If you hear ‘can’, you will likely activate words like ‘candy’ and ‘candle’ as well, at least during the earlier stages of word recognition.
C. Having to deal with this persistent linguistic competition can result in difficulties, however. For instance, knowing more than one language can cause speakers to name pictures more slowly, and can increase ‘tip-of-the-tongue states’, when you can almost, but not quite, bring a word to mind.
D. It also seems that the neurological roots of the bilingual advantage extend to brain areas more traditionally associated with sensory processing. When monolingual and bilingual adolescents listen to simple speech sounds without any intervening background noise, they show highly similar brain stem responses. When researchers play the same sound to both groups in the presence of background noise, however, the bilingual listeners’ neural response is considerably larger, reflecting better encoding of the sound’s fundamental frequency, a feature of sound closely related to pitch perception.
G. Furthermore, the benefits associated with bilingual experience seem to start very early. In one study, researchers taught seven-month-old babies growing up in monolingual or bilingual homes that when they heard a tinkling sound, a puppet appeared on one side of a screen. Halfway through the study, the puppet began appearing on the opposite side of the screen. In order to get a reward, the infants had to adjust the rule they’d learned; only the bilingual babies were able to successfully learn the new rule. This suggests that for very young children, as well as for older people, navigating a multilingual environment imparts advantages that transfer far beyond language.
Answers:
27. eye movements 28. language co-activation 29. Stroop Task 30. conflict management. 31. cognitive control
32 YES 33. NOT GIVEN 34. NO 35. NO 36. NOT GIVEN 37. D 38. G 39. B 40. C
Explanations for the Not Given answers:
33. Bilingual people are better than monolingual people at guessing correctly what words are before they are finished. NOT GIVEN
There is no comparison about who is better at guessing.
PARA B
Research shows that when a bilingual person uses one language, the other is active at the same time. When we hear a word, we don’t hear the entire word all at once: the sounds arrive in sequential order. Long before the word is finished, the brain’s language system begins to guess what that word might be. If you hear ‘can’, you will likely activate words like ‘candy’ and ‘candle’ as well, at least during the earlier stages of word recognition.
36. Fewer bilingual people than monolingual people suffer from brain disease in old age. NOT GIVEN
The text compares the timing (=how early) and severity (-how serious) of brain disease but there is no comparison between the number (=how many) of bilingual and monolingual people who suffer from brain disease in old age.
PARA F
Research also indicates that bilingual experience may help to keep the cognitive mechanisms sharp by recruiting alternate brain networks to compensate for those that become damaged during aging. Older bilinguals enjoy improved memory relative to monolingual people, which can lead to real-world health benefits. In a study of over 200 patients with Alzheimer’s disease, a degenerative brain disease, bilingual patients reported showing initial symptoms of the disease an average of five years later than monolingual patients. In a follow-up study, researchers compared the brains of bilingual and monolingual patients matched on the severity of Alzheimer’s symptoms. Surprisingly, the bilinguals’ brains had more physical signs of disease than their monolingual counterparts, even though their outward behaviour and abilities were the same. If the brain is an engine, bilingualism may help it to go farther on the same amount of fuel.
***Comparisons are often NOT GIVEN in the IELTS Reading Test.***
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