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Bilingual children are more alert and creative

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Pamela Dutta
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Interesting Observation! Aug 14, 2012

That is interesting! In India, children in cities have no choice but to learn 2 or more languages, English and a modern Indian language (both are part of school curriculum) plus Hindi, because it is the predominant language in all government communique and also in Bollywood movies, songs and other popular media.
 
liz askew
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not necessarily Aug 15, 2012

In some cases perhaps, but in other cases children can get confused when it comes to writing in different languages.
Also, I would dispute that "bilingual children are more alert and creative" than non-bilingual ones. What are they using as a comparison to make this statement?
Cheers!
Liz Askew
 
Helena Chavarria
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I can't say I agree Aug 16, 2012

I live in Catalonia, a Spanish autonomous region where children are brought up to be bilingual in Spanish and Catalan.

I'm afraid I don't consider the children to be more alert and creative. I would even go as far as to say that their progress at school is sometimes hindered.
 
Annamaria Amik
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Depends Aug 16, 2012

@Helena:
What is the language of study in those schools? I can imagine these children are hindered in their progress because the language they study in is not their real mother tongue. The situation is the same in Romania; Hungarian children here surely have worse grades at Romanian and other language-based fields (e.g. history).
However, creativity and alertness are not necessarily related to progress in school, IMO.
 
Ty Kendall
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By the same token.... Aug 16, 2012

Annamaria Amik wrote:

@Helena:
What is the language of study in those schools? I can imagine these children are hindered in their progress because the language they study in is not their real mother tongue. The situation is the same in Romania; Hungarian children here surely have worse grades at Romanian and other language-based fields (e.g. history).
However, creativity and alertness are not necessarily related to progress in school, IMO.


They aren't necessarily related to bilingualism either. I find these kinds of "studies" very dubious, a belief borne out in the hedging language they use:

"can help children", "can have demonstrable benefits", "could develop skills useful in other types of thinking".

I'd also like to know a lot more about their scientific method before I bought into such a bold claim as the one heading this thread.
 
Helena Chavarria
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I'm only quoting a fact Aug 17, 2012

Helena Chavarria wrote:

I live in Catalonia, a Spanish autonomous region where children are brought up to be bilingual in Spanish and Catalan.


Annamarie, children study in Catalan and Spanish, depending on the subject. When they are in the playground, they use both languages. When I am sitting round the table at mealtimes with my family, we speak Spanish, Catalan and English, depending on who we're addressing. But I wouldn't say the younger members of my family were especially creative or alert.

I started teaching over thirty years ago and the children I have in my classes today are definitely not more creative or alert than the monolingual children I used to teach at the beginning.

However, I don't think language has anything to do with this fact. I think it's due to the change of lifestyle: young children go to the park with adults watching over them, they no longer play on their own outside or do errands for their parents. They play with adult supervision, which doesn't allow them to develop their creative skills.
 


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