A Unique Child: Cognitive development - Multi-lingualism

In the past, scientific studies of language acquisition focused mainly on monolingual children learning their native tongue, be it English, Chinese, French or one of the many other languages of the world. Such a focus was surprising, since there are fewer monolingual people across the globe than there are bilinguals. Studies show that the vast majority of the world's children actually grow up learning more than one language simultaneously. And, with the huge changes in population distribution in recent decades, even here in the UK, bilingualism is becoming the norm rather than the exception.

An increasing number of pupils at all levels of schooling, from nurseries to colleges, hear English at school but go home to households where the native language is different. In response to this, scientists have broadened their perspectives and are now examining language acquisition in new ways to discover whether there are significant differences in the development of infants who grow up monolingually and those simultaneously mastering two or more languages. These comparisons are yielding interesting results that have prompted further questions. One of the most fundamental questions is, does bilingualism confer a cognitive advantage to young children or does it instead slow their learning process?