Benefits of Bilingualism and Bilingual Education

People are able to identify themselves in regards to language in a variety of different ways: with the language or languages that they personally speak, the languages of their ancestors, and/or with the languages existing in their society. Language not only is our manner of communication, but it is our identity in many ways. Throughout the world, numerous people live in contact with not only one language, but with many. Bilingualism is a common occurrence, and there are a substantial number of speakers of more than one language in the world. In fact, with modern technology and our global economy, the world seems to be growing increasingly more connected. Thus, the necessity for language study becomes more prominent as the distance across cultures seems to shrink. Language learning is not only studying speech and words, but also allows learners to examine other societies and people whose way of life is different from their own. With the study of languages, people become more aware of other nations and cultures, which is a beneficial for social aspects of society. Additionally, recent research suggests that these social and cultural aspects are not the only benefits of bilingualism, but there may be other cognitive advantages to bilingualism. This paper serves to demonstrate whether or not benefits of bilingualism exist, specifically in relation to cognitive effects, and if so, what these benefits are