Strengths of monolingual and bilingual year one primary school pupils

The thesis deals with the interrelation between bilingualism and strength of year 1 students. The theoretical part discusses bilingualism, the influences that define it, its strengths and weaknesses. It also includes the definitions of strengths according to Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences. The research study was conducted with an instrument called »Wizard's Castle«, testing 6 children’s strong areas: verbal-linguistic, visual-spatial, logical-mathematical, bodily-kinaesthetic, musical and practical. The goal of the thesis was to investigate if bilingual pupils reach better results than monolingual pupils in all areas. Bilingual students were divided into two groups: balanced and unbalanced speakers. The results of the study show that balanced speakers reached higher results in all areas. Unbalanced speakers reached lower results in the verbal-linguistic area, as in most cases Slovene was not their first language. In other areas, they achieved better scores than monolingual pupils. The knowledge of two languages has a positive effect in all areas. The knowledge of two languages has a positive effect in all areas. It should be noted that all pupils involved in the study learnt two languages in a natural way, i. e. in order to communicate with their schoolmates, friends form kindergarten, teachers, one of their parents etc