Two languages in one brain – does that make you smarter?
Not necessarily smarter but your brain works harder and you are better at focusing your attention. In the following I will be talking about what happens in the brain when you learn, what the advantages and disadvantages are of two languages in one brain, and why the bilingual brain works harder.

A month ago I attended a wonderful presentation by Janet Zadina about language learning and the brain.  Here is my simplified synopsis of it.

What happens in the brain when you learn a language?
Anyone who learns a language, this could be a child, a High School Student or an adult, will create a map of this language in the brain. You can imagine this map as a storage place for all the intricate structures of the language.  If you learn two languages you simply create two maps.

What are advantages and disadvantages of two languages in one brain?
Let us think of a (native English speaking) Middle School student learning Spanish. She will have a map for English in her brain.  Now she will create another map for Spanish in the same area. This sounds like a confusing set up.  How can she tell what map she is using? Can she just copy certain aspects of the map? Two maps make some things easier and others harder.  Our student might store the English word organization in an area for English abstract nouns.  She might copy this idea for the Spanish word organizaçion.  No harm done and she even saved study time. Sometimes copying map entries can be misleading.  You might store the Spanish word sensible as an adjective describing someone smart and reasonable.  This word actually translates into sensitive.  Simply copying information for similar sounding words does not always work.

Why does the bilingual brain work harder?
When this student speaks English we can measure brain activity in the “map area.”  When she speaks Spanish we find similar activity in the same area.  She is a beginning Spanish learner and needs a lot of attention and effort to speak and understand Spanish – she is constantly analyzing while speaking. She will activate other brain areas to help out. The frontal lobes, the executive support system, get involved.  Our language student’s brain works overtime. Put yourself in a foreign language context and try to figure out what is going on, the activity in your brain is nearly palpable. “What does he want me to do? Where does he want me to go?”  Moving the hand to the forehead when thinking might actually have a reason – we point to our hard working frontal lobes to give them some well-deserved credit. This is the cognitive load that makes language learning quite exhausting and also exiting.

Some benefits of speaking two languages
The student slowly becomes familiar, comfortable and fluent in Spanish.  She will not have to think about what she says anymore – it feels effortless – the language happens automatically.  Yes, that is where we all want to be as language learners. There is a reason why this wondrous stage feels so effortless.  Our brain executive, the frontal lobes, does not work that hard anymore. There is hardly a need to control the language since the language’s structure has been internalized.

Our student is bilingual now - does she simply deny access to one language map while using the other?  Not quite. She can switch back and forth as often as she likes.  Both language maps are active.  She will figure out a way to manage both languages’ coexistance.  This requires a lot of attention, more specifically: selective attention. According to research bilinguals have better selective attention which means they perform better on assignment tasks.  They can completely focus their attention on one specific area.  If that doesn’t sound intriguing…

Test yourself
If you are curious about finding out more about selective attention I would like to invite you to a self-experiment.  Click on this link (it takes 1 minute) and please do not continue reading until you are done watching the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahg6qcgoay4

Well, if you were not able to see the bear the first time it actually is a good thing.  It means that you have the ability for selective attention.  You were able to focus on one aspect only.  You might not have seen the bear but only speak one language. Maybe you should consider learning another language since you have high levels of selective attention already.

Good luck to all language learners.
Alles Liebe und toi toi toi.
Mareike

Popularity: 17% [?]