Do Infants Only Learn "One" Language Well? (4)

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Do Infants Only Learn "One" Language Well? (4)
Multilingual Education Does Lead to the Infant Development

The myth that one has first to speak well one’s native language before learning a second language is counteracted by the studies showing that children who master two languages understand the structure of each language better and apply them in a more conscious way.

Therefore, multilingualism helps foster other competences related to language. These positive effects are clearest when the second language is acquired early; a multilingual education Does NOT Lead to a delay in development.

Sometimes, very young children may confuse languages but unless there is a defect in acquisition (such as poor differentiation of sounds), this phenomenon later disappears.

Theories on bilingualism and multilingualism have been particularly based on cognitive theories. Future school programmes on language learning should rely on successful examples of teaching practices and be informed by research on the brain, current or future, on ages favourable to language learning (Sensitive Periods).

"Understanding the Brain", The Birth of a Learning Science, 2007, page 118

Do Infants Only Learn "One" Language Well? (3)

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Do Infants Only Learn "One" Language Well? (3)
“Knowledge Acquired in a Language Is NOT Accessible or Transferable to Another Language”

Recent studies have revealed overlapping language areas in the brain of people who have a strong command of more than one language. This point could be twisted in favour of the myth that the brain has only “limited space” in which to store information relating to language. Other studies on bilingual subjects have shown the activation of distinct areas of a few millimetres when they described what they did that day in their native language, then in the language learned much later (Kim, 1997).

The question of “language areas” in multilingual individuals has thus not yet been resolved. But from this lack of resolution, it is wrong to claim that the strong command of one’s native language is weakened when a second language is learned. Abundant cases of multilingual experts are living proof that this is not so. Students who learn a foreign language at school do not get weaker in their native language but instead advance in both.




“Knowledge acquired in a language is not accessible or transferable to another language” is another myth and one of the most counter-intuitive. Anyone who learns a difficult concept in one language – for example evolution – can understand it in another language. If there is incapacity to explain the concept in the second language, it is due to a lack of vocabulary not a decrease in knowledge.

Experiments have found that the more knowledge is acquired in different languages, the more it is stored in areas far away from the area reserved for language: it is not only preserved in the form of words but in other forms such as images. Multilingual individuals may no longer remember in what language they learned certain things – they may forget after a while if they read a particular article or saw a particular film, for example, in French, in German, or in English.

"Understanding the Brain", The Birth of a Learning Science, 2007, page 118

Do Infants Only Learn "One" Language Well? (2)

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Do Infants Only Learn "One" Language Well? (2)
Do Bilingual Children Develop Their “Intelligence” Less?

The myths arise from a combination of factors. Since language is important culturally and politically, these considerations colour numerous arguments, including brain research findings, to favour one “Official” language to the detriment of others.




Certain medical observations have played their part: cases of bi- or multilingual patients completely forgetting one language and not at all another after a head trauma helped foster the idea that languages occupied separate areas in the brain.



Studies conducted at the beginning of the 20th century, which found that bilingual individuals had inferior “intelligence”, were carried out with faulty methodologies, being based mainly on migrant children who were often undernourished and in difficult cultural and social conditions.

The protocols should have taken into account that many of these children had started learning the language of their host country around the age of 5, 6, or later, and, without a strong command of that language, they had problems learning other subjects. In short, we cannot meaningfully compare the intelligence of monolingual children from native, often well-off families with that of multilingual children from primarily underprivileged environments with limited family knowledge of the dominant language.

"Understanding the Brain", The Birth of a Learning Science, 2007, page 118

Do Infants Only Learn "One" Language Well? (1)

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Do Infants Only Learn "One" Language Well? (1)

Can A Young Child’s Brain Only Manage to Learn One Language at a Time?

Today, half the world population speaks at least two languages and multilingualism is generally considered an asset. Yet for long, many have believed that learning a new language is problematic for the native language.

Superstitions on this die hard and are often based on the false representation of language in the brain. One myth is that the more one learns a new language, the more one necessarily loses the other.

Another myth imagines two languages as occupying separate areas in the brain without contact points such that knowledge acquired in one language cannot be transferred to the other.




From these ideas, it has been supposed that the simultaneous learning of two languages during infancy would create a mixture of the two languages in the brain and slow down the development of the child. The false inference is that the native language had to be learned “correctly” before beginning another one.

"Understanding the Brain", The Birth of a Learning Science, 2007, page 118

Have We Two Brains? (5)

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“Is There One ‘Left-Brain’ & Another ‘Right-Brain’?” (5)
No, None Escientific Evidence Confirms That

No Scientific Evidence, indeed, indicates a correlation between the degree of creativity and the activity of the Right hemisphere. A recent analysis of 65 studies on Brain Imaging and the processing of emotions concludes that such processing cannot be associated Exclusively with the Right Hemisphere. Similarly, No Scientific Evidence Validates the idea that analysis and logic depend on the left hemisphere, or that the left hemisphere is the special seat for arithmetic or reading. Dehaene (1997) found that the two hemispheres are active when identifying Arab numerals (e.g. 1 or 2 or 5).






Other studies show that, when the components of reading processes are analysed (e.g. decoding written words or recognising sounds for the higher level processes, such as reading a text), Sub-systems of the Two Hemispheres Are Activated.





Even a capacity associated essentially with the right hemisphere – encoding spatial relationships – proves to be within the Competence of the two hemispheres; but in a different way in each case. The left hemisphere is more skilful at encoding “categorical” spatial relationships (e.g. high/low or right/left), while the right hemisphere is more skilful at encoding metric spatial relationships (i.e. continuous distances).





Brain Imaging has shown that even in these two specific cases, areas of both hemispheres are activated and working together. A more surprising finding, perhaps, is that the dominant hemisphere for language is not necessarily connected to right- or left-handedness, as had been thought. A widespread idea is that right-handed people have their language on the left and vice versa, but 5% of right-handed people have the main areas related to language in the right hemisphere and nearly a third of left-handed people have them located in the left hemisphere.








Based on the latest studies, therefore, scientists think that the hemispheres of the brain do not work separately but together for all cognitive tasks, even if there are functional asymmetries. As a highly integrated system, it is rare that one part of the brain works individually. There are some tasks – such as recognising faces and producing speech – that are dominated by a given hemisphere, but most require that the two hemispheres work at the same time.


This invalidates the “left brain” and “right brain” concepts. Even if they may have brought some benefit through supporting more diversified educational methods, classifying students or cultures according to a dominant brain hemisphere is highly dubious scientifically, potentially dangerous socially, and strongly questionable ethically. It is thus an important myth to avoid.

"Understanding the Brain", The Birth of a Learning Science, 2007, page 117