Bilingualism : an asset or liability on the cognition of six to nine year-old Lebanese children?

Abstract

his study compares the performance of six to nine-year old Arabic-English bilingual children from Lebanese private schools to that of their monolingual peers in the English language in the areas of semantic development, awareness of the arbitrary nature of word-referent relationship, divergent thinking, knowledge of grammatical structures, and logical reasoning. The purpose is to find out whether the bilinguals have been positively affected by their bilingualism. The exercises are taken from researchers who conducted their studies after 1960 and believe that bilingualism results in cognitive advantages as opposed to those before that period who conclude that bilingualism negatively affects cognition. Twenty eight bilinguals and thirteen monolinguals are chosen. The results show that bilinguals in Grades 1 and 2 outperform their peers in most of the areas tested, but the bilinguals of Grade 3 perform poorly while their monolingual peers achieve very good results. The conclusions reached are that as monolinguals mature, they become more proficient in their English language and demonstrate cognitive advantages while bilinguals do that at younger age. The third grade bilinguals are confused and exhibit disadvantages. the recommendation is to implement two additions to the curriculum of Grade 3 and to have the third grade bilingual teachers and parents monitor their learning to ensure firstly proper acquisition of vocabulary words in both languages and secondly a near native proficiency in both languages in order to receive cognitive advantages.