Knowing
different languages has been always an asset. However in today's
world where everything seems to be more 'open', accessible and mixed
when we concern cultural issue, this ability is rather a requirement
that only an asset. That is why we start learning foreign languages
already in our kindergarten in order to associate it easier and make
it more natural. However, there are also examples of people who
were raised in the bilingual family where each parent origins the
different culture and thus speaks different language. So the question
is: Are they lucky or not to grow up in this multilinguistic milieu?
Most of the interviewees of this kind confess that in spite of some
struggles with linguistic confusion concerning different ways of
communicating with their parents or the anxiety of being rejected by
the school society as a mix-race child, the experience of being
brought up in a bilingual family has had rather positive impact on
them. They all distinguish the widen perspective of seeing the world
and dealing with other cultures but also the enormous opportunities
that they obtained in their professional career as the native
speakers in two languages. In this case the research also stresses the ability of
mind to become more flexible while learning two languages at once in
the more or less 'natural' linguistic environment what results in
associating other foreign languages more easily but also gaining more
fluency in communication.
So as
we see the myth saying that bilingual education only messes with
children's minds and influences negatively their proper development
has no rational foundations so that it can be easily rejected.
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