Impact of Multilingualism on Children's Learning and Social Life

This article discusses the impacts of multilingualism on children's learning and social life. It explores how multilingualism affects brain development, mental capacity, language skills, and socialization. It also examines the challenges faced by local and foreign children in the classroom.

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Linguistic and Cultural Diversity
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Institution
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How multilingualism impacts the life of the children in learning.
Raising multi lingual children might be a big challenge to the parents who decide to
follow such directions. There are several impacts of multilingualism in the learning life of
children and they include the following: Bigger brain capacity. When children are exposed to
many languages, their brain density increases as they have to process the different languages in
their brains. The second impact is that the children are able to develop improved mental capacity
and health. Speaking two or more languages helps the kids to sifter some of the inappropriate
information and also assists them in problem solving. The third impact on learning is that
multilingualism enhances the skills of language in children. This equips the kids with different
vocabularies and they are able to speak out many words in different ways (Crowe and David
2014).
How multilingualism impacts the life of children outside learning.
Multilingualism develops the social life of children as it assists them in socializing with
others who do not speak their language. This gives them the chance to understand others from
different communities and they can easily make friends from other locations as they adapt to the
situations that they are not familiar with. Multilingualism also assists the children to have new
perceptions and the knowledge of other cultures. When children learn other languages they get to
study about other cultures that widens their perceptions and investigative skills (Diamond 2010).
How multilingualism impacts the life of a local child in class.
A local child may face several challenges in class when new languages are introduced to
the system because they are only used to their mother tongue. When such a child is exposed to
other languages, he or she may confuse the languages and use wrong words from the languages

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to communicate. It might take some time for the child to catch to with the new language through
the help of a teacher and frequent practice (Muller 2013).
How multilingualism impacts the life of a foreign child in class.
A foreign child may not experience much difficulties in class as compared to the local
child. This is because the child is already exposed to different kinds of languages and his brain
density is already expanded. So this type of a child will take only some short time in mastering
the new language. After that she will be able to communicate in the new language more fluent
than the local child in the classroom (Tucker 2011).

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References
Crowe, K., McLeod, G. and David, H. (2014). Speech, sign or multilingualism for children with
hearing loss: Quantitative insights into the caregivers decision making. Journal of Language,
Speech and Hearing services in Schools, 45 (3) pp. 234-247.
Diamond, J. (2010). The Benefits of Multilingualism. Journal of Science, 330 (6002), pp. 332-
333.
Muller, N. (2013). Vulnerable Domains in Multilingualism. John Benjamins Publishing.
Tucker, G. R. (2011). Bilingual education in the 21st century: a global perspective. Journal of
Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 32(1), pp. 99-100. Available at:
doi:10.1080/01434632.2010.515718

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