Bilingualism Matters carries out research and public engagement on the benefits of language learning. It is the basis of an international network.
In 2008 Professor Antonella Sorace founded the Bilingualism Matters (BM) programme to share her research findings with the wider public.
Sorace wanted to fight some common misconceptions about bilingualism, and instead focus on its benefits. In particular, Sorace wanted to address the myth that bilingualism is bad for children’s cognitive development.
BM’s purpose is to make current research on bilingualism more accessible, and help people make informed decisions about language learning. BM aims to reach a wide audience, including parents, educators, health professionals, and policy makers.
Multilingual families are more and more common in the UK and Europe thanks to increased mobility. Professor Sorace founded the Developmental Linguistics Group at the University of Edinburgh in 2001. Along with the arrival of several other researchers, this marked the start of an important development in research into multilingualism and bilingualism.
The Edinburgh approach
The University of Edinburgh is one of the few places globally that studies language-learning at all ages, as well as its effect on thought and mental skills across the lifespan. The Centre is based in the school of PPLS, bringing together research perspectives from linguistics, child development, and cognitive psychology to explore how language and thinking develops.
Bilingualism vs monolingualism
Researchers compared bilingual children and adults’ language-acquisition and mental flexibility with those of monolinguals – people who speak only one language. This meant researchers could learn about the effect of early bilingualism on children’s language. They found that, although bilinguals may have smaller vocabularies than monolinguals, this tends to equalise in older bilingual children. They also found that second-language learning can be more effective when it begins before the age of 4.
Researchers also found that people who start learning a language later in life show some of the same mental benefits as people who learnt multiple languages as young children – including Dr Thomas Bak’s work suggesting a delay in the onset of dementia symptoms.
