Children's Language

We'll look now at a very interesting study . It was carried out by a researcher who works in two countries, Scotland and Italy, and it involved children from both of these countries aged around nine or so. Half of the children from each country spoke only their national language. However, the other half spoke their national language plus another language.During the study all the participants were given tests and quizzes which looked at a range of skills, including vocabulary understanding, problem-solving, creative thinking and arithmetic . The children used their national language to complete the tasks, which involved things like copying patterns of coloured blocks, orally repeating a series of numbers and giving clear definitions of words.The results were quite clear. The bilingual children were significantly more successful in the tasks.