The world is changing every day. People from every place on the globe have an opportunity to come together through online communication and increasing international travel and business. Educators agree that understanding multiple languages should be considered a critical art of their curriculum.

Fluency in Spanish has become a marketable employment skill. The language continues to spread in commerce, entertainment, and daily social interactions. Beyond the global implications, however, bilingual education has a wealth of benefits to offer young learners.

It’s much easier to master spoken language in childhood. This becomes progressively more difficult with age. Younger children have more plasticity, or general flexibility for learning, in their developing brains than adults and even older children. Toddlers can best understand new patterns of sound and speech before they turn 3. Learning another language at a young age also lays a solid foundation for ongoing language learning. If a second language is mastered in childhood, it can make learning other languages significantly easier.

Studying language doesn’t just develop that one area but builds the whole brain to solve problems more effectively. Bilingual kids outscore their peers not just on the language portion of standardized tests but also some areas of math. Even when other students received more mathematics instruction, bilingual students were able to beat their scores.

Speaking another language is more than just an academic advantage. Kids who learn more than one language are generally more creative and may help their cognitive skills stay sharp when they age. There’s even some evidence to suggest that mastery of more than one language could delay the onset of Alzheimer’s. You can hear some of this creativity in speech when they’re first learning. Kids will naturally tend to mix words from the two languages together or switching grammar between languages. All of this is part of the learning process and should be met with gentle correction. Bilingual thinking has an interesting impact on art and language, as evidenced by such great authors like Sandra Cisneros or Junot Díaz. The blending of different tongues has the ability to connect different people and cultures in a tradition as old as humanity.

Pebblecreek Montessori emphasizes bilingual education with our innovative Touch Spanish program. We offer students of all ages the opportunity to master another language as part of their early education to maximize the intellectual benefit.

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