Bilingualism - Truths and Misconceptions

Join Britta and Jeff as they discuss bilingualism, an important subject in the world of language learning. What does it mean to be bilingual? What are some of the misconceptions about bilingualism? They also discuss the physiological, social and financial benefits of bilingualism!

Jeffrey Smale is a member of the teaching team at ACA, and since obtaining his CELTA teaching certificate has taught in Brazil and Quebec. He has learned some Russian, Bulgarian, German, Chinese, Portuguese and also French.

In preparing this episode, we used information from a number of sources:

Bilingualism and Multilingualism by Jean-Marc Dewaele

Statistics Canada Linguistic diversity and multilingualism in Canadian homes:https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/as-sa/98-200-x/2016010/98-200-x2016010-eng.cfm

CBC https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/census-wednesday-language-1.4231213

BBC:https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20160811-the-amazing-benefits-of-being-bilingual#:~:text=He's%20right.,language%20%E2%80%93%20South%20Africa%20has%2011.

Francois Grosjean: https://www.francoisgrosjean.ch/myths_en.html

Economic Advantages of Bilingualism (Canada): https://www.caslt.org/files/learn-languages/pch-bilingualism-lit-review-final-en.pdf

Psychology Today; https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/hide-and-seek/201807/beyond-words-the-benefits-being-bilingual

This week, Jeff recommends lyricstraining.com for a fun way to practice listening using music. Britta recommends trying a crossword puzzle to practice English vocabulary and general knowledge too! Here are some puzzles for different levels of English learner:

Beginner and intermediate crossword puzzles for language learners:

https://www.esolcourses.com/content/exercises/crosswords/crossword.html

http://iteslj.org/cw/

https://games.usatoday.com/games/easy-crossword/

Advanced crossword puzzles:

https://www.nytimes.com/crosswords

Come check out our website, at lesbonsmots.ca. You can see our language learning videos, and read our blog posts on news, culture and language learning. We will also have our episode transcript available there. We’d love to hear from you at [email protected].