How Languages Build Brains:

• Second-language learning in a school context has a positive impact on the development of general cognitive skills of learners.
• Learning a second language is helpful to learners’ language development, which, in turn may help learners to learn other languages more quickly.
• Speaking more than one language might enhance bilinguals’ focus and ability to ignore irrelevant information.
• Bilinguals outperform monolinguals on many cognitive tasks including solving problems, multitasking, remembering longer lists of information and switching between tasks.
• Speaking more than one language helps to compensate for cognitive disadvantages that result from aging, epilepsy and low socioeconomic status.

The above statements come from the Literature Review on the Impact of Second-Language Learning (2017).

Read Why Learn Languages? Languages Build Brains – a short summary of the benefits of learning a second language.

Read research-based articles on how language learning builds better brains:

• Canadian Institutes of Health Research: The bilingual advantage: A lifetime of cognitive benefits revealed
• Encyclopedia on Early Childhood Development: Second-Language Acquisition and Bilingualism at an Early Age and the Impact on Early Cognitive Development
• World Economic Forum: The best time to learn a new language? You've missed your chance
• World Economic Forum: Being bilingual alters your brain. Here's how
• York University: Study finds all bilingualism gives kids an advantage
• Mosaic: Why being bilingual helps keep your brain fit