It has been said that speaking more than one language not only helps you to communicate with more people and get better jobs but it also helps you to improve your cognitive skills. It can also help you to regulate emotions and prevent brain deterioration.
These are some of the benefits that bilingual people have:
• Speaking two languages can help people to regulate negative emotions. When bilingual people shift from one language to the other, they also change their perceptions about how they experiment those emotions. If you are immersed in a negative emotional state, speaking a foreign language will help you to feel better as you feel kind of detached from the emotion.
• Bilingual people can delay the onset of Alzheimer because when they shift from one language to the other, they are using more their brains and keeping them active. It seems that constantly controlling two languages is like a workout for the brain. It challenges our grey cells and keeps them from degenerating.
• Bilinguals have better working memory. Studies by York University showed the bilingual children outperformed monolingual children on a series of tests that challenge executive functions such as working memory. For example, bilingual children could better remember the sequence in which a series of items was presented.
• Researchers from a University in Chicago discovered that when people solve problems in a foreign language, they were more practical, and rational. Speaking another language helps us to see the problem from different perspectives and as a result be more objective. This is because a foreign language does not have an emotional baggage which is present in our native tongue.
So because of all of this, we can conclude that learning another language not only will help us to get better job opportunities but it also will help us to keep our brains active and functioning at a higher level.
