Being bilingual can help keep your brain in good condition

A silohuette of a side profile of a womans head inside her head space is a ocean sunset

Learning and understanding a new language is one of the most challenging things that your brain can do. But as well as the advantage of acquiring another language, it appears that the effort of giving your brain a good workout today by being bilingual could keep it in better condition in later life.

Research led by Dr. Daniela Perani, a professor of psychology at in Milan, found that people who speak two or more languages seem to weather the ravages of Alzheimer’s disease better compared to people who have only mastered one language. Alzheimer’s is a progressive mental deterioration that can begin in middle or old age due to generalized brain degeneration.

The study involved 85 people with Alzheimer’s – half of whom spoke both German and Italian and half who spoke only one language. The researchers found that bilingual patients had greater connectivity in key brain areas. This was especially in the part of the brain that governs “executive control” – a set of necessary behavioral cognitive processes that include problem-solving, working memory, reasoning and attentional control. The study also noted that the bilingual Alzheimer’s patients showed less severe symptoms of the disease.

The study concluded: “Our findings suggest that the effects of speaking two languages are more powerful than both age and education in providing a protection against cognitive decline.”

Bilingualism and the brain

Although Alzheimer’s disease is currently incurable, the study supports a popular theory that people who have higher levels of education function longer with little manifestation of the illness. Part of the reason why bilingual brains may be better at resisting Alzheimer’s could be due to a lifetime of switching between languages daily.

Learning and speaking more than one language changes how the brain carries out tasks that require focus and concentration on a certain piece of information without being distracted. It can also increase the density of white matter (connections) in the brain, meaning that there are more connections between brain parts, thus making this part of the brain more resistant to degeneration.

This is supported by a study conducted by a team led by Professor Ana Inés Ansaldo at the , which suggests that bilingual people have more robust and more efficient brains compared to those who only speak one language. This is one of the reasons why a bilingual brain can be a buffer against aging and dementia.

They recruited elderly people, half of whom spoke only one language and the other half who had learned a second language between the ages of 11 and 18. All performed equally well on a task that involved focusing on an object's color while ignoring its position, but brain scans revealed a big difference in how they processed the task.

“While bilinguals were recruiting very specific brain areas and a small number of areas to perform the task, monolinguals were recruiting a much larger number of areas that were consuming much more resources. And the networks they were using were very, very complex,” says Professor Ansaldo. “That led us to think that the bilingual brain was more efficient in terms of the amount of resources that bilingual people require to do complex tasks as opposed to the monolingual brain.”

The study concludes that bilingualism shapes the brain in a different way or how people approach complex tasks. It could be because bilinguals must inhibit the language they are not using to focus on the one that they are using.

Read our other blog post on about how language learning can help your mental health and wellbeing.

Learn more from our other blog posts

More blogs from app

  • A teacher stood at the front of a class holding a tablet in front of adult students

    9 steps to teaching advanced business English

    By Margaret O'Keeffe

    The challenge of teaching business English to C1 level students

    Once your English students reach a B2 level of English, they’re fairly competent communicators. For many learners, their motivation to improve starts to suffer when they reach this intermediate plateau. They understand almost everything and can express themselves clearly enough - so why would they want to continue learning English and achieve a C1 level of English?

    The CEFR describes C1-level learners as proficient users of a language. C1-level students have a high proficiency in English and perform well in an international work environment.

    How can we help our upper intermediate students reach this level and see the benefits in their own lives and careers? Here are nine steps you can take as an English language teacher to help your students achieve language proficiency.

  • A business woman in a suit sat at a laptop

    6 tips for teaching business English to low level learners

    By Margaret O'Keeffe

    The CEFR describes A1 and A2 learners as ‘basic users’ of a language. So how can we help these students to develop their English for the workplace?

    Here are our six top tips:

    1. Focus on high-frequency vocabulary for work

    Learning English vocabulary for work context is the top priority for many low-level learners in business English classes. It helps them to communicate their message in a simple, effective way. This makes it important to teach common words and set expressions for everyday work situations.

    These include:

    • lexical sets (words related to the same topic or situation) – for example, days, months, numbers, verbs to describe work routines, verbs in the past.
    • common collocations with verbs and nouns (for example, manage a team, have meetings, place an order, solve a problem).
    • functional language and fixed phrases – greetings (How are you? Nice to meet you.) and offers (How can I help you? Would you like…?).

    2. Help students with vocabulary learning

    Teach vocabulary items in realistic contexts. For example, phone calls, to-do lists, short emails, text messages etc.

    While it might be tempting to give students lots of vocabulary to memorize, this can cause overload, be frustrating and ultimately demotivating for learners. Instead, you should aim to present eight to ten new words in a lesson as a general rule. This is an achievable number for working memory and helps to build learners’ confidence. The number of words can be a little higher if items are easy to show in images or there is repetition; for instance, the numbers 20 to 100.

    Have students make simple decisions about new words, as this helps with recall later. Start with simple tasks, such as matching words and pictures or verb and noun collocations they’ve seen in a short text (for example, managing a team, call customers, writing emails, etc.). Next, ask students to complete sentences using the target words and write their own sentences using these words.

    Getting students to personalize new vocabulary makes it more memorable, for instance writing sentences describing their work routines. Repetition also aids long-term memory, so make sure vocabulary is recycled in the materials in later lessons.

    Finally, make a list of vocabulary games to use for revision exercises, warmers and to finish classes.

    3. Maximize student speaking time

    Learners need to develop their English-speaking skills for work. The classroom is a safe, low-stakes environment for them to gain fluency and confidence.

    Use the audio and video scripts of short dialogues or an extract from a longer script. Students read the dialogue aloud in pairs or groups. Give feedback by drilling the stress and rhythm of any words or phrases which were difficult with the whole class. Back-chaining phrases – starting with the last sound and building up going backwards – is an excellent way to drill. Get students to swap roles and repeat the task.

    You can also use another technique called disappearing dialogue. Put a short dialogue on the board for students to practice in pairs. Then delete parts of the dialogue and ask them to repeat the task, swapping roles each time. Gradually delete more parts to increase the challenge. Students can reconstruct the dialogue as a final task.

    Moreover, surveys, questionnaires, true/false games, and information-gap exercises are ways to practice speaking in English, target structures, and vocabulary.