Prefrontal Cortexes

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Recommended: Effects of Bilingualism

One of the benefits of teaching children a second language is that their development and academic results will most likely flourish. Children are able to think more flexibly and more creatively because of their underdeveloped prefrontal cortex, the part in the brain where working memory is stored. According to Abdul Malik Muftau, “Due to the development of the prefrontal cortex, adults experience functional fixedness and that makes adults see everything exactly as it is.” (edlab). Children’s prefrontal cortexes allow them think creativity and learn new skills as long as they are surrounded by whatever said thing they want to learn. Because of this, when children are learning a new language, not only are they constantly exposed to it but develop …show more content…

An immersion school in Charlotte, North Carolina surrounds their students with French, German, and Japanese and do not teach English vocabulary, spelling or grammar until the third grade. It showed that “In 2001, 94% of the third graders and 100% of the fifth graders in that immersion school scored at or above grade level in reading in English. (Stewart)”, their percentages actually proving to be greater than the elementary schools that do not focus on foreign languages. Besides English, students who study foreign languages have been proven to excel more at other fields of education such as math, science, and social studies. Canadian researchers Turnbull, Lapkin, and Hart made a study of studying over 5,000 children’s tests scores who were in an immersion program throughout the province of Ontario, Canada. Concluding that the “test scores of immersion students were comparable to scores of students in the regular program. However, by Grade 6, test scores of immersion students in mathematics and writing surpassed those of students in the regular

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