Cognitive Processes

Question: Discuss about theCognitive Processes. Answer: Introduction Learning a new language depends on various factors of the person and his character that help him to learn a new language. Bilingual people always have an edge over the monolingual person when it comes to learn a new language. Many factors determine the success of a person in learning a new language. Some of them are the internal factors such as the learners mind set; skills, memory and intelligence determine the learners success in grasping a new language. Language is preferably one of the complex skills that human can learn. Some external factors like; the learning environment, guidance, proper feedback and the skills learning ability of the learner has major affects on the success of the leaner in becoming expert in a new language. As the earlier study has suggested that, the bilingual persons are more capable in learning, a third language easily compared to the monolingual persons trying to learn a second language. Phonetic learning is a difficult task for the non-native learners as they find it complex than to learn the grammar or even the vocabulary. However, studies have shown that the bilingual persons have a little benefit in terms learning the phonetics of a language being from non-native background. In addition to this notion, the present study will try investigating the fact over the bilingual persons form various language backgrounds to understand the affects bilingual knowledge has in terms of phonetic learning. Literature Review In the earlier studies, it was preferred that the bilingual persons are more likely to adapt to a new third language far more conveniently than the monolinguals trying to learn a new second language. In the journal, The relation of bilingualism to intelligence, Psychological Monographs: general and applied, 76(27), by (Peal Lambert, 1962) an experiment was conducted among the bilingual and monolingual children to test their verbal and non-verbal abilities. The experiments did provide the fact that the children belonging to the bilingual group scored a higher score as compared to the monolingual children. It is thus evident that the bilinguals have a superior learning ability compared to the monolinguals in learning a new language. Other works have supported these facts at that time providing far more justification to the fact that the bilinguals have advantage over the monolinguals in learning a new language (Clyne, Hunt Isaakidis, 2004). Many other authors have provided support th rough their works in this aspect leading to the acceptance of the fact that the bilingual ability of a person provides him the advantage in terms of learning the new language is the other factors are controlled. In addition to this economic and social factors also influence the learning process of an individual. As discussed by Sanz, (2000) in his journal Bilingual education enhances third language acquisition: Evidence from Catalonia. Applied psycholinguistics, 21(01), 23-44. He promoted the thought that the socio economic and the demographic variables along with education if controlled it is seen that the bilingualism has advantage over the monolinguals in language learning. On the other hand, the recent studies in the field of the language learning have questioned that belief of the bilingual superiority. In the works of Duabeitia et al., (2014) in the journal The inhibitory advantage in bilingual children revisited. Experimental Psychology the various other factors responsible for the learning behaviour of the learner such as his intelligence, memory and other internal as well as external factors influence greatly the success of the learner. The superiority may hold true for the learner in terms of learning the new vocabularies and other aspects, but is very different when it comes to the phonetic learning of the new language (Huang et al. 2013). It is particularly difficult for the non-native learners to master the phonetic aspect of the language and have success in complete learning of the language. In addition to this the works of Gallardo del Puerto, (2007) it is observed that the difference between the bilinguals and the monolinguals are very marg inal in the vocabulary learning test. After reviewing the literature, it can be said that the bilingual has benefit in terms of the improved working memory and ability to learn the vocabulary more efficiently compared to the monolinguals (May, 2013). In addition to this if the learner has knowledge of different phonetics and other linguistic features of languages, he can learn a new language faster than a person knowing one language. This is helpful for the learner to have a better idea of the new language if the phonetic characters are closely related to the language known to him (Durgunoglu Verhoeven, 2013). Methodology In this study, new experiment is to be conducted to provide justification to the fact of bilinguals having superiority in language learning than the monolinguals. As the experiment had only three language groups, it would be better to have few more people from various other language backgrounds to support the fact or prove against it. Make necessary adjustments to the sample size to include more participants to take the test. It will be more effective to have a group of 10 people in the each control and test group form various age groups to support the experiment. Including people from contrasting language backgrounds such as Chinese-Spanish, or Hindi-Portuguese may provide for results that diverse to support the study and provide justification. In addition to this, the various other aspects of cognitive learning are to be considered to have better idea of the necessary factors that influence the bilingual advantage of the learners. Is the age or the language background or having an idea of various other language phonetics is necessary for the success of the learners in learning a new language (May, 2013). Furthermore, the bilingual and the multilingual is to be compared to present a better understanding of the affects of the knowledge one possess at the time of learning a new language (Abello-Contesse et al. 2013). The stages, to which a bilingual belongs is a major factor that affects the performance of the learner. Stages of the bilingual learner can be determined as: early, late and simultaneous. In the early stage, the learner is comparatively new to the second language and does not have full command over the language (Huang et al. 2013). However, in the late stage the learner is well versed in the new language and is confident with the second language. The simultaneous learner has knowledge of both the languages he learned and has developed confidence over period (Antoniou et al. 2015). All these stage will have different affect on the performance of the learner trying to learn a new language. Thus, the groups have to be divided accordingly so that each group consists of the learners from different stages and test their performance. Independent and Dependent Variables and the Hypothesises The experiment is to be conducted between two groups where one acts as a control group and the other as a test group. The control group consist of the learners who are well versed in the language the test group is asked to learn. The two independent variables will be the gender of the participants and the knowledge background of the participants. The dependent variables in the experiment will be the age of the participants, language knowledge multilingual or bilingual, and background of the participant in terms of his language and ethnicity. Hypothesis H1: Multilinguals perform better in the word identification test H2: People from background to the tested language will have higher performance, eg: a person with knowledge of English will learn Spanish faster as compared to a person from Hindi background H 3: People in the late stage of the bilingual learning will show better performance in learning new words as compared to people who are in the early stage of the bilingual learning. Reference list Abello-Contesse, C., Chandler, P. M., Lpez-Jimnez, M. D., Chacn-Beltrn, R. (Eds.). (2013). Bilingual and multilingual education in the 21st century: Building on experience (Vol. 94). Multilingual Matters. Antoniou, M., Liang, E., Ettlinger, M., Wong, P. C. (2015). The bilingual advantage in phonetic learning. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 18(04), 683-695. Clyne, M., Hunt, C. R., Isaakidis, T. (2004). Learning a community language as a third language. International Journal of Multilingualism, 1(1), 33-52. Duabeitia, J. A., Hernndez, J. A., Antn, E., Macizo, P., Estvez, A., Fuentes, L. J., Carreiras, M. (2014). The inhibitory advantage in bilingual children revisited. Experimental Psychology. Durgunoglu, A. Y., Verhoeven, L. (2013). Literacy development in a multilingual context: Cross-cultural perspectives. Routledge. Gallardo del Puerto, F. (2007). Is L3 phonological competence affected by the learner's level of bilingualism?. International Journal of Multilingualism, 4(1), 1-16. Huang, J. T., Li, J., Yu, D., Deng, L., Gong, Y. (2013). Cross-language knowledge transfer using multilingual deep neural network with shared hidden layers. In 2013 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (pp. 7304-7308). IEEE. May, S. (2013). The multilingual turn: Implications for SLA, TESOL, and bilingual education. Routledge. Peal, E., Lambert, W. E. (1962). The relation of bilingualism to intelligence. Psychological Monographs: general and applied, 76(27), 1. Sanz, C. (2000). Bilingual education enhances third language acquisition: Evidence from Catalonia. Applied psycholinguistics, 21(01), 23-44.