One of the questions that are frequently debated in primary education in Wales is the value of the Welsh language. From my personal experience as a welsh school student, I believe that being able to speak Welsh is a very valuable skill in this country as it can provide further opportunities for teaching and learning.
Reminiscing about my childhood in a Welsh speaking schools brings back a lot of fond memories and many life experiences which English speaking schools miss out on. These experiences could include visiting Llangrannog, Tan-y-Bwlch, participating in the National Eisteddfod across the county, vising Snowdonia National Park and so on. We could argue that English speaking schools could all do these things. They could, but the language barrier, especially in North Wales could be a challenge as on a few occasions when entering shops in North Wales, the employees would greet you in Welsh and sometimes, Welsh is the only language they speak.
In the Donaldson (2015) report, one of the values of the new Successful curriculum is that they want to ensure that their education system makes it possible for more learners of all ages to acquire a wider range of language skills in Welsh and that there is confidence and pride in Wales as a bilingual nation with the strength and assurance to nurture both languages. One of the goals for the curriculum include a Wales that is prosperous, resilient, healthier, and more equal, with cohesive communities, a vibrant culture and a thriving Welsh language (Donaldson, 2015).
A question we must consider for this topic is the value of bilingualism itself. Is there an advantage to it? Many studies have suggested that bilinguals have an advantage over monolinguals in executive control. Evidence for this claim has been obtained in studies with children (Bialystok & Martin, 2004), young adults (Costa, Hernández, & Sebastián-Gallés, 2008), and older adults (Gold, Kim, Johnson, Kryscio, & Smith, 2013) (de Bruin et al. 2015).
From my own personal experience of being bilingual, I believe that there are many benefits. In my everyday life, I use Welsh quite frequently, in the house, in placement, in university and in work. An example of this is on placement where the teacher needed help filming the year 5/6 pupils speaking welsh to send to the comprehensive school. The lack of understanding of the language was evident by the teacher as some of the sentence structures were not correct, therefore I helped her by going over their paragraphs and ensuring that their welsh was correct and helped them practice their paragraph before filming.
In broader terms, I believe that by being bilingual, I found it a lot easier to learn other foreign languages such as Spanish and French as the sentence patterns in foreign languages are the same as in the Welsh language. This made it easier to understand the other languages and how to structure sentences. This statement is supported by Bonfiglio (2017) who says that an amazing benefit of being bilingual is that you can learn additional languages more easily than monolinguals. If you have learned a second language already, then learning a third means transferring those skills over. Here’s a video that highlights some of the benefits of bilingualism.
The opposing argument is that many studies have shown that there is no advantage to speaking more than one language. De Bruin et al. (2015) argues that not all studies have found that bilinguals have an advantage over monolinguals. Some of these studies have been published (e.g., Gathercole et al., 2014; Paap & Greenberg, 2013), but we suspected that many other studies of this nature have not. Paap (2014) raised the concern that the literature on bilingualism and executive control might be affected by a confirmation bias to report positive results only.
In regards to the value of the Welsh language, I don’t believe many people in Wales value it as Harris (2013) says that the Welsh language is steadily declining and yet, the amount of Welsh-speaking schools are on the rise. This statement is interesting because when we think about other countries such as Spain for example, they learn Spanish because that is their native language and the vast majority of the country speaks Spanish. In Spain, they may learn English as it is one of the most used languages in the world. When we compare this to Wales, although Welsh is our native language, barely anybody is able to speak the language with approximately only 311,000 young people and adults speaking the language fluently (Statistics for Wales, 2015). The language is also not very versatile as Welsh is not a well-known language across the world, therefore it only holds it’s value in a confined area or country. This is supported by Harris (2013) who says that Welsh-speaking bilingual workers are immobile their advantage exists only in a small enclave.
There are many angles in this argument to consider while trying to come to a definitive answer. However I do believe that for the people who can speak welsh, we are at an advantage in our country regarding job prospects especially in primary education as schools across Wales are desperate for teachers who are bilingual since the Welsh language is compulsory in all schools across Wales. Also I believe that if more children are taught Welsh and use small amounts every day, this could have a positive impact on the amount of people that can speak the language. What are your thoughts on this topic?
References
Bialystok, E., & martin, M.M. (2004). Attention and inhibition in bilingual children: Evidence from the dimensional change card sort task. Developmental Science, 7, 325-339 cited in De Bruin et al. (2015) Cognitive Advantage in Bilingualism: An Example of Publication Bias? Psychological Science 26(1) 99-107 [Online] https://journals-sagepub-com.ezproxy.cardiffmet.ac.uk/doi/pdf/10.1177/0956797614557866(Accessed: 26, March 2019)
Bonfiglio, C (2017) 10 Amazing Benefits of Being Bilingual, Bilingual Kidspot [Online] https://bilingualkidspot.com/2017/05/23/benefits-of-being-bilingual/(Accessed: 26, March 2019)
Costa, A., Hernández, M., & Sebastián-Gallés, N. (2008) Bilingualism aids conflict resolution: Evidence from the ANT task. Cognition, 106, 59-86 cited in De Bruin et al. (2015) Cognitive Advantage in Bilingualism: An Example of Publication Bias? Psychological Science 26(1) 99-107 [Online] https://journals-sagepub-com.ezproxy.cardiffmet.ac.uk/doi/pdf/10.1177/0956797614557866(Accessed: 26, March 2019)
De Bruin et al. (2015) Cognitive Advantage in Bilingualism: An Example of Publication Bias? Psychological Science 26(1) 99-107 [Online] https://journals-sagepub-com.ezproxy.cardiffmet.ac.uk/doi/pdf/10.1177/0956797614557866(Accessed: 26, March 2019)
Donaldson, G. (2015) Successful Futures: Independent Review of Curriculum and Assessment Arrangements in Wales, Welsh Government: OGL
Gathercole, V. C., Thomas, E. M., Kennedy, I., Prys, C., Young, N., Viñas Guasch, N., . . . Jones, L. (2014). Does language dominance affect cognitive performance in bilinguals? Lifespan evidence from preschoolers through older adults on card sorting, Simon, and metalinguistic tasks. Frontiers in Psychology, 5(11). Retrieved from http://journal.frontiersin .org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00011/full cited in De Bruin et al. (2015) Cognitive Advantage in Bilingualism: An Example of Publication Bias? Psychological Science 26(1) 99-107 [Online] https://journals-sagepub-com.ezproxy.cardiffmet.ac.uk/doi/pdf/10.1177/0956797614557866(Accessed: 26, March 2019)
Gold, B. T., Kim, C., Johnson, N. F., Kryscio, R. J., & Smith, C. D. (2013). Lifelong bilingualism maintains neural efficiency for cognitive control in aging. The Journal of Neuroscience, 33, 387–396. cited in De Bruin et al. (2015) Cognitive Advantage in Bilingualism: An Example of Publication Bias? Psychological Science 26(1) 99-107 [Online] https://journals-sagepub-com.ezproxy.cardiffmet.ac.uk/doi/pdf/10.1177/0956797614557866(Accessed: 26, March 2019)
Harris, E (2013) Home Truths: the decline of the Welsh language, Open Democracy: London
Paap, K. R. (2014). The role of componential analysis, cate- gorical hypothesising, replicability and confirmation bias in testing for bilingual advantages in executive functioning. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 26, 242–255. doi:10.1080/ 20445911.2014.891597 cited in De Bruin et al. (2015) Cognitive Advantage in Bilingualism: An Example of Publication Bias? Psychological Science 26(1) 99-107 [Online] https://journals-sagepub-com.ezproxy.cardiffmet.ac.uk/doi/pdf/10.1177/0956797614557866(Accessed: 26, March 2019)
Paap, K. R., & Greenberg, Z. I. (2013). There is no coherent evidence for a bilingual advantage in executive processing. Cognitive Psychology, 66, 232–258. cited in De Bruin et al. (2015) Cognitive Advantage in Bilingualism: An Example of Publication Bias? Psychological Science 26(1) 99-107 [Online] https://journals-sagepub-com.ezproxy.cardiffmet.ac.uk/doi/pdf/10.1177/0956797614557866(Accessed: 26, March 2019)
Statistics for Wales (2015) National Survey for Wales 2013-14: Welsh language use survey, Welsh Government, OGL: Cardiff [Online] http://www.comisiynyddygymraeg.cymru/English/Publications%20List/20150129%20DG%20S%20Welsh%20Language%20Use%20Survey%202013-14%20-%20Main%20report.pdf(Accessed 26, March 2019)
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