The Bitter Fight Over the Benefits of Bilingualism

Re:The Bitter Fight Over the Benefits of Bilingualism by mikeash on Thursday February 11, 2016 @09:46AM (#11080381)

How many of those children pushed into learning a second language actually learn it to the point of fluency? In my experience, that number is nearly zero. For every student who attains fluency from school, there are dozens who don't.

I'm having a hard time figuring out exactly how they selected people in the various studies referenced in the article, but the lack of any reference to native versus non-native languages indicates to me that they're looking at people who speak multiple languages natively. Many of the referenced studies are about young children, who simply wouldn't have had time to learn a language to fluency in school.

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Re:The Bitter Fight Over the Benefits of Bilingualism by Grishnakh on Thursday February 11, 2016 @11:13AM (#11080999)

Does anyone ever achieve fluency in school? I seriously doubt it. I studied German for four years in high school, and I am most certainly not fluent. AFAICT, you really have to be immersed in the language for some time to become truly fluent in it. Studying it in a classroom with only one single fluent person (the teacher) to talk to is not going to do it.

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Re:The Bitter Fight Over the Benefits of Bilingualism by mikeash on Thursday February 11, 2016 @11:33AM (#11081152)

Probably not. Well-off people can better afford study-abroad programs and other such things which could potentially take you from a foundation learned in school to fluency, so that would still be a potential link. Still, the number of people who pull that off has to be small compared to those who just grow up in a bilingual (or just non-English-speaking) household.

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