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Monoglottism (Greek language μόνος monos, "alone, solitary", + γλῶττα , "tongue, language") or, more commonly, monolingualism or unilingualism, is the condition of being able to speak only a single language, as opposed to multilingualism. In a different context, "unilingualism" may refer to a language policy which forced language an official or national language over others.
Being monolingual or unilingual is also said of a text, dictionary, or conversation written or conducted in only one language, and of an in which a single language is either used or officially recognized (in particular when being compared with bilingual or multilingual entities or in the presence of individuals speaking different languages). Note that mono glottism can only refer to lacking the ability to speak several languages. Multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population.G. Richard Tucker (1999) A Global Perspective on Bilingualism and Bilingual Education Carnegie Mellon University CALL Digest EDO-FL-99-04
Suzanne Romaine pointed out, in her 1995 book Bilingualism, that it would be weird to find a book titled Monolingualism. This statement reflects the traditional assumption that linguistic theories often take on: that monolingualism is the norm. Monolingualism is thus rarely the subject of scholarly publications, as it is viewed to be an unmarked or prototypical concept where it has the sense of being normal and multilingualism is the exception.
The assumption of normative monolingualism is also often the view of monolinguals who speak a world language, like the English language. David Crystal (1987) said that this assumption is adopted by many in Western society. One explanation is provided by Edwards, who in 2004 claimed that evidence of the "monolingual mindset" can be traced back to 19th century Europe, when the nation was rising and a dominant group had control, and European mindsets on language were carried forth to its colonies, further perpetuating the monolingual mindset. (2025). 9780631236139, Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 9780631236139
Another explanation is that the nations who speak the English language are both “the producers and beneficiaries of English as a world language” and the populations within these countries tend to be monolingual.
In letter fluency tasks, monolinguals in the study were also able to respond with more words to the letter cue than bilinguals, but such an effect was not seen in bilinguals with a high vocabulary score.
Also, monolinguals performed better than bilinguals on verbal fluency in the study. If the vocabulary abilities were made to be more comparable, however, many of the differences would disappear, indicating that vocabulary size may be a factor that moderated a person's performance in verbal fluency and naming tasks. The same study also found that bilinguals, in a version of the letter fluency task that placed more demand on executive control, performed better than monolinguals. Thus, once vocabulary abilities were controlled, bilinguals performed better on letter fluency possibilities by the enhanced frontal executive processes in the brain.
It is important to note here that bilinguals' overall vocabulary size in both languages combined was equivalent to monolinguals' in one language, even though monolinguals may excel in vocabulary size for the one language they speak. Bilinguals may have smaller vocabularies in each individual language, but when their vocabularies were combined, the content size was approximately similar to that of the monolingual. Monolingual children demonstrated larger vocabulary scored than their bilingual peers, but bilingual children's vocabulary scores still increased with age, just like the monolingual children's vocabulary scores (Core et al., 2011). Despite a variation in vocabulary scores, there was absolutely no difference between monolingual and bilingual children in terms of total vocabulary size and total vocabulary gains (Core et al., 2011). Bilingual children and monolingual children have the same vocabulary size and gain the same vocabulary knowledge.
It is believed that bilingualism contributes to cognitive reserve by preventing effects of cognitive delay and prolonging the onset of sicknesses such as dementia. Cognitive reserve refers to the idea that engaging in stimulating physical or mental activity maintains cognitive functioning (Bialystok et al., 2012). In that case, knowing more than one language is similar to stimulating mental activity. To test whether or not bilingualism contributes to cognitive reserve, Bialystok et al. (2012) looked at hospital records among monolingual and bilingual adults who have dementia. The researchers found that elderly bilingual adults were diagnosed with dementia about three to four years later than elderly monolingual adults. The results have been replicated and validated, with outside factors being controlled. In fact, outside factors such as socioeconomic status and cultural differences always helped monolinguals, making the argument the bilingualism contributes to cognitive reserve even stronger (Bialystok et al., 2012). That finding enhances the fact that bilinguals are at an advantage because of their ability to speak two languages, not because of outside factors. A probable explanation for this phenomenon is that knowledge of multiple languages keeps the brain alert and therefore more mentally aware for a longer period of time.
However, evidence from a research study shows that bilinguals have a faster reaction time in most working memory tasks. While a lot of research asserts that monolingual children outperform bilingual children, other research asserts the opposite. Research by Bialystok et al., as reported by Kapa and Colombo (2013, p. 233) shows that bilingual individuals perform better than monolingual individuals on a wide variety of cognitive tests, thus demonstrating cognitive control advantages. Two different concepts, attentional inhibition and attentional monitoring, are used to measure attentional control. In terms of attentional control, early bilingual learners showed the greatest advantage, compared to monolingual speakers and late bilingual speakers. In terms of overall performance on ATN, the three groups performed equally, but when age and verbal ability variables were controlled, there was a difference in reaction time. The early bilingual children's reaction time was tremendously faster than the monolingual children, and only slightly faster than the late bilingual children (Kapa & Colombo, 2013). Early bilingual learners showed that they simply responded most efficiently to the task at hand. The results from this study demonstrate the advantages bilingual children have with attentional control. This is likely because bilingual children are used to balancing more than one language at time, and are therefore used to focusing on which language is necessary at a certain time. By constantly being aware of what language to use and being able to successfully switch between languages, it makes sense that bilingual children would be better at directing and focusing their attention.
Results show that in the child's early stage, multilingual kids are very different from one another in their language and cognitive skills development, and also when compared to monolingual children. When compared to monolinguals, multilingual children are slower in building up their vocabulary in every language. However, their metalinguistic development allowed them to understand better the structure of the language. They also performed better in non-verbal control tests. A non-verbal control test refers to the ability to focus and then able to divert their attention when being instructed to.
Others have disagreed with Summers' view. A week later, The New York Times hosted a discussion among six panelists, all of whom were for learning foreign languages and cited the benefits and advantages and the changing global landscape.
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