This article is extremely helpful for IELTS candidates. If you are doing the IELTS preparation, you need to go through the benefits of bilingual IELTS reading answers.

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IELTS Reading Answers

Part One – Bilingual Language IELTS Reading

According to the latest figures, the majority of the world’s population is now bilingual or multilingual, having grown up speaking two or more languages. In the past, such children were considered to be at a disadvantage compared with their monolingual peers. Over the past few decades, however, technological advances have allowed researchers to look more deeply at how bilingualism interacts with and changes the cognitive and neurological systems, thereby identifying several clear benefits of being bilingual.

Part Two

Research shows that when a bilingual person uses one language, the other is active at the same time. When we hear a word, we don’t hear the entire word all at once: the sounds arrive in sequential order. Long before the word is finished, the brain’s language system begins to guess what that word might be. If you hear ‘can’, you will likely activate words like ‘candy’ and ‘candle’ as well, at least during the earlier stages of word recognition.

For bilingual people, this activation is not limited to a single language; auditory input activates corresponding words regardless of the language to which they belong. Some of the most compelling evidence for this phenomenon, called ‘language co-activation, comes from studying eye movements.

A Russian-English bilingual asked to ‘pick up a marker from a set of objects would look more at a stamp than someone who doesn’t know Russian, because the Russian word for ‘stamp’, mark, sounds like the English word he or she heard, ‘marker’. In cases like this, language co-activation occurs because what the listener hears could map onto words in either language.

Part Three

Having to deal with this persistent linguistic competition can result in difficulties, however. For instance, knowing more than one language can cause speakers to name pictures more slowly, and can increase ‘tip-of-the-tongue states when you can almost, but not quite, bring a word to mind.

As a result, the constant juggling of two languages creates a need to control how much a person accesses a language at any given time. For this reason, bilingual people often perform better on tasks that require conflict management. In the classic Stroop Task, people see a word and are asked to name the color of the word’s font. When the color and the word match (i., the word ‘red’ printed in red), people correctly name the color more quickly than when the color and the word don’t match (i., the word ‘red’ printed in blue).

This occurs because the word itself (‘red’) and its font color (blue) conflict. Bilingual people often excel at tasks such as this, which tap into the ability to ignore competing for perceptual information and focus on the relevant aspects of the input. Bilinguals are also better at switching between two tasks; for example, when bilinguals have to switch from categorizing objects by color (red or green) to categorizing them by shape (circle or triangle), they do so more quickly than monolingual people, reflecting better cognitive control when having to make rapid changes of strategy.

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Part Four

It also seems that the neurological roots of the bilingual advantage extend to brain areas more traditionally associated with sensory processing. When monolingual and bilingual adolescents listen to simple speech sounds without any intervening background noise, they show highly similar brain stem responses.

When researchers played the same sound to both groups in the presence of background noise, however, the bilingual listeners’ neural response is considerably larger, reflecting better encoding of the sound’s fundamental frequency, a feature of sound closely related to pitch perception.

Part Five

Such improvements in cognitive and sensory processing may help a bilingual person to process information in the environment, and help explain why bilingual adults acquire a third language better than monolingual adults who master a second language. This advantage may be rooted in the skill of focussing on information about the new language while reducing interference from the languages they already know.

Part Six

Research also indicates that bilingual experience may help to keep the cognitive mechanisms sharp by recruiting alternate brain networks to compensate for those that become damaged during aging.

Older bilinguals enjoy improved memory relative to monolingual people, which can lead to real-world health benefits. In a study of over 200 patients with Alzheimer’s disease, a degenerative brain disease, bilingual patients reported showing initial symptoms of the disease an average of five years later than monolingual patients.

In a follow-up study, researchers compared the brains of bilingual and monolingual patients matched on the severity of Alzheimer’s symptoms. Surprisingly, the bilinguals’ brains had more physical signs of disease than their monolingual counterparts, even though their outward behaviour and abilities were the same. If the brain is an engine, bilingualism may help it to go farther on the same amount of fuel.

Part Seven

Furthermore, the benefits associated with bilingual experience seem to start very early. In one study, researchers taught seven-month-old babies growing up in monolingual or bilingual homes that when they heard a tinkling sound, a puppet appeared on one side of a screen.

Halfway through the study, the puppet began appearing on the opposite side of the screen. In order to get a reward, the infants had to adjust the rule they’d learned; only the bilingual babies were able to successfully learn the new rule. This suggests that for very young children, as well as for older people, navigating a multilingual environment imparts advantages that transfer far beyond language.

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Questions Related to IELTS Reading Passage

Question Number One

Following are a few statements given from the passage above. You have to check the answers from the passage and write them correctly.

#1. The bilinguals’ brains had more ______________ of disease than their monolingual counterparts

Answer: physical signs

#2. Research indicates that bilingual experience may help to keep the _______________

Answer: cognitive mechanisms

#3. If the brain is an engine, _______________ may help it to go farther on the same amount of fuel.

Answer: bilingualism

#4. In a study of over 200 patients with Alzheimer’s disease, bilingual patients reported showing initial symptoms of the disease an average of ___________ later than monolingual patients.

Answer: five years

#5. When researchers played the same sound to both groups in the presence of background noise, the bilingual listeners’ _______________ is considerably larger.

Answer: neural response

Question Number Two

Look at the statements below and after reading them, write TRUE or FALSE in front of them.

TRUE – If the statement agrees with the information that is given above in the passage.

FALSE – If the statement disagrees with the information that is given above in the passage.

#1. Neurological roots of the bilingual advantage extend to brain areas more traditionally associated with sensory processing.

Answer: TRUE

#2. Older bilinguals enjoy improved memory relative to monolingual people.

Answer: TRUE

#3. Bilinguals are also better at switching between two tasks.

Answer: TRUE

#4. According to the latest figures, the majority of the world’s population is now bilingual.

Answer: TRUE

#5. Research shows that when a bilingual person uses one language, the other is active at the same time.

Answer: TRUE

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Conclusion

If you have checked the benefits of being a bilingual passage from this article, you can move ahead with your IELTS preparation to check out more content on the IELTS Ninja website.

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Shilpa

Shilpa is a professional web content writer and is in deep love with travelling. She completed her mass communication degree and is now dedicatedly playing with words to guide her readers to get the best for themselves. Developing educational content for UPSC, IELTS aspirants from breakthrough research work is her forte. Strongly driven by her zodiac sign Sagittarius, Shilpa loves to live her life on her own notes and completely agrees with the idea of ‘live and let live. Apart from writing and travelling, most of the time she can be seen in the avatar of 'hooman' mom to her pets and street dogs or else you can also catch her wearing the toque blanche and creating magic in the kitchen on weekends.

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