Biculturalism: Benefits of Speaking the Dominant Language to Children's Development - Essay Sample

Bicultural Identity: Speaking the Dominant Language of the Child Benefit Their Development

Biculturalism is a typical surge across the globe due to the increase in international migration. In some cases, children experience acculturation due to biculturalism, especially where one of the cultural groups is dominant. Biculturalism can be a socio-cultural challenge to children when growing up, and therefore the need for parents to contextualize its development process. The existence of multiculturalism in many societies has appeared as a challenge towards various aspects of language development, speech styles, attitude, and speech styles. Besides, growing in different cultural and social issues affect the language development of children (Firmansyah, 2018). Despite the existence of biculturalism, parents play important roles in a child's physical, social, emotional, and intellectual development since they provide the primary environment within which a child begins to grow. Apart from the genetic characteristics that children inherit from parents, their growth is shaped by the interactions, parenting styles, beliefs, and resources provided as they grow. The family still occurs as the first learning environment and is capable of creating a strong foundation to shape the child's character after childhood. According to statistics, the variability of adult intelligence is acquired between birth and the age of 19 years, with 50% of the knowledge occurring before the age of four, 30% before the age of eight and the remaining 20% before the age of 19 years (Firmansyah, 2018). Among the various aspects, a child learns during adolescence include the nature of language development, development of oral communication, and the development of reading and writing. The event of a child's intelligence occurs before the end of adolescence, with everything becoming relatively stable at adulthood. Therefore, it is easy for parents to influence a child's speaking ability, especially if they live in a bicultural society. This paper aims at analyzing the bicultural identity of children, and how speaking the dominant language can benefit their development.

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Literature Review

According to Schwartz et al. (2019), biculturalism is a term that refers to any case in which an individual endorses at least one heritage culture and another receiving culture, respectively. As a result, there is acculturation with the individual forfeiting the cultural heritage and adopting the receiving culture (Schwartz et al., 2019). However, the two are independent, and therefore, an individual can acquire some aspects of their receiving-culture while still retaining some elements of their cultural heritage (Schwartz et al., 2019). Biculturalism is indicated to utilize the integration approach and is associated with various positive psychosocial outcomes in immigrant groups. Moreover, individuals in bicultural identities turn out to be dynamic, multifaced, and interrelated. As indicated in Erikson's conceptualization of identity development, analyzing the bicultural identity of children is a structural-organizational integration process that allows parents to make choices on goals, roles, and beliefs to be followed by their siblings (Schwartz et al., 2019). Besides, identity development allows children to recognize and affirm their cultural context in biculturalism.

To understand the relationship between cultural adaptation and child development, Huang et al. (2017), analyses a conceptual model that indicates cultural values as a fundamental goal of parents when rearing children. The aesthetic ideals of parents influence how they interact with their children, as well as how they interpret the behavior of their young ones. Parents provide the first socialization environment to children and, therefore, can transmit culture-specific values to them through the process of cultural socialization (Huang et al., 2017). Cultural socialization plays a vital role in the transmission of cultural values, attitudes, and behaviors to children. However, in bicultural societies, the level of acculturation and level of enculturation is affected, and this causes implications to parenting practices and the development of a child (Huang et al., 2017). For instance, the greater acculturation in Asian Americans (ASA) parents is due to the valuing of child independence. Likewise, the greater enculturation in the same culture is expected to more traditional childrearing values and attitudes. These practices have a foundation in the dominant cultural practices of ASAs parents and seem to construct a relation to developmental outcomes in preschool-aged ASA children.

Speaking the Dominant Language of the Child in Bicultural Identity

In America today, there are immigrants of Asian origin, and they continue to increase every year. Many people from the Asian region do not speak English and, therefore, are required to learn English when they settle in the United States. Also, their original cultural practices are different from those practiced in Western nations. It is such reasons that people from the Asian region, and living in America have embraced bilingualism and biculturalism. Although biculturalism seems to dominate in Asian-Americans, learning of the dominant language should be given the priority. Learning of the dominant language plays an essential role in the psychological growth of a child. Language learning is perceived as a critical factor in the construction of self-efficacy, self-esteem, self-confidence, and identity (Chen & Padilla, 2019). Therefore, the language used by individuals as a mother tongue connotes their cultural and linguistic identity, hence enhancing their psychological comfort, healthy development, and fulfillment.

Biculturalism and bilingualism are known to cause significant consequences on cognitive performance, especially in mental flexibility, conflict resolution, divergent, and creative thinking skills. The presence of biculturalism exposes children to a greater diversity of the same concept and also a diverse way of accessing and encoding knowledge (Chen & Padilla, 2019). Therefore, such individuals perceive biculturalism as somehow conflicting and incompatible. Learning the dominant language first assists in eliminating the confusion that occurs when encoding conflicting cultural information. Language is a vehicle of culture and can be used to shape creativity.

Similarly, learning the dominant language in biculturalism plays a role in understanding how a language works. Linguistic awareness is divided into categories such as pragmatic awareness, sematic, phonology, and syntactic (Chen & Padilla, 2019). An individual improves the abilities to engage in cognitive processes of thinking and the use of cultural language. As children speak their home language, they improve their capability to monitor and control their use of language. Moreover, it becomes increasingly easy to learn a second language, as there is a better grasp of how language functions (Chen & Padilla, 2019). Such an individual obtains a deeper understanding of the metalinguistic skills that different languages and the ability to switch linguistic codes.

Although parents should encourage their children to learn the dominant cultural language, embracing biculturalism has a positive impact on the child's development. The main advantage is realized in terms of social reinforcement and interaction. Culturalism provides children with a social effect that improves their ability to respect racial diversity and linguistics (Chen & Padilla, 2019). Besides, allowing children to be bilingual improves their level of explorative cognition, among them cognitive flexibility and divergent thinking skills, therefore improving their life satisfaction and self-esteem. Moreover, biculturalism allows children to gain a deep experience of the two languages and express greater cognitive flexibility (Chen & Padilla, 2019). This move allows them to gain a better understanding of the challenges associated with living in a multicultural context, therefore promoting their holistic psychological development. When a child has greater resilience and positive self-psychological perception, he or she becomes confident to explore socially and cognitively. On the contrary, such children could rather hold back due to concerns over social rejection and failure.

Learning both languages in biculturalism allows children to acquire positive coping responses. They learn how to detect and reorganize the daily cultural meanings of both cultural identities. A large percentage of such children also acquire social competence due to the dual cultural knowledge and the ability to respond to varying social contexts (Chen & Padilla, 2019). Children who identify with both cultures, home, and host cultures, have been indicated to demonstrate a higher level of creativity and professional success compared to those maintaining monoculturalism (Chen & Padilla, 2019). Therefore, learning languages from both cultures can be beneficial to bicultural youth, especially in their academic success.

Another benefit of encouraging bilingualism entails the ability to diverge the thinking abilities of children. Such children gain cognitive advantages compared to their monolingual peers, and this may contribute positively to their academic outcomes. In terms of biculturalism, bicultural children have a higher level of cognitive complexity when compared with their monocultural peers (Chen & Padilla, 2019). Although the presence of bicultural, may present conflicting and dissociated information to children, they, in most cases, make efforts to encode, detect, organize, and integrate bicultural meanings.

Although bilingualism and biculturalism may affect psychological growth, they sometimes contribute positively to the psychological well-being of children. Learning a second language besides the dominant language can be a powerful life experience to a new culture with its values and artistic expressions (Chen & Padilla, 2019). Children gain the capacity and experience to navigate across cultural and linguistic barriers, therefore experiencing psychological growth. Moreover, bilingualism may provide more positive outcomes such as hope and resilience to the children's well-being.

Conclusion

Biculturalism can be beneficial and also detrimental to the development and well-being of children living in a bicultural society. Between birth and the age of 19 years, parents play an important role in a child's physical, social, emotional, and intellectual development. They provide the primary environment within which a child grows. Therefore, teaching the dominant language to children facilitates easy communication and also eliminates confusion that occurs when encoding conflicting cultural information. Besides, language learning is perceived as a...