When it was revealed earlier this year that entries had fallen for GCSE modern foreign languages, many in education reacted with dismay.
Speaking to Tes, Ofqual adviser Professor Robert Coe said that languages were in a “vicious circle” of decline that could only be broken by a change in policy.
“Do we think it’s important for young people to have this opportunity and be encouraged or pressured to take that opportunity?” he asked.
The benefits of learning a language are well publicised. A quick internet search says it boosts problem-solving skills, verbal and spatial abilities, memory, creative thinking and performance on academic tests.
The wider public also sees learning a language as worthwhile. According to research from the British Council, published in 2020, 62 per cent of adults think learning a foreign language sharpens the mind and improves memory.
But is there any robust evidence to suggest learning a language improves cognitive skills?
Li Wei, a professor in applied linguistics and dean of UCL Institute of Education, says the research isn’t as extensive as many people believe.
In 2019, Wei, with Professor Bencie Woll from the faculty of brain sciences at University College London, published a paper, Cognitive Benefits of Language Learning: Broadening our perspectives, which found far more evidence for the link between the cognitive benefits of being bilingual, than evidence for the cognitive benefits of language learning.
The limited research that does exist tends to focus on children in different countries learning English. This, Wei says, is down to policy decisions by the government.
“The lack of research from the UK is partly because the teaching of modern foreign languages in this country has never been on top of the agenda, so the desire for research hasn’t been strong,” he says.
“However, it’s like the chicken and the egg; unless we can convince people this is going to be really beneficial, especially for children in disadvantaged circumstances, who are struggling with lots of things, it won’t become a priority.”
Despite the limited research, Wei says what does exist “suggests learning a language does improve cognitive skills, including problem solving, attention and various other skills.”
Cognitive benefits of language learning: the research
He highlights a few studies based in the UK.
The first, Does bilingualism influence cognitive aging?, was conducted by cognitive neuroscientist Thomas Bak and others at the University of Edinburgh in 2014. Around 853 monolingual people had their cognitive abilities tested in 1947, aged 11 years old, and then retested in 2008 and 2010, aged 70 and over.
The researchers found those who had learned languages at school performed significantly better than predicted, with the strongest effects on general intelligence and reading.
Another study by Bak, Novelty, Challenge, and Practice: The Impact of Intensive Language Learning on Attentional Functions, published in 2018, concluded learning a new language can improve attention and mental alertness after a week of study.
Researchers observed 33 participants, aged between 18 and 78, on a one-week Scottish Gaelic course, and compared them with those who were also completing one-week courses, but not specifically in a language, and those who weren’t completing a course at all.
At the start of the courses, there was no difference in attentional inhibition and switching. At the end, however, significant improvement in attention switching was observed in the language group across all ages. Half of the language participants were retested nine months after their course - and all those who practised Gaelic five hours or more per week improved from their baseline performance.
Another study, The influence of learning a second language in primary school on developing first language literacy skills, published by Victoria Murphy, a professor of applied linguistics at the University of Oxford, and others in 2015, looked at the impact foreign language instruction had on metalinguistic awareness.
English-speaking students in Year 3 were divided into three groups. The first group were taught Italian for one hour each week for 15 weeks, the second group were taught French for the same amount of time, and the third group didn’t receive any language teaching at all.
At the end of the 15 weeks, the researchers found the pupils who had been taught Italian and French outperformed their peers in English reading accuracy and different aspects of phonological processing.
They also found those who had learned Italian, outperformed the French and control groups on some measures, which the researchers suggested means features of Italian (its transparent mapping of sounds onto phonemes, for example) might have a particularly facilitative influence on developing literacy skills.
The report also highlights there are “many positive influences of foreign language learning on other aspects of educational attainment”.
Wei and Woll conducted a meta-analysis of primary studies testing foreign language learning with measured outcomes of creativity. Data from six studies, involving 502 participants, indicated a strong positive correlation between creative flexibility, fluency, originality and foreign language learning.
The report says there may be a few explanations for this, and highlights a study by Professor Richard Landry in 1974, which found fourth graders (Year 5 pupils) and sixth graders (Year 7 pupils) who had learned a second language at school performed better on measures of creativity than their monolingual counterparts. Landry concluded there was “the willingness and adaptability to change” in learning a language, which then facilitated creative development.
Other research links academic achievement and language learning, says Wei: students have found positive links to English language learning, literacy, and maths and science.
Overall, Wei and Woll concluded “that dual language learning is effective not only in promoting learners’ English language proficiency and literacy skills, but also brings about academic advantages in the core subjects, such as mathematics and science”.
Is more research needed?
Further research in this area is clearly necessary to support the small-scale studies - and Wei is currently working on a larger project, which he is hopeful will reach the same conclusions.
At the IOE, Wei and others are evaluating the benefits of the Mandarin Excellence Programme (a programme designed to help pupils in England learn Mandarin Chinese, starting in Year 7). The researchers are tracking 8,000 students, analysing their school achievements, and their intercultural learning. Of these, 200 to 300 will have their spatial visual processing skills and other cognitive skills examined.
The findings will be published in the next few years, but so far, Wei says anecdotal evidence is positive.
“School data shows the pupils who are learning Mandarin are doing really, really well in other school subjects. It’s convincing evidence. We’ve set up a number of experiments to really look at whether specific learning of Chinese characters impacts children’s spatial, visual or processing capacity, which obviously needs proper experimental evidence,” he says.
As the research in this area grows, as does the commitment from the government. Indeed, in January 2022, the Department for Education set a target for 90 per cent of Year 10 students to take a language at GCSE by 2024.
So, let’s return to our original question: does learning a language improve cognitive skills? Research is limited, but the handful of studies that exist show that, yes, it does.
