Bilingual effect on the focus and attention of children under Eight

Abstract EN

Bilingualism is a phenomenon that has significantly spread out in recent times for certain reasons like immigration, marriage of different nationalities, or residence for study abroad, and due to the fact that several Arab families are nowadays keen on sending their children to international schools in which they can acquire a second language, which is often English, besides their native language or mother tongue starting from the age of four years old.

These practices resulted in the emergence of new generations of bilingual children who represent the target of the present study so as to detect the differences in their attention and concentration between them and other children who deal in one language with a special emphasis on linking between dealing bilingually and the child's ability to use vocabulary of each language respectively in the right situation and to concentrate on dealing with the specificity of each language separately.

The present study has been applied to children under the age of 8 who deal both in Arabic and English.

The researcher was keen on the diversity of her study sample in terms of gender (male/female) as well as the diversity of children's age and location.

Also, the researcher was keen on focusing on a phenomenon with a special emphasis on attention and concentration as a basis to mental and cognitive processes, a foundation for learning process and a pillar for self-adjustment.

The present study adopted experimental method using appropriate statistical tools analyzing data and then processing them statistically.

The study revealed that there is a high ability of attention and concentration among bilingual children compared to their monolingual colleagues.

Therefore, the study recommended educators to diffuse the importance of bilingualism and to make available kindergartens as well as elementary schools that offer this service in coincidence with encouraging studies that focus on the development of mechanisms of concentration and perception as well as attention in this important age group.