The Benefits Of Being Bilingual — IELTS Reading Answers

“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”

The table gap names the behaviour researchers studied; the passage says evidence for language co-activation comes from studying eye movements.

“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’”

The gap names the phenomenon of both languages activating at once; the passage calls it language co-activation.

“In the classic Stroop Task, people see a word and are asked to name the colour of the word’s font”

The gap names the test where people name the colour of a word's font; the passage calls it the classic Stroop Task.

“bilingual people often perform better on tasks that require conflict management”

The gap names the ability bilinguals show an advantage in; the passage says they perform better on tasks requiring conflict management.

“they do so more quickly than monolingual people, reflecting better cognitive control when having to make rapid changes of strategy”

The gap names what faster switching reflects; the passage says bilinguals do it more quickly, reflecting better cognitive control.

Attitudes towards bilingualism have changed in recent years.

“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,”

The contrast between past disadvantage and recently identified clear benefits confirms that attitudes towards bilingualism have shifted.

Bilingual people are better than monolingual people at guessing correctly what words are before they are finished.

“Long before the word is finished, the brain’s language system begins to guess what that word might be”

The text says the language system begins guessing long before the word is finished, but never compares bilinguals with monolinguals on accuracy of guessing.

Bilingual people consistently name images faster than monolingual people.

“For instance, knowing more than one language can cause speakers to name pictures more slowly”

The passage says knowing more than one language can cause speakers to name pictures more slowly, contradicting the claim that they are consistently faster.

Bilingual people’s brains process single sounds more efficiently than monolingual people in all situations.

“When monolingual and bilingual adolescents listen to simple speech sounds without any intervening background noise, they show highly similar brain stem responses”

Without background noise the two groups show highly similar brain stem responses, so the bilingual advantage does not hold in all situations.

Fewer bilingual people than monolingual people suffer from brain disease in old age.

“bilingual patients reported showing initial symptoms of the disease an average of five years later than monolingual patients”

Bilingual patients showed symptoms five years later, but the passage never says fewer of them develop the disease, so the comparison is absent.

an example of how bilingual and monolingual people’s brains respond differently to a certain type of non-verbal auditory input

“When researchers play 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”

Paragraph D reports that in the presence of background noise the bilingual listeners' neural response is considerably larger, a non-verbal auditory difference.

a demonstration of how a bilingual upbringing has benefits even before we learn to speak

“only the bilingual babies were able to successfully learn the new rule”

Paragraph G's babies learning a new rule before they can speak demonstrates a benefit of bilingual upbringing prior to speech.

a description of the process by which people identify words that they hear

“When we hear a word, we don’t hear the entire word all at once: the sounds arrive in sequential order”

Paragraph B explains that we do not hear a word all at once, since sounds arrive in sequential order, which is the word-recognition process.

reference to some negative consequences of being bilingual

“Having to deal with this persistent linguistic competition can result in difficulties”

Paragraph C notes that dealing with persistent linguistic competition can result in difficulties, the negative consequence of bilingualism.