Janaina Weissheimer
Full Professor in the Department of Modern Foreign Languages – UFRN
Collaborator at the Brain Institute – UFRN
CNPq Researcher
Member of the National Science Network for Education – CpE Network
Ingrid Finger
Full Professor in the Department of Modern Languages – UFRGS
Coordinator of the Bilingualism and Cognition Laboratory – LABICO/UFRGS
CNPq Researcher
Member of the National Science Network for Education – CpE Network
Janaina Weissheimer
Full Professor in the Department of Modern Foreign Languages – UFRN
Collaborator at the Brain Institute – UFRN
CNPq Researcher
Member of the National Science Network for Education – CpE Network
Ingrid Finger
Full Professor in the Department of Modern Languages – UFRGS
Coordinator of the Bilingualism and Cognition Laboratory – LABICO/UFRGS
CNPq Researcher
Member of the National Science Network for Education – CpE Network
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2025 | N°. 3 | From literacy to cognition in aging, the benefits of bilingual education reinforce the need to offer it throughout the country’s education system
FOTO: ADOBESTOCK
You are participating in an academic event and eagerly awaiting la hora del cafecito. A student asks you about your favorite anime and manga. One of your favorite songs on your playlist is “Viva la Vida,” and you know the lyrics by heart. You go to the mall to eat a quesadilla and see two deaf Brazilian people chatting animatedly in LIBRAS (or Brazilian Sign Language, the official language of the deaf community in Brazil).
These everyday situations make us realize that we are surrounded by many languages. In fact, there are more than 7,000 languages coexisting in the world, more than 200 in Brazil , and many of us have two (or more) in our heads. This scenario invites us to ask: “Why isn’t bilingualism still part of the school curriculum for all our children?”
One of the reasons is the prejudice against linguistic minorities in our country. Many agree that learning English is important, but question the benefits of learning other languages that don’t enjoy the same prestige in society. Furthermore, bilingualism is a relatively new field of research and, therefore, still permeated by various uncertainties. We will try to clarify some of them here.
Who is bilingual, anyway?
It’s common for people to think that to be bilingual they need to be equally fluent in both languages, often with an advanced level of proficiency in both. In fact, fully balanced bilinguals, capable of performing equally well in both languages, don’t exist. Our languages develop dynamically, and we will always be more fluent in one language or the other, depending on how we use them or the context.
This is because proficiency depends on the quantity and quality of our interactions. In other words, a bilingual is simply someone who uses two or more languages for different purposes when interacting with different people around the world.
Bilinguals have accents
Can you recognize a gaucho (those born in the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul) or a carioca (those born in Rio de Janeiro) when they ask for directions on the street? A simple trip around our vast country is enough to reveal a wealth of distinct accents, isn’t it? This shows us that we all have some kind of accent, even if we only speak Portuguese. And what’s the problem with having an accent? None!
On the contrary, our accent is constructed from our lived experience in a given speech community and reflects our linguistic, social, and cultural identity. In other words, our accent expresses our subjectivity while also providing us with a sense of linguistic and geographic belonging. Therefore, we will always have some accent, even in our native language. So, the next time you find yourself worrying and struggling to hide your accent, remember this.
The earlier, the better?
It’s undeniable that children have a biologically prepared environment for learning, whether languages or anything else. But we can become bilingual at any point in life, even in adulthood. The human brain is plastic and molds itself based on our experiences.
Brains that experience rich learning experiences develop more and better—they learn how to learn—and this happens at any stage of life. It’s a fact that learning languages early improves our pronunciation; on the other hand, a more mature learner generally possesses greater metacognition and more effective communicative strategies.
Bilingualism goes far beyond English
Linguistic prejudice overshadows the wealth of opportunities we have to experience bilingualism in our daily lives, whether with languages from border regions, the bimodal bilingualism of sign language, languages brought by immigrants, languages preserved by indigenous peoples, etc. This linguistic diversity, so prevalent in our country, is addressed by the National Curricular Guidelines for the provision of Plurilingual Education, approved in 2020 by the National Council of Education and awaiting approval by the Ministry of Education. The document recognizes that offering an additional language in schools, whatever it may be, promotes the learning of the first language and can benefit both children’s linguistic and cognitive development.
How is bilingual schooling implemented in practice?
Bilingual education can happen anywhere, but bilingual schooling takes place specifically in schools. To achieve this, the most important thing is that the school as a whole embraces a bilingual culture, not just the “bilingual team” or the “bilingual teachers” who teach in the “bilingual building.”
Children must feel free, encouraged, and confident to communicate in any language they have in their repertoire, in any setting, and with anyone—at recess, in the cafeteria, on the playground—and not just in the classroom or with the language teacher.
Learning to read and write in two languages is possible and beneficial
Bilingualism positively affects literacy, as bilingual children build knowledge and develop skills using their entire linguistic repertoire. In other words, when bilingual children begin learning to read and write, they don’t learn to read in just one language; they automatically seek out relationships between languages, building hypotheses and establishing associations. This happens regardless of whether children learn to read and write first in their native language and then in the second language, or whether they learn to read and write in both languages simultaneously.
And how does bilingualism affect our aging process?
Imagine putting a little money into savings every month, throughout your life, to have a reserve for retirement. We can think similarly about the mental exercise a bilingual person performs, sometimes activating and sometimes inhibiting languages, as a way to build a cognitive reserve.
Consider that the bilingual brain can never “turn off” one of the languages. They are constantly activated, and this requires cognitive exercise to prevent them from becoming mixed up during use. It is precisely this constant exercise that utilizes a cognitive reserve that, among other benefits, can protect our brains from the cognitive decline we naturally experience as we age. In other words, bilingualism can offer us a longer functional life and even delay the cognitive symptoms associated with some neurodegenerative diseases.
The science of bilingualism has already clarified many questions. Considering all its benefits, it is clear that offering bilingual education to all children in public and private schools in the country is urgent and necessary. This will allow us to take an important step toward ensuring the quality education proposed by UNESCO’s 2030 Agenda, which includes reducing inequality between countries by promoting equitable and inclusive learning opportunities.
However, many challenges remain when it comes to implementing bilingualism into school routines. There is a shortage of adequate teaching materials, gaps in teacher training, a lack of a culture of bilingualism in the community, and uncertainty about the ideal workload, to name a few.
On the other hand, there are successful implementations of bilingualism in schools, including in the public system. Some examples are the municipality of Ibiporã, in Paraná, which offers bilingual Portuguese-English education to all children; the Maria Emília School in Sapiranga, Rio Grande do Sul, which became bilingual in 2023, and the Wazare Municipal Indigenous School, located in the Utiariti Indigenous Territory in Mato Grosso, which maintains the traditional Aruak language, its native language, in its curriculum and includes Portuguese as a second language.
What about you? How do you make bilingualism a reality at your school?
