Positive Effects of Bilingualism: Divergent Thinking and Its Implications for Language Education

摘要

The issue of bilingualism has been widely explored in the past decades,showing that there are multiple positive effects of"additive bilingualism".Such positive factors are closely linked with children’s cognitive development and intelligence.This paper gives a detailed review on how bilingualism plays a role in children’s divergent thinking ability.Fully taking advantage of such positive effects in language education should be a significant part for bilingual education and foreign language programs.Thus,this paper further discusses the educational implications of these theoretic findings,suggesting that an additive bilingual environment should be cultivated through multiple ways of curriculum and program planning.