I’m preparing a series of lessons for my Intermediate English students highlighting the advantages to being bilingual (I’ll share them here once they’re done). I think they’ll provide some good positive reinforcement. I thought readers might find it useful to see the few resources I’ve identified, and hope you can suggest others.

In a related issue,e very so often I’ll have a student who says they’re not very interested in learning English because they’re going back to Mexico as soon as possible. My usual response, which has been pretty effective, is that the student is likely to get a better-paying job there if he/she knows English, too. That position makes sense to me and, usually, to the student, who then tends to become more serious about learning English. I have gotten anecdotal evidence from English teachers in Mexico that this statement is true, but had never been able to find any concrete evidence to back it up.

Until recently.

The Guardian ran a story on research showing that knowing English increased your income by 25% in five countries in the developing world.

Mexico wasn’t one of the countries started, but just being able to show this kind of data to my students will be helpful.

Here are my choices for The Best Resources For Learning The Advantages To Being Bilingual:

The Wall Street Journal reports on new research that shows speaking a second language helps mitigate the consequences of dementia. Now, obviously teenagers have challenges thinking long-term. But sharing this kind of info certainly can’t hurt.

An article Education Week provides additional information on this research. It’s headlined Science Grows on Acquiring New Language.

Languages smarten up your brain is the title of a column in the Guardian Weekly. It’s a summary of a report detailing research results that show learning a second language contributes to improved problem-solving and decision-making abilities, among other advantages. The full report can be found here.

Voxy has produced a great infographic titled Why It Pays To Be Bilingual.

Being bilingual may delay Alzheimer’s and boost brain power is a very interesting article from The Guardian. Here’s a short excerpt:

Another study of bilingual people carried out by Judith Kroll, a psychologist at Penn State University, supported the idea that speaking more than one language keeps the brain in shape and bolsters mental function. She found that bilingual speakers could outperform single-language speakers in mental tasks such as editing out irrelevant information and focusing on important details. Bilinguals were also better at prioritising and multi-tasking, she said.

“We would probably refer to most of these cognitive advantages as multi-tasking,” said Kroll. “Bilinguals seem to be better at this type of perspective-taking.”

Juggling Languages Can Build Better Brains comes from Science Daily.

Bilingualism good for the brain, researchers say is from the Los Angeles Times.

How the Bilingual Brain Copes With Aging: As Brain Power Decreases, Older Adults Find New Ways to Compute Language is a report from The Science Daily.

The Bilingual Advantage is a great New York Times column about…the advantages of being bilingual.

Additional suggestions are welcome.

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You might also want to explore the over 600 other “The Best…” lists I’ve compiled.