Potential Influence of Bilingualism on the Development of Abstract Thinking
When studying the effect of individual bilingualism on the academic achievements of bilingual students in mathematics, many researchers emphasize the potential difficulties they are experiencing. Currently, a large number of various researches are devoted to studying the possible cognitive advantages of students associated with bilingualism. This paper uses an alternative approach based on the hypothesis that bilingualism gives students an advantage when solving complex abstract mathematical problems. The results of a pedagogical experiment conducted among first-year students of the Institute of Philology and Intercultural Communication at Kazan (Volga) Federal University give grounds to consider this hypothesis to be correct. They prove the assumption that bilinguals can better understand the meaning of symbols than monolinguals. There is a clear advantage of bilingual students in performing complex symbolic mathematical tasks. This advantage may be due to the fact that bilingual participants have more developed abstract-symbolic thinking. The results of the pedagogical experiment can also be explained by group differences in operating control or in the socio-economic status of the participants. Consideration of alternative explanations for the results of the pedagogical experiment will be the subject of further research.