In this edition of the Linguistica Recruitment blog, we’re bringing you a rundown of the latest bilingual job news stories you may have missed. We’re already one month into 2017 and it’s already shaping up to be a busy year in the world of bilingual recruitment, particularly with all the Brexit hoo-ha out there in the ether. So, we’ve scoured the worldwide web to keep you up to speed.
France to lure London finance workers to Paris
There has been much discussion about how Brexit will impact the capital’s thriving financial sector, with speculation that some of The City’s biggest banks could shift their operations abroad. French authorities are hoping to capitalise on this uncertainty by hosting a London roadshow to woo some of our best financial minds.
Germany is also on the charm offensive, with senior regulators meeting representatives from some of the world’s biggest banks to explain how they could move business to Europe’s biggest economy once Britain leaves the EU.
Beyond the financial sector, Paris has also been boosted by an influx of investment in its tech sector, which could lead to a number of opportunities for tech specialists with fluency in French. Facebook has recently chosen the French capital as the location for its first ever start-up incubator in a move which will attract tech entrepreneurs from all over the world.
Europe’s first bilingual English-Chinese school opens in London
Parents who want to ‘prepare their children for the new century’, and also have quite a bit of cash, can now send their little learners to Europe’s first English-Chinese school. Kensington Wade, a dual-language, independent prep school, is set to open next year and will teach children as young as one Chinese.
Students will be taught in both English and Chinese, with lessons split 50-50. Children will arrive at the school with different levels of Chinese language skills, but the school will not segregate pupils by ability. Instead, it will adopt a traditional Chinese approach that assumes everyone will achieve the same standard.
News of the school’s opening comes amid renewed emphasis from the UK government on the importance of Chinese as a second language to prepare future generations for the global jobs market.
Being bilingual could combat cognitive ageing
We’ve long known that being bilingual can benefit your brain in a number of different ways, from boosting your memory to improving your problem solving skills. But now new research from the Université de Montréal has found that bilingual brains are actually more efficient, and this increased efficiency could have benefits for our brains in later life.
The study tested groups of bilingual and monolingual senior citizens on how they performed certain tasks that involved focusing on visual information while having to avoid spatial information. The bilinguals showed higher connectivity between visual processing areas located at the back of the brain and used fewer regions of the brain to complete the task.
It is thought that after years of daily practice managing interference between two languages, bilinguals become experts at selecting relevant information and ignoring anything that can distract from a task. This efficiency of thought reduces the brain power being used and can slow the effects of cognitive ageing.
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