The relationship between bilingual proficiency and self-esteem

Proposing that bilingual proficiency should produce a more favorable attitude toward bilingualism and should enhance one's self-esteem, the authors compared 57 bilingual and 67 unilingual students from grades 9, 10, and 11, measuring their opinions about bilingualism and their self-esteem. The bilingual students are substantially more favorably disposed toward bilingualism than the unilingual students are. On the Janis-Field scale of self-esteem, the bilingual students show greater self-esteem than the unilingual students. The largest differences between the groups are on questions that measure self-confidence and social ease; differences are less pronounced on questions about self-worth and about shyness. We speculate that bilingual proficiency offers some psychological advantages to students who achieve it.