Bilingualism, an asset to future language acquisition?

Abstract: The purpose of this essay was to find out whether bilingual students
acquire an additional language more easily compared to monolingual
students. In order to find evidence of this a field study was carried out
focusing on the results of bilingal and monolingual students in National
tests in English. The field study indicated that the monolingual students
generally performed better in all parts of the test. The reason for this is
mainly because of the fact that the bilingual students' greatest difficulty
was spelling. The bilingual students did, however, outperform the
monolingual students in a section where they had to explain words in a
context by means of using other words. They also managed word ordering
better and never used 'Swenglish' expressions in their written productions.
It was therefore possible to draw the conclusion that bilingual students
have a better metalinguistic awareness, that is, a deeper concious awareness
about language and the use of language. No other significant differences
between these students were found.