We tend to focus on the opportunity to gain fluency in a second language as one of the most amazing aspects of an Adolesco exchange (plus, it’s just. so. cool.). But there are hidden advantages to being exposed to multiple languages (and the people who speak them…). It’s not only about communicating in a new language: the multi-language experience itself is shown to significantly increase a child’s ability to understand things from the perspective of someone else – one of those ‘growth’ opportunities that are worth their weight in gold.

“…children who hear more than one language have, you know, incredibly rich social experiences that monolingual children don’t face. And so, you know, these kids do things, like they attend to who speaks which language to whom, when and where different languages are spoken, who understands what content and so forth.
So you know, I think of this as kind of this continued practice in taking the linguistic perspective of others. And so from that, I think that children are able to perspective-take more generally.”

Read more here: http://goo.gl/f73RBh