Final

Zamir Asliev

Dr. Benander

ENGL 1001

21 January 2018

What Is a Credible Source?

My topic for research report is “Benefits of multilingualism.” I chose this topic because I myself a multilingual and speak four languages fluently. I want to research about how knowing and speaking more than one language has positive impact in life? What kind of disadvantages it might have? Why is it good to be raised as a bilingual? Are bilinguals really smarter than monolinguals? Is it better if the schools made learning a second language one of the major subjects? Why most Americans are monolingual and why they do not want to learn another language? Why is it easy for bilinguals to learn a third language? I have written an essay about some benefits of multilingualism in the past. It was overly general essay and simply descriptive. However, now I would like to learn and research many more benefits or disadvantages of multilingualism in depth.

In order to back up my arguments I have to use reliable and credible sources. Therefore, I have found one reliable and relevant source for my topic which is “The Benefits of Multilingualism” written by Jared Diamond who is an American scientist. He was also known for his popular science books and have received numerous awards. He studied anthropology, ecology, geography and evolutionary biology. He wrote this article (my source) in a scholarly journal called “Science.” The article was published by American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) on October 15, 2010. AAAS was founded in 1848 and it was the world’s largest multidisciplinary scientific society with about 130,000 members. (www.aaas.org) The source being from an .org website makes it more trustworthy and reliable source. Additionally, it has relevant references to back up its claims stated in the article. There is no any advertisement or errors in punctuation, and it is correctly formatted. On the contrary, websites like .com or .net are mostly not reliable because they often try to attract you to buy their offering product with making the website as a credible site. I must find sources from popular and trusted websites, except Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a very popular website but anybody can edit the pages. However, it has references for its claims and we should pay attention to those references to check if they are relevant and prove the claims.

This article talks about the health benefits and some disadvantages of growing up as a monolingual or bilingual. For example, bilingual brain is more efficient than monolingual. However, growing up bilingual may cause a slow-down or delay in child’s speech. They often start to speak later than monolingual. No matter the delay of speech bilingualism has much more benefits in the later life. One of them is delaying incurable disease Alzheimer’s. You might ask, why is this so? The answer is that monolinguals do not use that specific part of the brain which bilinguals or multilinguals do on regular basis. In this case, when a person gets older unused part of the brain cells starts to degenerate and it causes memory loss, dementia and eventually Alzheimer’s. This is another reason I want to research this topic in depth. I would use this source to point out some of the benefits of being bilingual or multilingual in research project. However, when I was searching for sources I came across many articles that had even more benefits of multilingualism. Therefore, I want to know more and research about this topic. Also, I want to know what monolinguals can try to delay the disease or is there any other ways to help them feel better and happy?

During my search for a reliable and credible source I learned to avoid things such as, too much ads, many grammatical and punctuation errors, wrong format language and especially when the content of the article encourages you to buy their item or to be a member of their company. Basically, when they try to make you spend your money only for them and not anybody else.

An example of a source that I will never use will be “The Five Benefits of Being Multilingual in the Workplace” written by Marina Ivanova which I could not find the background information of the writer seemed suspicious and made me think that it would not a credible source. The only thing I could find the about the author was that she is a Russian actress when I searched in Google but I do not think that is her. Therefore, I could not determine that she has credentials for her article. The article has only one relevant reference so, this is another factor that it is not reliable. Also, it is from .tv website which is not very trustworthy site. Furthermore, the author talks about that bilinguals has an increased rate of getting hired but does not cite any source to back up her claim, and yet again it makes the article not credible. The website also allows user to comment on their postings, such as the one written by Ivanova. The website itself has four people running it and I could not find their background information whether they have the credential to prove the facts in the articles.

Lastly, reliable and credible sources are vital for backing up your claims about your topic. Therefore, you should pay attention that article you are going to use must have an author, the date should be recent and the websites ending .edu or .gov are very trustworthy. Because they are educational or government websites.

Work Cited

Diamond, Jared. "The Benefits of Multilingualism." Science, vol. 330, no. 6002, 15 Oct. 2010, pp. 332-333. EBSCOhost, doi:10.11261/science.1195067.

Ivanova, Marina. “The Five Benefits of Being Multilingual in the Workplace.” AdvisorTV, 29 March 2016. http://advisor.tv/post/the-five-benefits-of-being-multilingual-in-the-workplace. Accessed 22 January 2018.