User:Rizbella/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Multilingualism

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article because I have always taken an interest in the topic of multilingualism and its cognitive benefits (in young children specifically). My preliminary impression was that the article was a thorough yet concise and comprehensive summary of what multilingualism is, including some of its implications and a lot of background information. This article matters because I think that early-age multilingualism is something that is often ignored and not incorporated into the typical American school system, despite all of its benefits. There are many myths surrounding it and having a reputable article to objectively describe it is important.

Evaluate the article
The lead section is very concise and gives the definition of what multilingualism is. If one were to seek out the definition of multilingualism and come across this article, they would be well informed of the general meaning just by reading the lead section, which I think would constitute a good lead section. The article is organized, easy to read and follows grammatical rules. The amount of images in the article is not too overwhelming as they are formatted neatly, and many of them actually contribute to understanding the subject or provide examples of what is mentioned. The captions are helpful in understanding what is pictured and its relevancy to the article's subject. The article seems balanced, as it covers just about as many different aspects about the subject that I can think of. For the most part, none of the different sections outshine the others too strongly, which I think also contributes to the balance. However, there are a few sections that would benefit from having more information, such as the "Economic Benefits" section. There is very little information in that section compared to many other sections.

The point of view is straightforward and objective. Much of the article references reputable scientific studies and statistics with functioning links. However, the "Cognitive Ability" section has a notification saying that additional citations are needed for verification, which would certainly improve the article's credibility since mostly all other sections have sufficient citations. The existing sources in the article are not all current, with the majority ranging within a 20 year span. There are a few that are outside that range, either very current or from more than 20 years ago. After doing some research I have found newer sources that could contribute to making this article more up to date.

The Talk Page for this article is not very active. Most of the discussion is about adding further information and additional citations in certain sections, such as the "Myths" and "Neuroscience" sections. There is also some conversation about changing formatting, merging certain sections or changing them. I also noticed that this article is a part of two Wikiprojects, Linguistics and Psychology. It is rated a C-Class article for both projects.

Overall, I think that this article has a strong, well-developed foundation with only minor weaknesses. More current sources, additional information, and more citations should be added in order to make the article even better.