Bilingual Competence and Bilingual Proficiency in Child Development

Abstract

A study of first and second language development in an indigenous community with implications for broader linguistic and cognitive issues. When two or more languages are part of a child's world, we are presented with a rich opportunity to learn something about language in general and about how the mind works. In this book, Norbert Francis examines the development of bilingual proficiency and the different kinds of competence that come together in making up its component parts. In particular, he explores problems of language ability when children use two languages for tasks related to schooling, especially in learning how to read and write. He considers both broader research issues and findings from an ongoing investigation of child bilingualism in an indigenous language–speaking community in Mexico. This special sociolinguistic context allows for a unique perspective on some of the central themes of bilingualism research today, including the distinction between competence and proficiency, modularity, and the Poverty of Stimulus problem. Francis proposes that competence (knowledge) should be considered as an integral component of proficiency (ability) rather than something separate and apart, arguing that this approach allows for a more inclusive assessment of research findings from diverse fields of study. The bilingual indigenous language project illustrates how the concepts of modularity and the competence-proficiency distinction in particular might be applied to problems of language learning and literacy. Few investigations of indigenous language and culture approach bilingual research problems from a cognitive science perspective. By suggesting connections to broader cognitive and linguistic issues, Francis points the way to further research along these lines.

Character reference in Greek-German bilingual children’s narratives

“…These are the age points at which story-telling moves from the pre-literacy narratives to literacy practices of primary school. Literacy development in bilingual children, however, is usually or predominantly in one of the two languages (Francis 2012). According to the dominance hypothesis (Yip and Matthews 2007), the input bilinguals receive is not balanced; thus, one of the two languages may develop faster or show greater complexity at a given age.…”

Teasing Apart the Effects of Dominance, Transfer, and Processing in Reference Production by German–Italian Bilingual Adolescents

“…All these studies start from the observation that bilinguals differentiate their two languages from early on (see, for example, De Houwer 1990;Francis 2011;Lanza 2000;Petitto and Kovelman 2003). Moreover, transfer from one language to the other is a hallmark of bilingualism throughout the lifespan (Döpke 2000;Montrul 2010;Sorace 2004).…”

Untitled

“…In addition to a GJT, an editing task was developed. Previous research has used editing tasks (ET) for examining L2 learners' ability to identify and correct errors (e.g., Francis, 2012;). To compare L2 learners' grammatical proficiency on the GJT with another task, it was decided to create an ET.…”