The Threshold Hypothesis, Semilingualism, and Other Contributions to a Deficit View of Linguistic Minorities

Abstract

Although some educational researchers have appealed to “semilingualism” or “limited bilingualism” to explain differences in student achievement among language minority students, in this article the author argues that the construct contributes much more to the malady than the remedy in the education of linguistic minorities. The author reviews four kinds of reputed evidence for semilingualism (from studies of language variation, linguistic structure, school performances, and language loss) and concludes that all of it is either spurious or irrelevant. The author argues that semilingualism is essentially indistinguishable from classical prescriptivism and that Cummins’s Threshold Hypothesis, which incorporates the semilingualism thesis, should be abandoned on empirical, theoretical, and moral grounds. An alternative account of the descriptive facts Cummins sought to explain is presented, and implications for education are discussed.

Preparing Teachers of English Language Learners: Empirical Evidence and Policy Implications

“…One of the limitations with these assessments is that "they do not necessarily measure students' ability to use the language in real-life settings or for academic purposes" (García, McKoon, & August, 2008, p. 255). Some researchers have found these assessment practices to be more detrimental than helpful in promoting achievement among ELLs (MacSwan, 2000;MacSwan & Rolstad, 2006;Mahoney & MacSwan, 2005). MacSwan and Rolstad (2006), for example, presented native language proficiency rates of students assessed with various measures that were in stark contrast with the extant literature on language acquisition (p. 2320).…”

Code-Switching Patterns in the Writing-Related Talk of Young Emergent Bilinguals

“…Contrary to popular misconceptions based on deficit constructions of bilingual language practices, and bilingualism more generally (MacSwan, 2000), research demonstrates that code switching (a) is a sophisticated, rule-governed, and systematic communicative behavior used by linguistically competent bilinguals to achieve a variety of communicative goals (Gingràs, 1974;Pfaff, 1979;Timm, 1975); (b) is determined by a complex network of sociolinguistic variables and constrained by syntactic and sociolinguistic properties (Lipski, 1985;MacSwan, 2004;McClure, 1981;Poplack, 1980); and (c) increases in prevalence and complexity with more advanced bilingual development (Poplack, 1980;Toribio, 2001).…”

Early Language and Literacy Development Among Young English Language Learners: Preliminary Insights from a Longitudinal Study

“…Although the construct of CALP has been the topic of lively academic debate (MacSwan, 2000;Aukerman, 2007), at a macro level Cummins' framework provides a useful and accessible conceptual model for the acquisition of both first and second language, as well as for the pedagogical implications of providing shifting learning supports as language and cognition unfold (Coelho, 2008). Most practitioners are familiar with the premise that language and context are interrelated and develop along a continuum from less to more cognitively demanding tasks, and from high levels of contextual supports to low.…”