Essay Networks

Introduction

The aim of this paper is to focus on the relationship of cognition, education and proficiency between first (L1) and second language (L2) in bilingual children. It will also evaluate the evidence related to the cognitive development, linguistic proficiency and education in bilingual children and describe this development and proficiency.

It has been acknowledged that learning a second language has a positive effect on intellectual growth. It enriches and enhances a child’s mental development; it leaves students with more flexibility in thinking, greater sensitivity to language, and a better ear for listening. It also improves a child’s understanding of his/her native language.

On the other hand, it gives a child the ability to communicate with people he or she would otherwise not have the chance to know. It opens the door to other cultures and helps a child understand and appreciate people from other countries and gives a student a head start in language requirements for later school years.

In the first article, the writer, Jim Cummins, argues that the cognitive factor has a central role in the speed and success with which the language is acquired. He also states that other individual factors, such as motivation, and conversational factors that determine the size and type of exposure to the second language, are also central to the acquisition process and interact with cognitive factors.

He further adds that the process of second-language acquisition can be clarified by differentiating between two dimensions of proficiency, namely, the attribute-based and input-based aspects of proficiency. The cognitive and personality variables are examples of attributes that influence proficiency in acquiring a second language. The input-based aspects of proficiency are related to the quality and quantity of L2 input acquired from the environment.

He further argues that the differences between the two dimensions may not be apparent at the beginning, but over time the influences of each dimension will become more apparent on the individual. He also supports the view that there should be a distinction between contextualised (conversational) and decontextualised (academic) language in order to understand the nature of children’s language and literacy development. Some examples of these distinctions are between communicative and analytic competence, utterance and text, conversation and composition. This view is also consistent with the view of another researcher, Biber (1986).

He applies one of the distinctions concerning the difference between individual and environmental sources of influence in acquiring language proficiency to the problem of how the first language influences the development of proficiency in the second language. He adds a further distinction between contextualized and decontextualised uses of a language.

The other articles also support the notion that learning a second language in childhood is associated with positive cognitive gains. It states that bilingualism in children is positively related to concept formation, classification, creativity and analogical reasoning. In addition, bilingual children demonstrate a refined awareness and control of the objective properties of language, commonly referred to as metalinguistic skills. More recently, Bialystok (1986) has shown that children’s bilingualism positively affects their increasing ability to solve problems involving high levels of control of linguistic processing.

The article by Cummins also states that a number of researchers have produced substantial empirical evidence in their studies for making this distinction with regard to second language acquisition. In this respect, an empirical study was carried out on immigrant students who are originally Finnish and living in Sweden. It consists of studies reported by Linde and Lofgren (1988).

The purpose was to assess the extent to which students’ acquisition of Swedish (L2) academic skills is related to their Finnish (L1) proficiency. A variety of tests in both languages were used; most assessed cognitive and academic abilities such as vocabulary knowledge, synonyms, antonyms, etc. as well as academic achievement in reading, math and other school subjects. The data can be summarized as follows:

Those who attended school in Finland (prior to immigration) approached the level of achievement of normal Swedish pupils in the written comprehension test considerably more often than those who began school in Sweden. Those who attended school in Finland for at least three years did best. The explanation for this can perhaps be found in their better skills in their mother tongue, which laid the bases for understanding a test written in Swedish. Two years in a Finnish class in Sweden did not, on the other hand, make for as good as a basis for learning Swedish as the corresponding time in Finland.

The studies carried out by Skutnabb-Kangas and Toukomaa (1976) in Olofstrom and Gothenburg were designed to find out the level of academic achievement among Finnish immigrant students in both Finnish and Swedish. The studies observed significant correlations for both samples between Finnish and Swedish verbal academic proficiency. Among the Olofstrom sample, the partial correlations (with length of residence held constant) between Finnish and Swedish for grades three to six students (N=165) ranged from 0.20 to 0.41. And for the grades seven to nine sample, five out of six partial correlations of Finnish with Swedish verbal academic skills were significant. A similar pattern of significant L1-L2 partial correlations was found for the Gothenburg sample.

Research has shown positive effects of bilingualism on the following metalinguistic abilities: early word distinction; sensitivity to language structure and detail; detection of ambiguities; correction of ungrammatical sentences and detection of language mixing and control of language processing.

However, an important question remains unresolved, that is no explanatory model of how or why bilingualism has such positive effects has yet been developed or tested. So far, it is not clear, for example, how bilinguals’ metalinguistic skills are related to advantages in cognitive abilities not directly related to language, such as classification or visual skills.

Another hypothesis put forward by Peal and Lambert (1962) stated that the possibility of switching linguistic codes while performing cognitive tasks gave bilingual children an added flexibility that monolingual children did not enjoy. This hypothesis gave rise to a popular concept regarding bilinguals’ cognitive advantages, namely, bilinguals’ cognitive flexibility. Even though some researchers have suggested caution in the interpretation of results on account of methodological shortcomings, the consistency of positive findings across different samples, measures, and research designs provides substantial support to the above hypotheses.

In another longitudinal study of the effects of bilingualism on cognitive ability, Hakuta (1987) made repeated observations of children’s language and cognitive abilities over a three-year period. The sample consisted of approximately 200 Puerto Rican children enrolled in bilingual-education programs, where both the first (Spanish) and second (English) languages were used substantially as media of instruction. At the beginning of the study, the youngest subjects attended kindergarten and at the end of the study, the oldest children attended sixth grade.

The most striking finding of Hakuta’s study is that bilingualism (defined as bilinguals’ ability in the second language controlling for relative ability in the first language) predicts substantial portions of the variance in cognitive ability for younger children in kindergarten and first grade while the effects decreases for the older children in grades four through six. In fact, no significant effects of bilingualism on cognitive abilities were found on children in grades five and six. For example, in first grade, degree of bilingualism explained 22 percent of the variance in test scores, while in fourth grade it predicted only 4 percent of the variance for the same test. The study, therefore, provided valuable data about the effects of bilingual education throughout the elementary-school years.

There can be two possible explanations, which account for the attenuation of effects. One explanation is that the effects of bilingualism are linked to age, and only in the early grades should we expect an interaction between the bilingual experience and the development of cognitive abilities. The other explanation for the decrease of positive effects is that the effects of bilingualism occur at the beginning stages of second-language and, therefore, after a certain threshold level of second-language proficiency, no additional cognitive variance is explained by increasing levels of bilingual proficiency.

In another study carried out by Diaz and Klinger, they stated that the positive effects of bilingualism were so clearly connected to low levels of second language proficiency that a new threshold hypothesis was formulated. This was in contrast to Cummins’ threshold hypothesis. Diaz suggested that only before a certain threshold of second-language ability, would bilingualism have a strong impact on cognitive ability.

It seems that the data suggests that the effects of bilingualism on cognitive development are most likely mediated through the processes and experiences associated with early phrases of second language learning in an additive context.

In a study of a sample of Mexican-American bilingual pre-school students, Diaz and Padilla (1985) reported positive effects of bilingualism on several age appropriate tasks of cognitive ability. A total of 32 pre-school students who attended Spanish-English bilingual pre-school programs in Texas, were videotaped while performing three different tasks: block designs, classification, and story-sequencing tasks. After brief instructions, children were asked to work on their own for a period of five minutes for each task. The effects of bilingualism on performance on the three tasks were analyzed in multiple-regression equations controlling for ability in the first language and months of preschool education. Children’s degree of bilingualism predicted significant portions of performance variance in both classification and story-sequencing tasks. The effects, however, did not meet the significance criterion for the block design task. Some interesting effects were also found on children’s private speech during the tasks.

In the article by Homel and Palij, they examine bilingualism and its relation with Cognitive development from three perspectives, namely: 1. Historical, 2. Examination of issues related to methodologies, and 3. The role theory has played in guiding research and what is expected to happen in the future.

The authors argue that in the past, bilingualism was viewed as a worry for the parents. It was believed that it caused confusion in children and it impedes their first language learning abilities. However, since that time a different picture has immerged, a picture, which is optimistic and supportive of bilingualism in childhood. The turning point took place, however, in 1992 with the publication of Peal and Lambert’s study of bilingual children in Montreal schools. Ironically, the original intention of the study was to document how bilingualism negatively affected intellectual performance so that appropriate solutions could be developed to solve the existing problems. But the result of the research was unexpected. Under a study of two groups, one monolingual and the other bilingual and after setting certain conditions and factors in place, the bilingual group performed significantly better than the monolingual group on most of the measures, including verbal intelligence.

With regard to methodologies, they state that the differences in the results between earlier studies and the results of Lamber and Peal (1962) and later researchers could be due to the quality of the methodology used. Also, to be taken into consideration are the variables and factors introduced in earlier researches which may have caused the poor performance results of bilinguals. Their analysis with regard to the above agrees to a large extent with that of Cummins, Diaz and Klinger.

Starting in the 1960′s and continuing into the 1990′s, some 12 dozen studies were conducted on the relationship between learning a second language early in life and cognitive ability. Robinson summarized many of them in one of his articles by concluding: “the picture that emerges is . . . a youngster whose experience with two language systems seems to have left him or her with a mental flexibility, a superiority in concept formation, and a more diversified set of mental abilities.” The studies also demonstrated that children who have studied a foreign language perform better on standardized tests and tests of basic skills in English, math and social studies. Data from the College Board’s 1992 edition of College Bound Senior in the United States revealed that students who had four or more years or foreign language scored higher on the verbal section of the School Test than those who had had four or more years in any other subject area. It is clear that the development of bilingualism is described by acquisition patterns both within the school context and outside the school.

Conclusion

Although the findings presented in this review may appear at times inconclusive, my assumption is that the data obtained holds an important key to our understanding of the cognitive abilities of both bilingual and monolingual children. The findings in this field are the result of investigations that vary in methodology and theoretical thinking. More research needs to be done in this area and the findings gathered so far need to be explained more if we are to understand the cognitive and linguistic functioning of bilingual children. In addition, even through more research is needed to answer the question of age effects in the relation between bilingualism and intelligence, the findings to date underscore the potential benefits of an early bilingualism experience.

References:

Cummins, J. (1991). Interdependence of first- and second-language proficiency in bilingual children. NY: Longman. In: Bialystock, E. Language Processing in bilingual children.

Diaz, R. M. and Klingler, C. (1991). Towards an explanatory model of the interaction between bilingualism and cognitive development. NY: Longman. In: Bialystock, E. Language Processing in bilingual children.

Malakoff, M. and Hakuta, K. (1991). Translation skill and metalinguistic awareness in bilinguals. NY: Longman. In: Bialystock, E. Language Processing in bilingual children.

Palij, M. and Homel, P. (1987) The relationship of Bilingualism to Cognitive Development: Historical, Methodological and Theoretical Considerations. New York University. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers. London. In: Homel, P., Palij, M., Aaroson, D. Childhood Bilingualism: Aspects of Linguistic, Cognitive, and Social Development.

Cooper, T. C. (1987). Foreign Language Study and SAT-Verbal Scores. The Modern Language Journal, 71/4, 381-397.

Robinson, D. W. (1992). The Cognitive, Academic and Attitudinal Benefits of Early Language Learning. In Met, M., ed. Critical Issues in Early Language Learning. White Plains, NY: Longman.