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7 An Analysis of Academic Language Proficiency In this chapter, we leave behind the interesting debates on the strictly linguistic aspects of L1 and L2 development. In chapter 6, we focused primarily on the grammatical knowledge side of our theme of bilingual competence and bilingual proficiency : children’s competence in two languages, and how this linguistic competence may undergo changes that are sometimes surprising. Now we shift our attention back to proficiency—specifically, to the abilities related to academic uses of language , including the abilities required for reading and writing. To review chapter 6 briefly, some aspects of grammatical competence unfold spontaneously and without recourse to cognitive-general learning strategies: 1. Whatever “core linguistic knowledge” turns out to be in monolingual speakers and in 2L1 (simultaneous bilingual) development, a part of it at least emerges without deliberate learning and awareness. 2. Even though we are accepting for now that L2 learning does not proceed spontaneously and uniformly in the same way as L1 acquisition, we concluded provisionally that some components of the Language Acquisition Device (LAD), if not all, intervene in L2 development as well. The argument was that if replacing language development shares with typical L1 development the singular hallmark of completeness and uniformity, then the acquisition mechanisms of the Faculty of Language must have remained intact. Following the argument one step further, there is evidence to support the proposal from L2 research that poverty of stimulus is still a problem for the development of L2 grammatical competence. It’s still a problem even if the L2 has not taken on the status of a replacing language (i.e., if the learner’s L1 has not undergone attrition). This linguistic knowledge, in L1 or L2, is revealed more or less clearly in highly contextualized tasks related to conversational proficiency. Episodes and encounters from everyday life remind us of the poverty-of-stimulus problem. Shifting attention to command of grammatical patterns by L2 learners of English, we are repeatedly struck by the same phenomenon: accented speech betrays 178 Chapter 7 a bilingual competence—specifically, that L1 is probably, almost surely, still complete . Therefore, English is not a replacing language but a true L2. At the same time, we should wonder how it came to pass that some speakers’ knowledge of morphology and syntax is as close to complete as it is. Simply put, it isn’t likely that cognitive -general learning strategies plus positive transfer from L1 alone account for these observations, and many others like them. The purpose of this review of chapter 6 is to strike a contrast with the different kind of development we will observe in this chapter in the realm of academic language proficiency. This idea implies that some of the component knowledge structures of academic language proficiency are different in kind, in some important way, from those evidenced in conversational proficiency. One might be tempted to draw a line between the grammatical competencies (spontaneous in development and uniform in ultimate attainment) and the other kinds of competence and processing mechanism that are part of discourse ability. For example, grammatical competence would interface with certain discourse-related competencies in face-to-face conversational ability. Then, the same grammatical competence would be deployed by certain other discourse-related competencies (overlapping, surely, with the first set) for the purpose of performing academic language tasks. While this idea sounds like it’s on the right track, it is too simple. Complicating matters in another area of contention, L2 learning, we have found support for the idea that the core grammar of L2 systems, even with the participation of the LAD, might depend on cognitivegeneral processes of learning in a way that L1 acquisition does not. These complications notwithstanding, we will now focus on those underlying components of language proficiency that do not follow the deductive-like and universal development that the essential components of grammatical competence follow in early childhood. An interesting question in its own right is this: what is it that makes learning to read, developing advanced comprehension abilities, and developing skill in text construction different from uses of language that do not vary widely from one person to another? One way the two types of language ability may differ has to do with the overused but still meaningful notion of “naturalness” in language learning. We are also returning here to the topic of chapter 3, where we examined descriptions of bilingual children’s abilities...

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