Bilingual Competence and Bilingual Proficiency in Child Development

Appendix 2: Indices of Additive Bilingualism

Appendix 2: Indices of Additive Bilingualism Chapters 5 and 9 refer to apparent trends in how the children in the Mexican study used both languages they know and how they perceived the relationship between them. Some of the trends were barely noticeable, as in the case of the choices for revision/correction in their Nahuatl compositions; others were strikingly evident, observable immediately from visual inspection alone (e.g., the patterns of lexical borrowing when writing in each language). All, however, showed the same trend, in the same direction. This leads us to speculate that even in the domains of language interaction and language contact where the apparent tendency could not be shown to be statistically significant, it fell into line with the same course of bilingual development , typical perhaps for children in this particular community. These tendencies are summarized in table A.2. The overall trend can be characterized informally as a kind of additive bilingual development, perhaps restricted to the bilingual school and community that was the site of this investigation. In fact, recent informal observation in the neighboring indigenous town (in the state of Puebla) has suggested the beginnings of a gradual shift away from Nahuatl in neighboring localities in the immediate vicinity that is not as apparent in the community where the research project was located. Although Nahuatl is mainly restricted to symbolic recognition at school, children ’s linguistic competence in the language continues to develop, most visibly among children who are Spanish-dominant upon entering 1st grade. Sociolinguistic factors that can be suggested as possible explanations include (1) the continuing strong presence in the community of the indigenous language in all realms of social life, confirmed in the national census report of 2000 (INEGI 2000), conferring upon it broad utility among all age groups; and (2) the school’s positive disposition (symbolic though it may be) toward expressions of children’s bilingual identity, and its promotion of enrichment activities related to Nahuatl language and culture. What is interesting is that these conditions seem to be consistently reflected in performance on language assessment measures, controlled observations, and formal interviews among children and their parents (N. Francis 1997; N. Francis and Navarrete 290 Appendix 2 Gómez 2003), tendencies consistent with recent field observations by Nava Nava (2010). The right-hand column of table A.2 lists the language assessment, the inschool observation of language use, or interview conducted with each of the 45 child participants in the study. The left-hand column lists the tendency of results that support the characterization of additive bilingual development. The following sections of the appendix briefly describe each measure. Borrowing in Nahuatl Composition and in Nahuatl Oral Narrative As figure A.1 shows, total frequency of borrowing does not vary with grade level. Rather, the measure of interest is a decrease in the frequency of borrowing of Spanish content words among 4th and 6th graders. Borrowing of discourse connectors —“hasta” [as far as, up to, until], “por” [in order to, because of], “para” [in order to, so that], “pero” [but], “entonces” [then], and so on—actually increases, reflecting the widespread use of these loanwords from Spanish among all Nahuatl speakers, even older adults with little knowledge of Spanish. A similar overall trend and relation between content word and discourse connector borrowing was evidenced in children’s oral narratives. As table A.2 indicates, this apparent tendency Table A.2 Comparing younger and older children on measures of language proficiency, preference, and use Measure Tendency as children attain higher grade levels (4th and 6th) Borrowing in Nahuatl writing Lower frequency of borrowed Spanish content words Borrowing in Nahuatl oral narrative Lower frequency of borrowed Spanish content words Revision/Correction of borrowed items in Nahuatl compositions Successfully attempted corrections of Spanish borrowings in Nahuatl writing made only by 6th graders Bilingual Interview: Vocabulary Higher percentage of Nahuatl expressive vocabulary as a function of grade level Bilingual Interview: Language dominance Children with less than complete Nahuatl conversational fluency: 2nd grade—3, 4th grade—1, 6th grade—0 Observation of language use in conversation with peers Increasing preference for Nahuatl with grade level Sociolinguistic interview Indices of ethnolinguistic loyalty/preference for Nahuatl higher for 4th and 6th graders Indices of Additive Bilingualism 291 on the part of older students to begin to “avoid” Spanish borrowing of content words, replacing them with their Nahuatl counterparts, is consistent with...