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3 The Debate on the Nature of Bilingual Proficiency Distinguishing between Different Kinds of Language Ability The previous chapter provided some background on the school language policy debate. That discussion opens the way for us now to consider the problems of bilingualism and literacy learning in a concrete language contact situation similar to some of those that we examined from afar. Here, we will examine the findings from a comparative follow-up to the study that was described in chapter 1. The follow-up study focused on the two skill areas that receive the most attention in school: reading and writing. Four classes of bilingual 3rd and 5th graders were chosen from the same school in Mexico to confirm the tendencies that emerged among the 45 children in 2nd, 4th, and 6th grades in the previous phase of the study (see figure 1.2). Since the 2nd-, 4th-, and 6th-grade cohort had been selected to reflect an average to above-average achievement range, the idea was to see if similar patterns of performance in Spanish and Nahuatl would hold up with the 3rd and 5th graders if the entire student body at each grade level were evaluated. Like the 2nd, 4th, and 6th graders, the 3rd and 5th graders were instructed in all subjects exclusively or almost exclusively in Spanish. This presented us again with the unique opportunity to examine the application of literacy skills learned through one language to literacy tasks in another language that children understand, but in which they have not had the opportunity to practice these skills. Recall that in chapter 2 the discussion of bilingual instructional models centered on the closely related teaching objectives of effective L2 learning and development of academic-related language abilities. Implicit in this discussion is the problem of applying academic literacy skills learned through one language to school tasks that involve reading and writing in another language, a research problem that was not addressed directly. This is the question we will examine here. As we will see, the results offer a new vantage point on the idea of interdependence between the linguistic domains of L1 and L2. We will also look at the related concepts of Common Underlying Proficiency, Central Processing System, Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency, and transfer. The researchers wanted to explore which aspects of language proficiency may be more interdependent and which 50 Chapter 3 aspects may be more autonomous in the way they are represented and put to use in actual performance. For example, what precisely does “interdependence” mean? What are the conditions under which skills stored in a Common Underlying Proficiency can be accessed? In particular, how can they be accessed under special circumstances of language contact—for example, those that involve indigenous languages (ILs)? In the bilingual education literature, the term “transfer” appears to refer to a different kind of interaction between L1 and L2 than it does in the field of second language learning. In the first case, the focus appears to be on the use of shared resources. In the second, the interaction is between one grammatical subsystem and another. So, an attempt will be made in this discussion to find a common ground, at the level of terminology at least. This chapter will also present an initial overview of the concept of Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency, primarily to introduce the controversy surrounding its application to child bilingualism. Chapter 7 will examine its components in more detail. In field studies of language use, patterns of results often emerge and analyses produce findings that were predictable but interesting in some way; or neither hypothesized result turns out to be more predictable than the other. Sometimes results are unanticipated, and from time to time they are surprising— these are the most interesting. However, all results evoke broader discussions: about a theory in dispute, about how they might be related to a finding from another study, or about a practical application somewhere in the real world of language learners. In discussing implications and applications, the natural tendency is to go too far. Experts in each field who review and comment on research reports have the very important job of keeping this tendency under control. There are two options: 1. Authors can restrict the discussion of findings scrupulously to what the data allow for. 2. Same as #1 because anything else would be incoherent. However, after the authors have signaled clearly where the discussion of findings concludes, it...

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