Bilingual competence and bilingual proficiency in child development by Norbert Francis (review)

Bilingualism is becoming increasingly important every day, a reality that is reflected in the fact that the majority of the world’s population speaks more than one language. Although some people decide to learn (or may be required to take in school) a non-native language later in life, many are fortunate enough to be brought up in a bilingual environment from birth where they may develop native competence in more than one language. The simultaneous development of two language systems and the competencies that work together to formulate these systems present a unique situation for research in bilingualism. In Bilingual competence and bilingual proficiency in child development, Norbert Francis takes this one step further by exploring some of the specific complexities that arise in bilingual literacy (when children use two languages for school learning tasks such as reading and writing). Also explored in the book are sociolinguistic issues, where Francis draws upon an ongoing study of bilingualism among youth in an indigenous language speaking community in Mexico. The inclusion and intersection of the socio- and cognitive approaches is one of the many strengths of this book.

To immediately resolve some past inconsistencies in the field, Francis defines and differentiates competence and proficiency, two variables that have been fuzzily defined, or even used interchangeably in previous work on bilingualism. The author refers to bilingual competence as the cognitive systems or knowledge structures that underlie bilingual proficiency. Bilingual proficiency is defined here as the ability to apply such competence, in one or both languages, for expression and comprehension. Using this distinction, Francis’ goal in his book is to investigate the competencies that underpin bilingual proficiency and how these competencies dynamically interact in the mind to help overcome linguistic challenges faced by bilingual children when performing tasks such as reading and writing at school.

Chapter 1 introduces two main threads that run throughout the book. The first is a theoretical exploration of aspects of bilingualism such as modularity, the poverty-of-stimulus problem, and how competence and proficiency differ from one another. A second thread consists of discussions on findings from a longitudinal study of literacy issues among bilingual children in a Nahuatl–Spanish speaking community in Mexico. Francis effectively paints a picture of how this unique bilingual community, and in particular how modularity and a componential view of bilingual proficiency, can provide insightful perspectives on bilingual literacy problems.

Chapter 2 continues along the lines of the introductory chapter by discussing the broader topic of bilingualism in schools. The chapter lays important groundwork for the rest of the book by looking at bilingual education policy globally and by drawing attention to the fact that this important research area could eventually lead to a better consensus regarding effective pedagogies, a notion to which Francis returns at the end of the book.

In chapter 3, Francis presents the study of academic language abilities in Nahuatl and Spanish among these bilingual children in Mexico. He does so by making some modifications to Cummins’ (2000) Common Underlying Proficiency model. The findings of the study in Mexico allow for a more explicit version which makes a strong case for a componential approach to bilingual proficiency. Of particular note is that, for Francis, the subcomponents of language proficiency are not language-bound and thus require their own domain.

Chapters 4 and 5 go beyond the confines of the Mexican project by drawing on in-depth analyses from componential and modular approaches. In these two chapters, Francis moves away from the study in Mexico, although he returns to it again later in the book. Based on these analyses and the findings from the study in Mexico, at the end of chapter 5 Francis develops a compelling bilingual version of Jackendoff’s (1997) Tripartite Parallel Architecture.

Chapter 6 continues to draw on previous work by discussing pertinent issues in bilingual development, namely the critical period, the extent to which there is access to universal grammar, and language attrition.

Francis suggests...