Linguistics Encyclopedia.pdf

A-Z 77
finding herself or himself in a situation in which more than one language needs to be
used, but who has not learnt either language formally as a foreign language. If formal
instruction in a foreign language has been received, the bilingual is known as a
secondary bilingual.
Finally, what one might refer to as a sociopsychological distinction may be drawn
between additive bilingualism, in the case of which the bilingual feels enriched socially
and cognitively by an additional language, and subtractive bilingualism, in the case of
which the bilingual feels that the second language is a cause of some loss with respect to
the first. The latter tends to be the case when there is tension between the cultures to
which the two languages belong (Lambert, 1974; Baetens Beardsmore, 1986, pp. 22–3).
BILINGUAL CHILDREN
A child may become bilingual for a number of reasons. The language of the home may
differ from that of the surrounding larger social group, or from that of the education
system of the country of residence, in which case the child can hardly avoid becoming
bilingual, and must succeed in the school language in order to benefit from the education
system. Opinions vary about the best way for schools to introduce the language of the
school to children whose home language differs from it, and the debate is typically
related to the wider issues of the rights and position of minority groups in multiethnic
societies (Tosi, 1982, p. 44).
Two main approaches predominate: (1) mother-tongue teaching, and (2) teaching in
the school language exclusively with other languages introduced only as subjects, not as
the media of instruction.
In mother-tongue teaching, children are first taught all their subjects in their mother
tongue. The school language will be introduced gradually, and may then either take over
completely, or both languages may continue to be used side by side. Only if both
languages continue to be used as media of instruction do such programmes fall within
Hamers and Blanc’s definition of a bilingual education programme as (1989, p. 189):
‘any system of school education in which, at a given moment in time and for a varying
amount of time, simultaneously or consecutively, instruction is planned and given in at
least two languages’.
The major argument in favour of mother-tongue teaching arises from research by
Skutnabb-Kangas and Toukomaa (1976) into Finnish migrant children’s levels of
achievement in Swedish schools. Skutnabb-Kangas and Toukomaa found that these
children underachieved in literacy skills in both Finnish and Swedish if they had migrated
earlier than the age often, whereas if migration had taken place after that age, the children
achieved normally, according to both Swedish and Finnish norms. This suggests that for
children who are not bilingual from birth, the mother tongue must be firmly established
before the second language is introduced; otherwise, the children’s competence in both
languages will suffer. It should also be borne in mind when considering the question of
mother-tongue teaching, that a child’s language is closely associated with its cultural
identity, and that it can be very disturbing for a child suddenly to have to switch to a new
language at the same time as s/he is being introduced to the new cultural norms which