Language Diversity in the Classroom - ymerleksi - home

236 Language Diversity in the Classroomadmitting that the definition of ‘perfection’ was a relative one. Weinreich(1953) simply defined bilingualism as the alternate use of two languages.In the same year, Haugen suggested that bilingualism began with theability to produce complete and meaningful utterances in the secondlanguage; this suggests that your Birmingham cousin is bilingual.Generally speaking, earlier definitions tended to restrict bilingualism toequal mastery of two languages, while later ones have allowed muchgreater variation in competence. But since this relaxation proves inpractice to be as unsatisfactory as an argument from perfection, mostmodern treatments acknowledge that any meaningful discussion mustbe attempted within a specific context, and for specific purposes.Further complicating the matter of degree, this question of wherebilingualism starts, is the fact that any line drawn must cross not just onegeneral language dimension, but many more specific threads of ability.Consider, first, that there are four basic language skills: listening,speaking, reading and writing. 1 Consider further the possible subdivisions:speaking skill, for example, includes what may be quite divergentlevels of expression in vocabulary, grammar and accent. Thus, there is asubstantial number of elements here, all of which figure in theassessment of bilingualism. It does not follow that strength in one meansstrength in another; thus, Baker (1988: 2) noted thata pupil may be able to understand spoken English and Welsh, speakEnglish fluently but Welsh only haltingly, read in Welsh with areading age of six and in English with a reading age of eight, writepoorly in English and not at all in Welsh. Is that pupil bilingual?In general, given both the basic skills, and their subdivisions, there are atleast 20 dimensions of language that might be assessed in order todetermine bilingual proficiency. While in many cases it is quite clearwhich language is dominant (at least within some given domain), arough reckoning may be quite inadequate if we wish, say, to comparegroups of bilingual individuals, or if we wish to study the relationshipbetween bilingualism and other personality traits.Many tests have been used to measure bilingualism; these includerating scales and tests of fluency, flexibility and dominance. The firstof these can involve interviews, language-usage measures and selfassessmentprocedures. In some ways, relying upon self-ratings has a lotto recommend it, but the strengths here rest upon the capacity of anindividual to be able to self-report accurately, a roughly equivalent senseacross individuals of what competence means, and a willingness to betruthful in response. None of these can be taken for granted. Indeed,