Name: Khalani Shabana M.

Semester 3

Paper No: 12 E.L.T.

Unit 4

Year 2013-14

Submit M. K. B. University

IS BILINGUALISM A SKILL OR LIMITATION?

• What is bilingualism?

• ‘Bilingualism refers to the phenomenon of competence and communication in two languages.’ ~ Agnes Lam

• The ability to speak two languages

• The frequent use (as by a community) of two languages

• The political or institutional recognition of two languages (Merriam Webster Dictionary)

INTRODUCTION

• Do we compare bilingual competences with monolingual competences?

• People often compare monolingual person with bilingual person.

MONOLINGUAL COMPETENCES NORMS

• Is the bilingual better at one language than the other?

• If so then there is one dominant language and one non dominant language and by dominant language it is known as dominant bilingually.

• It simply means one language is dominating over the other language.

RELATIVE COMPETENCES IN TWO LANGUAGES

• There are some people who

can speak two languages but

their limitation is that they can

perform in Second language

in particular domains only.

• Such as home and office

• Can we call a person who has

got the mastery over a

particular domain of language

bilingual?

DOMAINS

• Can we divide linguistic components in smaller components? LSRW Skills

• Such as Reading and comprehension in one language is possible, but writing and speaking is possible only in one language. In certain circumstances it is known as receptive bilingualism(having the ability to understand both the languages).

COMPONENTS

• Bidialectal abilities ~ Bidialectalism

• The phenomenon where by

someone can communicate in

more than two dialects of the

same language. e.g.

Cantonese and Putonghua for

a Chinese speaker.

• Biscriptual competence is the

ability to read more than one script

of the same language. e.g.

Chinese language can be written

both in the new simplified by script

and traditional complex script.

BIDIALECTALISM AND BISCRIPTUAL ABILITIES

• The issue regarding definition is between bilingualism and multilingualism because bilingualism often includes multilingual contexts.

• Patterns of Multilingualism are similar with bilingualism. e.g. individual in a society could be dominant in dominant language and another non dominant language.

Bilingualism and

Multilingualism

• Linguists differ in the importance they accord to bilingualism.

• Disregarded bilingualism refers to monolingual speaker-hearer competence in the language.

• The ultimate issue is with the contact of languages ‘the ultimate locus of contact’.

• Psychological point of view of L1 and L2 Learners simultaneous and successive bilingualism.

CONCLUSION