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Bilingual ThinkingIn chapter 9, Baker claims that there is some evidence that bilinguals are more able to use language in creative thinking. He gives a very simple example - Welsh children can use the word ysgol (school) in Welsh and the equivalent word in English, school. But ysgol also means ladder in Welsh, so the child is able to bring in additional meaning. Presumably, the child can also use the other meanings of school in English - eg school of dolphins. This type of advantage which is most seen in bilinguals who are balanced, also appears in the idea of metalinguistic knowledge. This complex term simply means that the person is able to stand back from their own language use and can analyse it. This is often what is done in a Linguistics course. You probably have to do it in the Sign Linguistics course. Baker gives us examples of Leopold’s study of his bilingual child who was more likely to use meaning to remember nursery rhymes. An experiment on this by Ianco-Worrall (1972) suggested that bilinguals were able to make judgements based on meaning much earlier than monolingual children aged 4-6 years. This supports the idea that the bilingual child has a much stronger link to meaning and better ways of reaching the meaning store. Much of this research shows that bilinguals are better able to carry out this higher level of processing. But this only applies to those bilinguals who are well developed. They have to have reached a threshold. You will find more information on this in Baker chapter 8, p 166 onwards. The threshold idea suggests that children have to reach the top floor (see page 168, and also p 53 of Hamers & Blanc) to be able to use languages fully and to have good effects on thinking. The threshold idea is a picture of a house with three floors and it is usually applied to educational effects. So the child on the lowest level is not just at an early stage of learning languages but may have problems in cognition because he/she is unable to process the information which is received. This could mean that the person is understanding the individual words but is not able to put together the meaning. This stage should be passed through very early on and the child by the time he or she reaches school should be on the second floor. This is not yet bilingualism - it only means being competent in one language - though there may be some knowledge of the second language. This is the base for most children. Only if the child is on the next level do we see the positive effects.
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