Republic of the Philippines

BATANGAS STATE UNIVERSITY

Gov. Pablo Borbon Campus I, Batangas City, Philippines 4200
COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
Tel. No. 980-0385 local 1125

Name: ESTRELLA H. PICCIO Date: March 06,2021

Course: LANG 606- BILINGUALISM AND BILINGUAL EDUCATION
PROFESSOR: BENEDICT O. MEDINA, PhD

ASSIGNMENT 03
REFLECTION:  COGNITIVE THEORIES OF BILINGUALISM AND THE
CURRICULUM

Bilingualism and bilingual education need to consider other

variables: cultural, social, political, community, teacher expectations,
and home factors. In this chapter, it was noted that initial research
into bilingualism and cognitive functioning and into bilingualism and
educational attainment often found bilinguals to be inferior to
monolinguals. This connects with a naive theory of bilingualism which
represents the two languages as existing together in balance. The
balance and balloon picture theories of bilingualism and cognition
appear to be held intuitively by many people. Many parents and
teachers, politicians and large sections of the public appear to
latently, subconsciously take the balloon picture as the one that best
represents bilingual functioning. Cummins (1980a) refers to this as
the Separate Underlying Proficiency Model of Bilingualism. This
model conceives of the two languages operating separately without
transfer and with a restricted amount of ‘room’ for languages. Initially
Cummins did not address these issues but has since revised his
theoretical framework (Baker 2011). Research has also suggested
that it is wrong to assume that the brain has only a limited amount of

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room for language skills, such that monolingualism is preferable.
There is another fallacy with the balance or balloon theory. The
assumption of the theory is that the first and second language are
kept apart in two ‘balloons’ inside the head. The evidence suggests
the opposite – that language attributes are not separated in the
cognitive system, but transfer readily and are interactive. For
example, when school lessons are through the medium of Spanish,
they do not solely feed a Spanish part of the brain. Or when other
lessons are in English, they do not only feed the English part of the
brain. Rather lessons learnt in one language can readily transfer into
the other language. Teaching a child to multiply numbers in Spanish
or use a dictionary in English easily transfers to multiplication or
dictionary use in the other language. A child does not have to be re-
taught to multiply numbers in English. A mathematical concept can be
easily and immediately used in English or Spanish if those languages
are sufficiently well developed. Such easy exchange leads to an
alternative idea called Common Underlying Proficiency (Cummins,
1980a, 1981a).

To sum it up, the researcher came up with these outlines that

when a person owns two or more languages they come from the
same central engine. Bilingualism and multilingualism are possible
because we have the capacity to store two or more languages.
Informational processing and educational attainment can be
developed through two languages. Language in the classroom needs
to be well developed to process cognitive challenges. Speaking,
listening, reading, and writing in L1 and L2 helps the whole cognitive
system to develop, but if children operate in an insufficiently
developed L2 the system will not function.When one or both
languages are not functioning fully cognitive functioning and
academic performance may be negatively affected.

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