Literature / 40
academically beneficial form of bilingualism can be achieved only on the
basis of adequately developed Ll skills'. This thesis is based on:
- the 'developmental interdependence hypothesis' : the development of
competence in L2 is partially a function of the type of competence
already developed in Ll at the time when intensive exposure to L2
begins;
- the 'threshold hypothesis': those aspects of bilingualism which might
positively Influence cognitive growth are unlikely to come Into effect
until the child has attained a certain minimum level of competence in
the L2;
- and on the postulated
significant relationships between communicative activities in
different languages which make similar contextual and cognitive
demands on the Individual. (Cummins,1979:122>.
It is also necessary to distinguish between surface fluency and cognitive
uses of language in both Ll and L2, as at school the bilingual child must
function in cognitively demanding situations through the medium of a
language he has not mastered. Cummins's (1983) conceptualization of
language proficiency along two continua (from context-embedded to
context-reduced and from cognitively demanding to cognitively
undemanding), which led to the distinction between B.I.C.S. and C.A.L.P.,
(Cummins,1983ιll4l see page 34, bottom) has been revised by the author
after criticisms on a number of grounds (see debate in Rivera,1984).
Vhile the decontextuallzation dimension remains controversial also in
view of the the arguments presented in the above section, the less
explored cognitive demand dimension seems to me more interesting: it can
be linked on the one hand to Vygotsky's 'scientific concepts' and the
activity theory in Soviet Psychology (see 2.3; Leont'ev,1981; page 177),
and, on the other hand, to Information processing theories applied to
discourse comprehension. (Discourse is used here in the sense of
structures beyond the semantic level). With reference to the latter: in
processing information the reader∕listener makes use of two complementary
sets of data, l.e. what is available in the text as words, sentences etc.,