From Colin Baker's The Care and Education of Young Bilinguals:
Young bilinguals sometimes have an enhanced ability to focus on the important content and meaning of language, rather than its external structure or sound. For example, a bilingual child is taught a nursery rhyme. Rather than merely learning the words by rote and concentrating on the rhyme, some young bilingual children seem to focus more (compared with monolinguals) on the meaning and story. Does this mean that bilingual children are less bound by the words, focused more on the core meaning?
An illustration comes from Leopold's famous case study (1939-1949) of the German-English development of his daughter Hildegard. Hildegard accepted very early that a word itself and its meaning were loosely connected, there was no absolute or inevitable link between them. Words were just arbitrary labels given to an object or idea. The name was separate from the object or idea itself. Leopold found that his stories to Hildegard were not repeated word for word. Plenty of substitutions and adjustments were made to relay the central points of the story.
(pp. 70, 71)
In a further experiment, Ianco-Worrall (1972) asked the following types of question: 'Suppose you were making up names for things, could you call a cow "dog" or a dog "cow"?' Bilinguals mostly felt that names could be interchangeable. Monolinguals, in comparison, more often said that names for objects, such as cow and dog, could not be interchanged. For bilinguals, names and objects are separate. This seems to result from owning two languages, which give the bilingual child and adult awareness of the free, non-fixed relationship between objects and their labels.
(p. 71)
...
One of the strongest lines of recent research in bilingual psychology studies the apparent ability of bilinguals to reflect upon the nature and functions of language. Simply stated, it appears that bilinguals have a greater awareness of language. This concept is commonly called metalinguistic awareness.
Metalinguistic awareness is the ability to reflect upon and manipulate spoken and written language. Language is inspected and thought about as a system to understand and produce conversations, rather than simply used. Such language awareness may include reflection on the intended meaning, sensitivity to what is implied rather than stated, and an analytical attitude towards language.
Research indicates that bilinguals, accustomed to owning and processing two languages, are better at analyzing them (Bialystok, 1987, 1988). They seem more able to look inwardly on each language and accumulate knowledge about the language itself, better able to regulate, manage and control their language processing.
One important possible outcome of the bilingual's greater metalinguistic awareness at an early age is earlier reading acquisition. Because bilinguals daily process two languages, they may acquire reading readiness skills faster. When this occurs, earlier reading may also relate to higher levels of academic achievement in various areas of the curriculum.
Not all bilinguals will have such metalinguistic awareness advantages. A study by Galambos and Hakuta (1988) found that such awareness is most developed when both languages are proficient at reasonably high levels. The effect of bilingualism on the processing of errors in Spanish sentences was found to vary depending on the level of bilingualism. The more advanced a child was in development of both languages, the better the performance on the test items.
(pp. 71, 72)
Baker, Colin (2000) The Care and Education of Young Bilinguals: An Introduction for Professionals. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
