Bilingüismo

JIM CUMMIN'S INTERDEPENDENCE HYPOTHESIS 

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Towards the end of the 1970s, Jim Cummins formulated his Interdependence Hypothesis after having studied the possible causes of academic failure of immigrant students in the US and Canada. According to this theory, the rate of success in the acquisition of the L2 depends in part on the level to which the child had developed his or her L1 at the time when he or she started being exposed to the second language. Thus, a child whose L1 is developed to a “normal” level, according to the child’s age, will probably not experience any problems in learning the L2, and thus in his or her academic trajectory. However, if the child has, for example, a reduced vocabulary in comparison to what could be expected at his / her age in the first language, then it is quite likely that this child will struggle both in the development of the L2 and in school in general.

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Likewise, Jim Cummins explains in this theory that when the development of the two languages is normal, what the child learns in one language is available in the other too. Therefore, if a child learns how to tell the time in one language, he / she will also know how to do it in the other, only needing the appropriate language elements to express it.  If a child understands the concept of society in one language, he /she won’t have to learn it again in the other.