Latin American Students and Language Learning in Catalonia: What does the Linguistic Interdependence Hypothesis show us?

The massive arrival in Spain of students of immigrant origin has visibly altered the traditional configuration of schools, where ethnic, cultural and linguistic diversity is becoming increasingly manifest. This situation is worth being mentioned insofar as it affects all the different autonomous com...

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Published inThe Spanish journal of psychology Vol. 17; p. E11
Main Author Huguet, Angel
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Cambridge, UK Cambridge University Press 01.01.2014
Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Subjects
Adolescent
Education - organization & administration
Education - standards
Educational Measurement
Emigrants and Immigrants - psychology
Female
Humans
Latin America - ethnology
Linguistics
Male
Multilingualism
Schools - organization & administration
Schools - standards
Social, Educational and Work Psychology
Spain - ethnology
Students - psychology
Catalan
Spanish
transfer
interdependence
immigrant children
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Summary:The massive arrival in Spain of students of immigrant origin has visibly altered the traditional configuration of schools, where ethnic, cultural and linguistic diversity is becoming increasingly manifest. This situation is worth being mentioned insofar as it affects all the different autonomous communities in the country, even more clearly Catalonia, where the educational system is organized under the parameters of bilingual education. One of the theoretical constructs supporting this educational model is the Linguistic Interdependence Hypothesis, developed by Jim Cummins at the beginning of the 1980s. According to the author, whenever the instruction in a given language (Lx) takes place under certain conditions, competence acquired in this language can be transferred onto another (Ly). Bearing this theoretical construct in mind, our study focuses on a sample of 237 Spanish-speaking subjects (123 native and 114 immigrant students) who completed a series of parallel tests evaluating their skills in Catalan and Spanish. Drawing on the data analyzed we can conclude that the Hypothesis accounts for the results in both native and immigrant students with the same L1.
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ISSN:1138-7416
1988-2904
1988-2904
DOI:10.1017/sjp.2014.11