The Development of Bilingualism/Multilingualism from the Psycholinguistic Perspective

Purpose. The purpose of this study was to outline the variable markers of the individual linguistic awareness/consciousness development in the conditions of artificial bilingualism.Methods. The main method of the study was the method of selective observation with the fixation of markers of the linguistic awareness development and qualitative indicators of respondents' mastery of English as a foreign language in the artificial bilingualism conditions. Potential standards of passive-mechanical (imitation) and active (cognitive-communicative) models of artificial bilingualism were used for comparison. Markers of the respondents' linguistic awareness were subject to monitoring: language knowledge, culture and speaking skills (at a level sufficient for formulating and expressing thoughts in the process of interpersonal communication in a foreign language), manifestations of language socialization (mastering the norms of listening, perceiving and speaking in a foreign language at a level sufficient for communication and coordination of semantic codes of communication subjects). The obtained data were subjected to content analysis, which made it possible to evaluate the markers of the development of the respondents' linguistic awareness in the artificial bilingualism conditions and to reveal the level of using a foreign language in communication. In order to statistically confirm the significance of the obtained data, the method of one-factor variance analysis (Fisher's phi-criterion) was used. A multidimensional procedure of cluster analysis (K-means clustering) was also used, which made it possible to distinguish subsets of the levels of the linguistic awareness development among the respondents of the research project.Results. The results of the data analysis of the research project proved that the differences between the experimental and control groups of junior high school students in identifying markers of linguistic awareness are reliably significant relative to individual predictors of the logical ordering of speech-thinking dimensions of language awareness (at p <= 0.05).Respondents of the experimental group demonstrate better results in listening, understanding the content of oral expression in a familiar everyday context and in communicative competences. The dominance of markers of an average level of linguistic awareness development among younger schoolchildren was also recorded.Conclusions. In the realities of permanent transformations of the modern information society, bilingualism appears as a predictor of foreign language mastery at a level sufficient for communication and exchange of ideas with other subjects of linguistic activity. Language (and foreign language in particular) is not only a communication tool, but also a way of perceiving, organizing and encoding (or decoding) the surrounding reality. In this context, linguistic awareness is interpreted as an invariant of possible schemes of mastering reality, which is most suitable for the purposes of communication between people. The analysis of markers of the junior high school students' linguistic awareness development proved that when an active (cognitive -communicative) model of artificial bilingualism is implemented, the respondents demonstrate statistically better results in listening, understanding the content of oral expression in a familiar everyday context and in identifying communicative competences.