The student who speaks both languages fluently has a definite cognitive advantage. As you might suspect and as research has confirmed, a fully fluent bilingual student is in a better position than usual to express concepts or ideas in more than one way, and to be aware of doing so (Jimenez, et al. 1995; Francis, 2006). The question: “What if a dog were called a cat?_ is less likely to confuse even a very young bilingual child. Nor will the follow-up question: “Could the 'cat' meow?_ confuse them. Such skill in reflecting on language is a form of metacognition, which I discussed in Chapter 2 and defined as using language as an object of thought. Metacognition can be helpful for a variety of academic purposes, such as writing stories and essays, or interpreting complex text materials.
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