Active bilingualism is also known as productive bilingualism, which is opposite to receptive (passive) bilingualism. The term 'active' implies a person's ability to successfully use and perform on four major language skills - listening, speaking, reading and writing. In many cases various language skills are not equally developed. The level of proficiency of every individual skill differs at least slightly from proficiency of other skills.
For example a girl from Torres Strait Islands is a competent user of her native language (KKY). She is illiterate in KKY, as her family has moved to Cairns when she was four years old and she has all her life attended formal schooling, conducted in Standard Australian English only. Even though her degree of proficiency in all language skills of L2 is questionable, this type of bilingualism is still considered to be active or productive. According to definition an active bilingual speaker is actively using both languages, depending on the language function. At another level active bilingualism is also a functional bilingualism. |
