Advances in the Study of Bilingualism

reverse pattern: speakers in Miami use more English ML than speakers in
Wales. This suggests that the different age of acquisition in the two com-
munities (and indeed language competence) may not be related to the
choice of the ML in bilingual clauses.

Language profi ciency self-report for Spanish or Welsh

As argued in relation to age of acquisition, language proficiency might be
expected to relate to the choice of the ML. As shown in Figure 6.3 above,
both groups reported similar proficiency in Spanish or Welsh: 74% of the
Spanish-English participants and 77% of the Welsh-English participants
indicated the highest level of proficiency for their questionnaire response
(χ^2 = 2.28, df = 2, p < 0.3).
Looking at Figure 6.1, high proficiency in Welsh could be said to be
related to the overwhelming choice of Welsh ML, but the results for Miami
(where Spanish is only ML 66% of the time) suggest that proficiency cannot
be the only factor influencing choice of ML.

Language profi ciency self-report for English

In contrast to the results for proficiency in Spanish and Welsh, the results
for proficiency in English revealed significant differences between the groups
(χ^2 = 8.60, df = 2, p < 0.05). 85% of the Spanish-English participants reported
the highest proficiency in English, whereas only 68% of the Welsh-English
participants reported the same level. See Figure 6.4.
This may be attributable to the differences we find in the primary and
secondary school language mediums (see Figures 6.5 and 6.6). Figures 6.5 and
6.6 show that English-medium education is more widespread for the Miami

Factors Influencing Code-Switching 131

0%

11%

15%

74%

0%

5%

17%

77%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

Some words Basic

conversaon

Fairly confident Confident

Sp-Eng

Wel-Eng

Figure 6.3 Language profi ciency self-report for Spanish or Welsh