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Bibliography – Language Immersion Benefits
Armstrong, P.W. and J.D. Rogers, Basic Skills Revisited: The Effects of Foreign Language Instruction on Reading, Math and Language Arts, Learning Languages (Spring 1997), 20-31 (3rd graders learning Spanish 30 minutes three times a week had statistically significant gains in their Metropolitan Achievement Test scores in mathematics and language after only one semester; even one class that had received one and one half fewer hours of math instruction per week than a control group still outperformed that control group in mathematics scores).
Bamford, K.W. and D.T. Mizokawa, Additive-Bilingual (Immersion) Education: Cognitive and Language Development, Language Learning 41, 413-429 (1991) (second language learners are more creative and better at solving complex problems than their peers).
Barik, H.C. and M. Swain, Bilingual Education Project: Evaluation of the 1974-75 French Immersion Program in Grades 2-4, Ottawa Board of Education and Carleton Board of Education, Toronto: Ontario Institute of Studies in Education. ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. 121 056 (1975) (second language study enhances English and other academic skills).
Bialystok, Ellen, Effects of Bilingualism and Biliteracy on Children’s Emerging Concepts of Print, Developmental Psychology 33 No. 3, 429-440 (1997) (study of the reading ability of 134 four- and five-year-old bilingual and monolingual children found that bilingual children better understood the general symbolic function of letters).
Bruck, M., W. E. Lambert, and R. Tucker, Bilingual Schooling Through the Elementary Grades: The St. Lambert Project at Grade Seven, Language Learning 24 (2): 183-204 (1974) (bilinguals outperform similar monolingual persons on both verbal and nonverbal tests of intelligence).
Caldas, S.J. and N. Boudreaux, Poverty, Race and Foreign Language Immersion: Predictors of Math and English Language Arts Performance, Language Learning, 41, 413-429 (1999) (bilingual proficiency correlates with higher scores on standardized tests and tests of both verbal and nonverbal intelligence).
Cooper, T. C., Foreign Language Study and SAT-Verbal Scores, The Modern Language Journal 71/4, 381-387 (1987) (SAT-verbal scores of students who had taken four or five years of foreign language were higher than the verbal scores of students who had taken four or five years of any other subject. Economic background, measured by the number of students receiving free and reduced lunches, did not affect students’ performance).
Curtain, H., Foreign Language Learning: An Early Start, ERIC Clearinghouse on Languages and Linguistics, Center for Applied Linguistics 1990 (Document No. EDO-FL-90-12) (foreign language study sharpens cognitive development and basic skills as well as communication skills, including memory and listening skills).
Curtain, H. and C. A. B. Pesola, Languages and Children: Making the Match: Foreign Language Instruction for An Early Start Grades K-8, Longman: New York (1994) (early second language study gives rise to greater academic achievement in other areas of study including reading, social studies, and mathematics).
Davis-Wiley, Patricia, FLES and Reading: Does Exposure to a Foreign Language in the Early Grades Really Make a Difference? Echo, Fall 1989, 14-15 (in study of 546 third grade students in a foreign language program as compared to 905 controls, although elementary foreign language students lost 60 minutes of traditional English language study each week and substituted foreign language study, they outperformed their monolingual peers on the SAT test, and most especially in the reading comprehension subtests).
Dumas, L.S., Learning a Second Language: Exposing Your Child to a New World of Words Boosts Her Brainpower, Vocabulary, and Self-Esteem, Child, February 1999, 72, 74, 76-77, summarizing Rafferty, E.A., Second Language Study and Basic Skills in Louisiana (Louisiana Dep’t of Educ. 1986) (in study of 13,200 3rd-5th graders studying French 30 minutes per day achieved significantly higher scores on the Basic Skills Language Arts Test than non-participants, regardless of gender, academic level or race).
Foster, K. and C. Reeves, FLES Improves Cognitive Skills, FLESNEWS 4, 5 (1989) (second language learners show greater cognitive development in mental flexibility, creativity, divergent thinking, and higher order thinking skills).
Garfinkel, A., and K. Tabor, Elementary School Foreign Languages and English Reading Achievement: A New View of the Relationship, Foreign Language Annals 24, 5 (1991) (children in elementary foreign language programs outperform their monolingual peers in acquisition of basic skills and an especially significant correlation between foreign language acquisition and English reading skills).
Genesee, F., Learning Through Two Languages, Cambridge, MA: Newbury House (1987) (second language study enhances English and other academic skills).
Hakuta, K., Mirror of Language, New York: Basic Books (1986) (bilingual proficiency correlates with higher scores on standardized tests and tests of both verbal and nonverbal intelligence).
Kim, K.H., N.R. Relkin, K.M. Lee and J. Hirsch, Distinct Cortical Areas Associated With Native and Second Languages, Nature, 388, July 10, 1997, 171-4 (study of 12 bilingual volunteers showed that second language is stored in different brain area depending on when in life a person becomes bilingual. Children who learn a second language store that capacity, together with their native language, in one sector of the brain. Adult language learners store each new language learned in a separate area. This finding helped explain why children who learn two languages develop the ability to speak both with native proficiency).
Landry, R., A Comparison of Second Language Learners and Monolinguals on Divergent Thinking Tasks at the Elementary School Level, Modern Language Journal 58, 10-15 (1974) (second language learners show greater cognitive development in mental flexibility, creativity, divergent thinking, and higher order thinking skills).
Lipton, G. (1969), To Read or Not To Read: An Experiment on the FLES Level, Foreign Language Annals 3, 241-46 (1969) (elementary school foreign language learners achieve higher scores on standardized achievement tests in reading, language arts, and mathematics than their peers).
Marcos, K.M., Learning a Second Language: What Parents Need to Know, National PTA Magazine, August/September 1998, 32-33 (summarizing research, author concludes that learning a second language in elementary school usually enhances a child’s ability in English. Additionally, students benefited in terms of ability to communicate and cognitive development).
Masciantonio, R., Tangible Benefits of the Study of Latin: A Review of Research (1977) (Latin study yields dramatic increases in standardized test performance in basic skills areas, including the Iowa Test of Basic Skills and the Missouri Mastery and Achievement Test).
McCraig, R., The Effect of the Elementary Foreign Language Program on Aspects of Elementary Education: A Longitudinal Study, Ferndale Michigan, Ferndale Michigan Public Schools (1988) (elementary school foreign language learners achieve higher scores on standardized achievement tests in reading, language arts, and mathematics than their peers).
Mechelli, Andrea, Jenny T. Crinion, Uta Noppeney, John O'Doherty, John Ashburner, Richard S. Frackowiak, Cathy J. Price, Neurolinguistics: Structural plasticity in the Bilingual Brain, Nature (October 2004) (researchers at University College, London, demonstrate that people who are bilingual have more gray matter (neurons, or brain cells) in the language region of their brains. The earlier a child learns a second language, the more advanced his or her brain becomes in language acquisition).
Robinson, D.W., The Cognitive, Academic and Attitudinal Benefits of Early Language Learning, in Met, Myriam, ed. Critical Issues in Early Language Learning, White Plains, NY: Longman (1992) (based on dozens of studies, the author concludes that children that experience two language systems are left with more mental flexibility, a superiority in concept formation, and a more diversified set of mental abilities, and in addition, outperform their peers on standardized tests and tests of basic skills in English, math and social studies).
Samuels, D. D. and R. J. Griffore, The Plattsburgh French Language Immersion Program: Its Influence on Intelligence and Self-Esteem, Language Learning 29/1, 45-52 (1979) (first graders who learned French through immersion showed significant gains in IQ, performing better on test items that asked them to interpret and organize a series of seemingly unrelated objects).
Saunders, C.M., The Effect of the Study of a Foreign Language in the Elementary School on Scores on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills and an Analysis of Student-participant Attitudes and Abilities (Dissertation, University of Georgia 1998) (comparing third graders learning a foreign language for 30 minutes daily with fourth graders who were not, the author finds that the 3rd grade foreign language students scored significantly higher on the mathematics portion of the Iowa test than the fourth graders).
Swain, M., Early French Immersion Later On, Journal of Multicultural Development 2 (1) (1981), 1-23 (second language study enhances English and other academic skills).
Thomas, W.P., V.P. Collier and M. Abbott, Academic Achievement through Japanese, Spanish, or French, Modern Language Journal, 77, 170-180 (1993) (bilingual proficiency correlates with higher scores on standardized tests and tests of both verbal and nonverbal intelligence).
Weatherford, H.J., Personal Benefits of Foreign Language Study, ERIC Digest, Washington, DC: ERIC Clearinghouse on Languages and Linguistics. ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. 276 305 (1986) (bilinguals outperform similar monolingual persons on both verbal and nonverbal tests of intelligence). |
