Historical Context and Existing Academic Literature
Within this field of academia, there are studies that look at how learning a new language can improve the academic performance of children in primary schools. Studies by Armstrong, P. W., & Rogers, J. D. (1997), Johnson, C. E., Flores, J. S., & Eillson, F. P. (1963), and Turnbull, M., Hart, D., & Lapkin, S. (2003) are renowned examples that demonstrate the scope of our current understanding of how language learning can develop cognitive ability and improve other academic performance in reading comprehension, writing ability, and mathematics skills. However, based on my definition, these studies would fall into ‘luxury’ learning, because these students had the privilege of learning a foreign language and participating in a study. What I am hoping to do is extend our current understanding of this topic onto students who would fall into the ‘necessity’ learning group. I also take into account the role of financial wellbeing as it pertains to academic performance; the studies that were highlighted above are limited in scope because they do not factor in student, school, or district financial wellbeing into their studies at all. Disparities in family income is important because it is inherently tied to other factors that influence academic performance, such as the ability to attend better academic institutions and provide environments more suitable for learning. There is plenty of work to be expanded upon to better understand how less-wealthy students compare to the more privileged students as it relates to the relationship between multiple language proficiency and academic performance.
Despite this, existing academic literature provides important context to our understanding of how learning a new language – whether it is out of luxury or necessity – can influence a child's academic development and performance on standardized exams. Therefore, it is important to understand the importance of already existing academic scholarship on this topic.
A 1997 study by P.W. Armstrong and J.D. Rogers evaluated the effects of foreign language instruction on 3rd graders’ ability to retain, learn, and score well on reading, mathematics, and language arts. They conducted their study by randomly selecting a group of students who received 30 minutes of schooling in complete Spanish at a rate of three times per week for an entire semester. They found that students who received Spanish lessons scored significantly higher in mathematics and language arts, but not reading, on standardized exams [1].
During the same year, J.M. Cade studied the relationship between the academic performance of students enrolled in a foreign language plan – a plan which Cade planned, developed, implemented and assessed – in the Kansas City, Missouri Public School District. His findings indicate that, over time, “second language learners have improved test scored, are able to think divergently, achieve in their first language, and attract and maintain parent involvement.” Attracting and maintaining parent involvement may be a case of correlation rather than causation – as argued previously, parent involvement can only be possible if parents have the luxury of being able to get involved with the academic activities of their children. A parent who works multiple work shifts per day is significantly less like to have the resources to commit time to their children’s schooling; on the contrary, parents who have the privelege of not having to work multiple shift to support their family are conversely just as likely to support luxury-based learning in any academic field, not just limited to language learning. A child who has more resources available to them is more likely to perform well in school and be better prepared to handle standardized exams [2].
Published in 1963, a study by L.A. Haak and W.B. Leino explored the degree to which elementary school students’ enrollment in Spanish lessons for 15 minutes a day over the course of three years correlated with their academic performance. From the study, the researchers concluded that “deletion of time from arithmetic, language and social studies had no detrimental effect upon measured achievement in subject areas from which the time was taken,” a finding which supports the theory that substituting mathematics, language studies, and other key subjects with language learning classes is not detrimental to a child’s successful performance in those fields. The study further demonstrated that “measured intelligence is positively correlated with measured achievement in the learning of [the target language course]” [3].
A study by E.A. Rafferty published in 1986 explored how the addition of 30-minute language learning programs to the public-school curriculum of third, fourth, and fifth graders shaped their academic assessment scores. The study found that the group of students who received foreign language instruction initially performed significantly better on language arts exams, and by the time they got to the fifth grade, also scored higher on math exams. Both the groups of students who received foreign language classes and those who received standard public-school coursework were “matched for race, sex, and grade level, and the academic levels of student in both groups were estimated by their previous Basic Skills Test results and statistically equated.” The study concluded that students who received foreign language coursework first acquired English language arts skills, which then translated to math skills [4].
As stated before, the limitation of every single study that I looked at was that the researchers looked at how learning a foreign language shaped the academic performance of currently monolingual students in primary school. However, I am interested in exploring how students who are already bilingual – or in the process of being bilingual – by the time they begin the research perform on academic assessments compared to their monolingual classmates. Despite this limitation, these studies provide meaningful context to the intricacies that surround the academic performance of children who are learning a second language; although it isn’t a direct comparison and the performance of luxury language learners cannot be entirely extended on to necessity language learners, these studies demonstrate how language curriculum and acquisition can influence academic performance.
Percentage of public-school students who were English language learners, by grade level: Fall 2017 [5] - Check Attached Item for Reference.
Unlike luxury language learners, the majority of necessity language learners in the United States adopt their non-native language (in this case, English) in elementary school. This finding supports the hypothesis that necessity language learners are often subjected to informal methods of adopting the English language – on a day-to-day basis, an example of this phenomenon would be to resort to watching American television rather than studying a textbook to improve non-native language skills.
Based on the study by the US Department of Education, “Spanish was the home language of 3.7 million EL [English Learners] public school students in fall 2017, representing 74.8 percent of all EL students and 7.6 percent of all public K–12 students. Arabic and Chinese were the next most commonly reported home languages (spoken by 136,500 and 106,500 students, respectively).” Furthermore, “In fall 2017, there were about 3.8 million Hispanic EL public school students, constituting over three-quarters (76.5 percent) of EL student enrollment overall.” Regarding the distribution of students who were English Language Learners in primary schooling, the report finds that “California reported the highest percentage of ELs among its public-school students, at 19.2 percent, followed by Texas (18.0 percent) and Nevada (17.1 percent). Twenty-one states had percentages of EL students that were 6.0 percent or higher but less than 10.0 percent, and 14 states had percentages that were 3.0 percent or higher but less than 6.0 percent.” The majority of my findings are useful only as far as providing context on the general effects of language learning on the performance of monolinguals in the United States.
Although there are studies on the relationship between language learning and academic performance, there is room for development within the realm of evaluating necessary bilingualism, luxury bilingualism, and academic performance. Most studies conclude that children who speak more than one language tend to display better academic performances – the limitation of these studies is that they are conducted on English speaking children who were experimentally immersed in a foreign language class, and they tend to completely ignore non-English speaking children who are required to learn a foreign language, often times without a formal curriculum. Additionally, many of these studies do not take into account the level of financial freedom that a child has or is subjected to vis-a-vis their families, as it related to their language acquisition.
[1] U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, EDFacts file 141, Data Group 678; and Common Core of Data (CCD), “State Nonfiscal Survey of Public Elementary and Secondary Education,” 2017–18. See Digest of Education Statistics 2019, table 204.27.
[2] Armstrong, P. W., & Rogers, J. D. (1997). Basic skills revisited: The effects of foreign language instruction on reading, math, and language arts. Learning Languages, 2(3), 20-31.
[3] Cade, J. M. (1997). The foreign language immersion program in the Kansas City, Missouri Public Schools, 1986-1996 [Abstract]. Dissertation Abstracts International -A 58(10), 3838.
[4] Haak, L. A., & Leino, W. B. (1963).The teaching of Spanish in the elementary schools and the effects on achievement in other selected subject areas., 100. from ERIC database.
[5] Rafferty, E. A. (1986). Second language study and basic skills in Louisiana. U.S.; Louisiana, from ERIC database.
[6] “Percentage of Public-School Students who were English Language Learners, by Grade Level: Fall 2017" US Bureaue of Education.