Bilingualism and Reading in the Native Language



Bilingualism and Reading in the Native Language

Stacy L. Colwell

University of Georgia

Introduction

Background

Without bilingual and multilingual speakers, this world would resemble a modern-day Tower of Babel in which the transmission of ideas, technology, and commerce would be hindered by a lack of communication. As the development of ideas and technology increases, bilingualism is becoming an ever-increasing commodity. In a struggle to remain a global technological and commercial powerhouse, the United States educational system has been increasingly compared to those of Asia and Europe. Additionally, the number of speakers in which English is not their native language has been increasing in the United States. In order to keep up with these demands, secondary schools and colleges often require students to take foreign language courses. However, these courses often begin too late and do not result in fluent speakers. More often than not, schools do not offer foreign language instruction until high school. This may be because schools are under increased pressure to produce high reading and math standardized test scores. Across the country schools are sacrificing fine arts, foreign language, and physical education programs to focus on programs specializing in reading and mathematics instruction.

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of this study is to determine if a correlation exists between the instruction of a foreign language beginning in middle school and standardized test scores in reading in the native language.

Research Questions

1. What is the relationship between the acquisition of a second language for native English speakers and reading ability in the native language?


2. Do middle school foreign language students score higher on standardized tests in reading than their monolingual counterparts?

Significance of the Study

If this study is able to show that learning a foreign language beginning in middle school shows a positive correlation with standardized test scores, and thus reading comprehension, this will provide compelling reason to implement foreign language programs beginning in middle school. This would result in increased communication with the ever-increasing population of English Language Learners, the ability to compete on a global level with foreign educational systems, and potentially even save time, energy, and money that is being spent on programs geared specifically at improving reading comprehension for standardized testing.

Review of Literature

In order to obtain information relevant to this study, a review of relevant literature was conducted. Topics covered in this review included 1) models of bilingual language processing; 2) brain imaging techniques supporting the Bilingual Interactive Activation Plus (BIA+) model; and 3) effects of second language on comprehension of words in the native language.

Several theories to describe how bilingual speakers process language have been proposed. The most commonly accepted theory is the Bilingual Interactive Activation Plus (BIA+) model (Dijkstra and Van Heuven, 2002). They found that as the brain processes language, there is a clear distinction, but also an interaction between portions of the brain that process word identification and task decisions. Subsequent studies by Titone et al. support this idea by showing that in the word identification system, language is nonselective, meaning that the brain does not restrict access to a single lexicon when processing language (2011). Further studies show that the brain uses bottom-up processing in which all appropriate words that are identified in the word identification system, regardless of language and context clies, are used in the task/decision system to determine meaning (Lagrou, Hartsuiker & Duyck, 2011). Using specialized imaging techniques, studies have been able to support the nonselective processing theory outlined in the BIA+ model (Van Heuven & Dijkstra, 2010).

Van Assche proposed that reading comprehension of whole sentences in the native language, which is a highly automated skill, is altered by the knowledge of a second language (2009). Further studies indicate that when reading in the native language, the presence of cognates from the second language speeds up the rate of word recognition, resulting in more efficient retrieval of target concepts (Van Assche et al., 2011). Costa was also able to show that Bilinguals exhibited faster rates in the attentional network task (ANT), which tests attention, orienting, and executive control (2008). The study shows that bilinguals are more efficient than monolinguals in the alerting and executive control networks and are better at resolving issues of conflicting information, which is a highly beneficial skill when reading complicated texts.

Research Methods

For the purposes of this study it is impractical to randomly assign middle school students within the same school into two groups in which one group receives foreign language instruction and the other group does not without intervention based on tracking and involved parents. This type of non-random grouping could skew the data. In order to limit these compounding variables, I propose a quasi-experimental nonrandomized control group pretest-posttest design.

Two schools from North Georgia will be used in the study. The schools selected will be from the same general geographic location (rural North Georgia Mountains). The schools will have a history of comparable standardized test scores as well as similar demographics including race, ethnicity, gender, socio-economic status, student-teacher ratio, and percentage of students receiving special education services. The treatment school will require students to take foreign language instruction in Spanish starting in the sixth grade, while the control group will receive a general curriculum without foreign language instruction.

At the beginning of the sixth grade year, all students will take the Degrees of Reading Power (DRP) test to determine a baseline level of reading comprehension. The DRP has been shown to accurately measure comprehension based on efficiency, accuracy and rate (Carver, 1992). The Criterion Referenced Competency Test (CRCT) scores from the fifth grade year will also be used for baseline data. The study will be a longitudinal study in which students continue to receive the appropriate treatment through the tenth grade. CRCT scores from fifth through eighth grade, End of Course Tests (EOCT) from ninth and tenth grade, and the DRP tests will be compared each year from the treatment and control groups to determine whether a correlation exists between foreign language instruction and reading comprehension as measured by standardized tests.

References

Ameel, E., Malt, B. C., Storms, G., & Van Assche, F. (2009). Semantic convergence in the bilingual lexicon. Journal of Memory and Language, 60(2), 270-290.

Carver, R. P. (1992). What do standardized tests of reading comprehension measure in terms of efficiency, accuracy, and rate? Reading Research Quarterly, 27(4), 347-359.

Costa, A., Hernández, M., & Sebastián-Gallés, N. (2008). Bilingualism aids conflict resolution: Evidence from the ANT task. Cognition, 106(1), 59-86.

Dijkstra, T. & Van Heuven, W.J.B. (2002). The architecture of the bilingual word recognition system: From identification to decision. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 5(1), 175-197.

Hale, Andrea D.Henning, Jaime B.Hawkins, Renee O.Sheeley, WesleyShoemaker, LarissaReynolds,Jennifer R.Moch, Christina. (2011). Reading assessment methods for middle-school students: An investigation of reading comprehension rate and maze accurate response rate. Psychology in the Schools, 48(1), 28-36.

Kang, J. Y. (2012). Do bilingual children possess better phonological awareness? investigation of korean monolingual and korean-english bilingual children. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 25(2), 411-431.

Kieffer, M. J., & Lesaux, N. K. (2012). Knowledge of words, knowledge about words: Dimensions of vocabulary in first and second language learners in sixth grade. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 25(2), 347-373.

Lagrou, E., Hartsuiker, R. J., & Duyck, W. (2011). Knowledge of a second language influences auditory word recognition in the native language. Journal of Experimental Psychology.Learning, Memory & Cognition, 37(4), 952-965.

Lorenzo, F., Moore, P., & Casal, S. (2011). On complexity in bilingual research: The causes, effects, and breadth of content and language integrated learning--A reply to bruton (2011). Applied Linguistics, 32(4), 450-455.

Slavin, R. E., & Cheung, A. (2005). A synthesis of research on language of reading instruction for english language learners. Review of Educational Research, 75(2), 247-284.

Tahan, S., Cline, T., & Messaoud-Galusi, S. (2011). The relationship between language dominance and pre-reading skills in young bilingual children in egypt. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 24(9), 1061-1087.

Titone, D., Libben, M., Mercier, J., Whitford, V., & Pivneva, I. (2011). Bilingual lexical access during L1 sentence reading: The effects of L2 knowledge, semantic constraint, and L1-L2 intermixing. Journal of Experimental Psychology.Learning, Memory & Cognition, 37(6), 1412-1431.

Van Assche, E., Drieghe, D., Duyck, W., Welvaert, M., & Hartsuiker, R. J. (2011). The influence of semantic constraints on bilingual word recognition during sentence reading. Journal of Memory and Language, 64(1), 88-107.

Van Assche, EvaDuyck, WouterHartsuiker, Robert J.Diependaele, Kevin. (2009). Does bilingualism change native-language reading? cognate effects in a sentence context. Psychological Science (Wiley-Blackwell), 20(8), 923-927.

Van Heuven, W. J. B., & Dijkstra, T. (2010). Language comprehension in the bilingual brain: FMRI and ERP support for psycholinguistic models. Brain Research Reviews, 64(1), 104-122.

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