This study examined the linguistic achievements of children with and without AD(H)D who attended German-English immersion and mainstream programs in German primary schools. Although the AD(H)D children’s performance was affected by their cognitive deficits, intensive exposure to the target language positively affected their L2 development.
In Germany, immersion (IM) programs still have a distinct elitist reputation, and students with cognitive problems are often prevented from attending them. To this end, we examined the linguistic achievements of students with and without attention deficits in German-English primary school IM programs. The children with AD(H)D were selected on the basis of the results in a standardized test on attention (D2-R, Brickenkamp et al. 2010), they had a German background and did not exhibit any other deficits. Their results in standardized tests on L1 German and L2 English were compared to peers without AD(H)D. The results of the present study indicate that these faced the same problems as they would in mainstream programs (e.g., Fortune & Menke 2010): For example, the AD(H)D students were outperformed by their peers with an age-appropriate attention span, irrespective of whether these tests were conducted in the L1 or in the L2. Most importantly, however, the AD(H)D students still benefited from attending IM programs because their L2 test results were considerably better than those of comparable children in mainstream programs. Based on these positive results, we infer that IM programs should be accessible to all students independent of their background. This, however, requires teachers who are willing and able to adequately support these children.
