Dutch children in Bilingual Primary Schools are taught in English at least nine hours a week. But how does their Dutch and English language and language awareness development compare to that of their monolingual peers? Are there advantages or disadvantages, and for whom? This study aims to answer these questions. Link to presentation: https://youtu.be/9CwUHkuOzXY
Background: Bilingual Primary Education (BPE) programmes show foreign language learning benefits for pupils when compared to less intensive foreign language learning programmes (Lindholm-Leary & Genesee, 2014). These advantages extend to metalinguistic awareness depending on the language pairs and the metalinguistic skill under study. This study examines whether these advantages are also found in English immersion in the Netherlands. More specifically, this longitudinal study explores pupils' emerging linguistic and metalinguistic skills in newly established BPE-schools, comparing them to pupils following early English as a Foreign Language (early-EFL) instruction. When and how does metalinguistic awareness emerge and are there advantages for BPE pupils?
Method: 102 BPE pupils (± 9 hrs. English/week) and 70 early-EFL pupils (±1 hr. English/week) were tested at 4;10 yrs., 6;4 yrs. and 7;7 yrs. of age using standardised Dutch and English vocabulary tests, phonological-, morphological-, and syntactic awareness tasks.
Results: Results show that whilst BPE-pupils scored significantly higher on English vocabulary than their EFL-peers, on metalinguistic awareness there were no significant differences between the two groups at any time. These findings contrast with previous findings (Reder et al., 2013) where differences at the group level were found for metalinguistic awareness. Further analysis showed that BPE pupils' vocabulary scores are more strongly associated with metalinguistic awareness scores compared to the early-EFL group. We explore child–internal (non-verbal intelligence, phonological short-term memory, age) and -external (out-of-school exposure, parental level of education) factors which may account for these differences on an individual level as well as on the between-school level. Multi-level analyses were applied to account for the sources of variation and the factors that may explain children's emerging language and metalinguistic awareness skills and their development over time.
