Early-English education works no miracles: Cognitive and linguistic development of mainstream, early-English, and bilingual primary-school pupils in the Netherlands

This large-scale study aims to shed light on the possible effects of early-English education on pupils’ cognitive and linguistic development, and more specifically to investigate whether the limited bilingual experience offered in such programs may change children’s development in three different domains: executive functions, phonological awareness, and English speech perception. To investigate each of these questions, we compared groups of early-English pupils with groups of mainstream pupils, and with simultaneous Dutch-English bilingual children. All were between 4 and 12 years old, and enrolled in elementary schools in the Netherlands. To investigate whether the relation between learning two languages and development was different for pupils of different ages, and with different levels of bilingual experience, pupils always came from three different age groups. Results showed that providing English lessons from the moment that pupils enter primary school does not hinder their cognitive or linguistic development, as compared to pupils who attend mainstream schools and who do not get English lessons before the penultimate grade. Positive effects of early-English education were found, namely on pupils’ English vocabulary, and their perception of one English phonetic contrast. These effects were however often small, and did not always hold for pupils of all age groups. There were also several skills that early-English education did not affect, namely executive functions, phonological awareness, and the perception of more difficult phonetic contrasts. We therefore conclude that when it comes to promoting pupils’ cognitive and linguistic development, providing English lessons from the start of primary school works no miracles.