Introduction
The purpose of this study is to learn how and to what extent bilingualism in early childhood (from ages 0-5) affects cognitive intelligence later in a person’s life as reflected by the academic performance at the university level. This an important and relevant topic for human development and education as schools are becoming increasingly more diverse, and there are more students from different cultural backgrounds speaking a multitude of languages. Many of these students will have parents who are native speakers of non-English languages who are faced with the dilemma to either teach their child in two languages during early childhood, one being English or raise him or her to speak only one language, English. Assessing whether there are positive or negative correlations between bilingualism in early childhood and academic performance later in life is extremely important as it can test the commonly held belief that raising children to be bilingual can confuse the child. However, it should be noted, today’s parents are more receptive to introducing bilingual learning to their children during early childhood. This study is potentially an important …show more content…
The purpose of this study was to test whether teaching two languages to young children would have any negative cognitive effects (Hakuta, 1990). Specifically, sixteen five-year-olds from New Haven, Connecticut in the Spanish-English bilingual kindergarten program were given pictures to identify in both languages at the end of the school year (Hakuta, 1990). The researchers found that the students who performed well on the English test also performed well on the Spanish test (Hakuta, 1990). Ultimately, the studies showed that students with high levels of English proficiency were not negatively impacted by learning Spanish simultaneously, but instead it benefited them (Hakuta,
The purpose of this study is to learn how and to what extent bilingualism in early childhood (from ages 0-5) affects cognitive intelligence later in a person’s life as reflected by the academic performance at the university level. This an important and relevant topic for human development and education as schools are becoming increasingly more diverse, and there are more students from different cultural backgrounds speaking a multitude of languages. Many of these students will have parents who are native speakers of non-English languages who are faced with the dilemma to either teach their child in two languages during early childhood, one being English or raise him or her to speak only one language, English. Assessing whether there are positive or negative correlations between bilingualism in early childhood and academic performance later in life is extremely important as it can test the commonly held belief that raising children to be bilingual can confuse the child. However, it should be noted, today’s parents are more receptive to introducing bilingual learning to their children during early childhood. This study is potentially an important …show more content…
The purpose of this study was to test whether teaching two languages to young children would have any negative cognitive effects (Hakuta, 1990). Specifically, sixteen five-year-olds from New Haven, Connecticut in the Spanish-English bilingual kindergarten program were given pictures to identify in both languages at the end of the school year (Hakuta, 1990). The researchers found that the students who performed well on the English test also performed well on the Spanish test (Hakuta, 1990). Ultimately, the studies showed that students with high levels of English proficiency were not negatively impacted by learning Spanish simultaneously, but instead it benefited them (Hakuta,