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How Important Is Knowing a Foreign Language?

By Jeremy Engle

• March 29, 2019

Have you ever studied a foreign language ? Do you think it’s still necessary to do so?

Isn’t it easy to find people who speak English in other countries if you really need to communicate with someone? And aren’t there translation apps for your phone you can download anyway?

What is the value of knowing more than one language in the 21st century? Is it really worth the time, effort and investment?

In “ Do You Speak My Language? You Should ,” Bénédicte de Montlaur writes:

In January, the Modern Language Association made an astonishing announcement in The Chronicle of Higher Education: From 2013 to 2016, colleges across the United States cut 651 foreign language programs . French was the hardest hit, losing 129 programs, followed by Spanish with 118, German with 86 and Italian with 56. Once these programs close, they are very hard to reopen. According to a Pew study from last year , only 20 percent of K-12 students in America study a foreign language (compared with an average of 92 percent in Europe), and only 10 states and the District of Columbia make foreign-language learning a high school graduation requirement. The decline in language education could have devastating effects for generations to come. With fewer options for learning a foreign language in school, a sharp decrease in interest is likely to follow. According to the Modern Language Association, enrollment in college-level foreign-language courses dropped 9.2 percent from 2013 to 2016. The association says these changes are most likely a direct result of the 2008 recession, which hit foreign-language degree programs harder than many other humanities programs. As programs shrink so does the supply of qualified teachers . It’s a vicious cycle. And yet, knowing a foreign language is becoming ever more essential. The freshman congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is Spanish-English bilingual, recently tweeted , “Bilingualism is a huge advantage in the economy and the world.” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, who at age 29 is already one of the best-known members of the Democratic Party, is a case in point. Her sentiment is shared by many. In response, some educators and parents are rethinking the way language is taught and calling for expanded access to language education. Nationwide, parents and teachers have been leading grass-roots initiatives to provide foreign-language learning in public schools, and some universities have instituted innovative language programs. From pre-K to graduate studies, there is a move toward holistic language education, based on the notion that learning a language should be grounded in the real, everyday use of that language.

The article concludes:

If Americans want the next generation to be active participants in a multilingual world, dual-language and multicultural education is crucial. Government spending on foreign-language education and the education of qualified foreign-language teachers needs to increase. More states need to enforce language-education requirements. Colleges need to recognize the importance of their foreign-language education programs. In turn, more parents, students and teachers need to lobby for language programs. The necessity of foreign-language education could not be clearer right now. The future in America, and everywhere, is multilingual. And so is the present.

Students, read the entire article, then tell us:

— How important is knowing a foreign language?

— What languages can you speak, read or understand? If you know more than one language, how did you learn these additional languages? Was it hard? Fun? How has knowing another language affected and benefited your life?

— If you speak only one language, have you ever wanted or tried to learn a new one? What challenges did you face in acquiring a new language?

— How persuasive is Ms. de Montlaur’s argument that Americans need to study a foreign language? Do you agree with her that the future is multilingual? Should schools require that students learn a second language?

— If you were to study a new language, what would it be and why?

— How much is foreign-language education emphasized at your school? What would you recommend to improve the foreign-language program at your school?

Students 13 and older are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.

The Magic of Bilingual Education

Seven educators and one former student on how learning another language can change lives, 1923: the right to let children learn a foreign language, một kỷ niệm yêu quý khi là giáo viên song ngữ, my favorite memory as a bilingual teacher.

Bilingual education for me has been a validation of my language, culture and identity that I did not receive as a child of public education. I grew up in a time when English was the sole focus of language acquisition. For my students, our school system’s Vietnamese dual-language program opens the door of access for their present and future. Most of the students have been with the program since kindergarten; those now in high school have reached notable achievements that are recognized at the state level and can be put on résumés for work or higher education. A more personal triumph for me is seeing how dual-language education affects students’ present lives. The most impactful memory I carry is the deep gratitude a grandmother once shared at an end-of-year celebration. She thanked me for giving her 7-year-old grandson the ability to communicate with her. It was, she said, the first time that she was able to get to know her grandson.

Tu Dinh is a language learning specialist at the district office of Highline Public Schools in Washington state. He spent five years at White Center Heights Elementary School as the first-grade Vietnamese dual-language teacher and two years as a Vietnamese instructional coach and dual-language facilitator.

Les programmes d’immersion linguistique enseignent bien plus qu’une autre langue

Language immersion programs teach much more than another language.

During my senior year at Spelman College, I applied to become a Peace Corps volunteer. Soon after graduation, I boarded a plane with 35 others for training in Senegal. Most of us only spoke English and had not previously traveled outside the United States. Our training focused on intercultural education, adjusting to different living conditions — and intensive language immersion.

After six weeks, I began my assignment as a high school English teacher in a village in Guinea. Although Guineans speak many languages, French is the national language. My French had to be strong enough to work and survive — sink or swim.

Over my two years in Guinea, I swam and survived. I learned that the ability to communicate in French and other languages enabled me to make genuine connections with my students, colleagues and neighbors. I witnessed my students’ English acquisition make a similar impact. I became a firm believer in the importance of language immersion as a way to better understand others.

After a decade-long career in international development and education policy, I began working for the Elsie Whitlow Stokes Community Freedom Public Charter School, a 25-year-old language immersion elementary school in Washington (which was founded by my mother and named after my grandmother). It was the first charter school in D.C. to offer Spanish and French immersion. This year I celebrate 20 years of working at the school and 10 years as the head of school. I have seen hundreds of children enter prekindergarten and graduate from the fifth grade with the ability to speak, learn, read, write and communicate in two or more languages.

Pre-pandemic, as a culminating event for their language immersion studies, our graduating students would travel to Panama or Martinique for a week-long international study tour. During their travels, not only would they explore a new country and connect with local students, they also participated in radio interviews in French and presidential palace tours in Spanish. The experience of traveling abroad and communicating in French or Spanish has changed the trajectory of many students’ lives. This school year, we look forward to completing our first international study tour since the pandemic.

Erika Bryant is executive director of the Elsie Whitlow Stokes Community Freedom Public Charter School.

Apoyemos a todos los niños multilingües a mantener su lengua materna

Let’s support all multilingual children in keeping their home language.

My family immigrated to California from Mexico in 1992 when I was 3 years old. My parents immediately enrolled me in Head Start, where I was lucky to have access to bilingual education, which supported and used my home language (Spanish) to help me develop proficiency and literacy in English. I was enrolled in bilingual classes until second grade, and I credit this experience as the reason I am bilingual and biliterate today. My mom still likes to talk about how I read 500 books in kindergarten in both languages. Bilingual education was crucial to my development and enabled me to communicate with and stay connected to my family both in Mexico and California. In 1998, California eliminated bilingual education, which means that — until 2016 when it was reinstated — generations after me were denied the opportunity to maintain their home language.

Leslie Villegas is a senior policy analyst at New America, where she focuses on improving equity for English learners in pre-K-to-12 education.

Nuwôpanâmun

We are wampanoag.

In our community, the bilingual education that our Weetumuw School students receive is meaningful on a much larger scale. Wôpanâak, the language spoken by the Indigenous people of eastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island, was a sleeping language for generations, and it is only in the past couple of decades that it has begun to come back to us.

Weetumuw is an independent school founded in 2016 that serves roughly 25 students in Mashpee, Mass. Today, with dedication from teachers, students and their families, as well as linguists who contribute to the school’s language content, we are able to see Wôpanâak reemerge as a language of children. And it is children who give life to the language. It is Wampanoag children who will allow Wôpanâak to thrive as they learn and grow.

With their language learning comes cultural understanding, and with both of these things providing a firm foundation from a young age, we are creating a generation of Wampanoag children who have a steadfast and invaluable sense of pride in their identity.

Nitana Hicks Greendeer is a citizen of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe. She is the head of the Weetumuw School as well as the mother of five current and former Weetumuw students.

El renacimiento también existe en español

The renaissance exists in spanish too.

My mom grew up in Mexico, my dad in the United States, and this meant I had access to both English and Spanish from childhood. My formal study of Spanish didn’t start until high school, when I learned for the first time to read and write in Spanish and acquired the vocabulary to better get to know some of my family. While I knew I loved Shakespeare early in life, I had no exposure to the Renaissance writers I teach today until I learned about them in college: Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Miguel de Cervantes, Lope de Vega, María de Zayas. Teaching and learning Spanish connects me to the rich cultural and political histories of Spanish in the United States, Latin America and Spain, past and present. The most gratifying part of my job is affirming the home languages of my students and advocating for early access to multilingualism and language learning. This means teaching my undergraduates about the value of their language stories, and partnering with local K-12 schools to recognize these biliteracies and strengthen second-language learning for all students.

Margaret Boyle is director of Latin American, Caribbean and Latinx studies and associate professor of Romance Languages and Literatures at Bowdoin College. She directs the Multilingual Mainers program for early elementary students and educators.

三者三様-日本語を学ぶ意義とは ～ 公立学校の三人の日本語教師が語る

One school system. three teachers. many reasons to study japanese..

Bilingual education is my passion and life work. In my school’s Japanese immersion program, 90 percent of students’ first language is English, which means they experience what it feels like to be a language minority at a young age. Through struggles and frustration in communicating in another language, they develop empathy for speakers of languages other than English, greater resiliency and a growth mindset. They are supportive of each other and also understanding when I stumble with English. Bilingual education fosters sensitivity to other people’s needs along with language proficiency and cultural competency, and I believe it has a significant impact on creating a caring society.

Noriko Otsuka is a Japanese immersion teacher at Fox Mill Elementary School in Fairfax County, Va.

I began taking Japanese in middle school. Learning the language required me to see beyond the Japanese pop culture I was familiar with and provided opportunities to meet new people and hear new perspectives. I decided that one of the most valuable skills we can learn is how to communicate with more people through languages. Now, as a teacher, I get to see my students learn to appreciate differences and similarities between cultures, and to reserve judgment about practices different from their own. Language learning has expanded my world, and the reason I teach is to pass that opportunity on to my students.

Cynthia Rinehart is a Japanese immersion teacher at Great Falls Elementary School in Fairfax County, Va.

My journey to becoming bilingual started with my daily English lessons in kindergarten in Japan. My father taught Chinese at Japanese colleges, and many international students and professors visited us at our home — giving me the opportunity to try my English. I was timid at first, but the excitement I felt when they understood me is still a precious memory. Learning English taught me important life skills. Communicating in another language is difficult. It requires patience, perseverance and creativity. If one way to express yourself is not effective enough, then you have to try again. As a Japanese immersion teacher, I wish my students a rewarding journey as they become lifelong language learners.

Lili Kennington is a Japanese immersion teacher at Great Falls Elementary School in Fairfax County, Va.

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• Review Article
• Open access
• Published: 19 June 2020

The social brain of language: grounding second language learning in social interaction

• Ping Li   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-3314-943X 1 &
• Hyeonjeong Jeong   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-5094-5390 2  

npj Science of Learning volume  5 , Article number:  8 ( 2020 ) Cite this article

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• Human behaviour

For centuries, adults may have relied on pedagogies that promote rote memory for the learning of foreign languages through word associations and grammar rules. This contrasts sharply with child language learning which unfolds in socially interactive contexts. In this paper, we advocate an approach to study the social brain of language by grounding second language learning in social interaction. Evidence has accumulated from research in child language, education, and cognitive science pointing to the efficacy and significance of social learning. Work from several recent L2 studies also suggests positive brain changes along with enhanced behavioral outcomes as a result of social learning. Here we provide a blueprint for the brain network underlying social L2 learning, enabling the integration of neurocognitive bases with social cognition of second language while combining theories of language and memory with practical implications for the learning and teaching of a new language in adulthood.

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The study of the neuroscience of cognition has made great strides in the last two decades, thanks to the rapid developments in non-invasive neuroimaging techniques and the corresponding data analytics. At the same time, the study of language acquisition, including second language (L2) learning by children and adults, has also progressed significantly from behavioral research toward neurocognitive understanding, thanks also to new methods including neuroimaging. These two domains of study (i.e., cognitive neuroscience and language learning) have seen increasingly happy marriages of approaches, theories, and methodologies in the last two decades, driven largely by the New Science of Learning 1 , a framework for studying learning at the intersection of psychology, neuroscience, education, and machine learning. Specifically, this framework argues that learning should be studied along three important dimensions: a computational process, a social process, and a process supported by brain circuits linking perception and action. Meltzoff and colleagues 1 further suggested that human language acquisition provides a bona fide example for connecting computational learning, social learning, and brain circuits for perception and action. Despite the call from this multi-disciplinary perspective, researchers in cognitive neuroscience and language acquisition have remained to focus on the individual learner, especially in the study of adult L2 learning. This tradition has seriously limited our understanding of a key aspect of what it means to learn: learning in the social context, interactively.

The study of language learning focused on the individual might have had its origin in the tradition of generative linguistics 2 , 3 , according to which linguistics as a science should study the language competence of the idealized speaker and the corresponding innate mechanisms that enable humans to learn language. Although the neuroscience of language has largely avoided accepting the generative tradition, the focus on the individual, and consequently, the brain structure and function of the individual (i.e., the “single-brain” approach 4 ), has not changed as a field (see Fig. 1 for illustration ) . This is unfortunate, since language serves a social communicative purpose and is fundamentally a social behavior. Note that there are some exceptions to this focus, especially in (a) the study of child language learning (see discussion next), and (b) social neuroscience, which has begun to focus on how brains respond to social interactions using methodologies such as hyper-scanning 4 , 5 . In addition, although leading models of the neurobiology of language do not incorporate a social component 6 , there have been recent efforts to extend the landscape to include pragmatic reasoning 7 , theory of mind 8 , and social interaction 9 .

Left: Traditional approaches for “single-brain” study of language learning; Right: “Social-interactive brain” research and emerging methods.

In this paper, we advocate an approach focused on grounding L2 learning in social interaction; we call this approach “Social L2 Learning” (SL2). Specifically, we define “social interaction” here as “learning through real-life or simulated real-life environments where learners can interact with objects and people, perform actions, receive, use, and integrate perceptual, visuospatial, and other sensorimotor information, which enables learning and communication to become embodied.” Notwithstanding generative linguistics and individual-brain study approaches, the field of first language (L1) acquisition has clearly demonstrated that children, from the earliest stages, depend on social interactions to learn 1 . This dependence may be initially coordinated through “joint attention” and shared intentionality between the infant and the parent/caregiver 10 . Computational models that incorporate social-interactive cues from mother–child interactions perform significantly better than models with no such cues included 11 , 12 . Kuhl et al. 13 further indicated that social learning is crucial even when children learn an L2: American babies exposed to Mandarin Chinese through a “DVD condition” (pre-recorded audiovisual or audio-only material) did not demonstrate learning of Mandarin phonetic categories as did babies who were exposed to the same material through a “live condition” (experimenter interacting with the infant during learning). For adults, however, folk wisdom suggests that they can learn an L2 rapidly without social cues (e.g., through intensive training in a classroom) and may be less dependent on the presence of peer learners. Limited evidence, however, suggests that social cues such as joint attention may also enhance L2 learning success through orienting the learner’s attention to the correct meaning among competing alternatives 14 .

Theoretical frameworks for understanding the social brain of language Learning

The proposed SL2 model is focused on grounding L2 learning in social interaction based on both behavioral and brain data. A number of important theoretical framworks have already paved the way for the SL2 model, some of which are separately known in the domains of psycholinguistics, memory, and cognition, respectively.

First, while the classic Critical Period Hypothesis 15 suggests a biology-based account of effects of age of acquisition (AoA) on learning, the Competition Model, in its various formulations 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , provides a social-based and interactive-emergentist account of the differences between L1 and L2 learning. Upon this account, the principles of learning are not fundamentally different between the child learning an L1 and the adult learning an L2 (e.g., contra the “less is more” hypothesis 21 ), but the processes and contexts within which learning takes place may be significantly different. For children, language learning is a natural event that unfolds in the environment where they grow up. They can naturally integrate the rich perceptual and sensorimotor experiences from this environment, interacting with the objects and people and performing actions in it. Picking up and using a spoon while hearing the sound “spoon” is part of the learning process, which differs from the process where adults sitting in the classroom look at a picture of spoon and associate it to an existing label in their native language. According to MacWhinney 17 , adult L2 learning is susceptible to several major “risk factors”, factors that prevent adults from acquiring a foreign language to native competence. These include thinking in L1 only (which implies the need to translate from L2 to L1 rather than directly using L2 as a medium), social isolation (learning as an individual or through in-group communities only), and lack of perception-action resonance (lack of direct contact with the target objects or actions in the environment while learning L2). These risk factors, particularly social isolation and lack of perception-action-based contexts, may explain why adult learners display the strong parasitic L2-on-L1 representations 22 : on the one hand, adults typically start to learn L2 when they have already established a solid L1 (“entrenchment” in L1), which lends easily to L2-to-L1 translation and association; on the other hand, they lack a dynamic and variable environment to build direct relations between L2 words and the objects/concepts to which the words refer 23 . With regard to the risk factors of thinking in L1 and social isolation, empirical evidence has shown that study-abroad experience may provide some environmental support, particularly in attenuating L1 to L2 interference for late adult learners 24 .

These theoretical perspectives are consistent with a larger trend in psycholinguistics to examine language learning and bilingualism not as an individualized but a general communicative experience. Adults show significant differences in how they learn two (or more) languages, the frequency and contexts with which they use the languages, and the communicative purposes for which each language is needed, therefore showing that bilingualism is a highly dynamic developmental process 19 , 25 , 26 , 27 . The SL2 approach advocated here also echoes a movement in the broader language science, from sociocultural theory 28 to usage-based language learning 29 and conversational analysis 30 , all of which view language learning as a socially grounded process. Ellis 31 summarizes this movement with regard to its focus on “how language is learned from the participatory experience of processing language during embodied interaction in social and cultural contexts where individually desired outcomes are goals to be achieved by communicating intentions, concepts, and meaning with others.”

Second and independently, human memory research suggests that item-based learning (encoding) and use (retrieval) are highly interdependent. This is due to the associative nature of memory, in which the cognitive operations used for encoding stimulus items directly impact their subsequent retrieval. A well-established hypothesis in this regard is the “encoding-specificity” principle 32 , according to which semantic memories are more successfully retrieved if they are recalled in the same context as when they were originally encoded (e.g., if word lists were encoded underwater they would be recalled better underwater than on dry land 33 ). Related to this hypothesis is the “levels of processing” theory 34 that suggests deeper, more elaborative, or richer semantic processing during encoding would lead to more successful retrieval than shallow or surface-level processing of the same material. If encoding involves more elaborative semantic processing, e.g., using multimodal information, it will have a positive impact on memory retention and retrieval. Both the “dual encoding” theory 35 and the multimedia learning theories 36 suggest that elaborative processing with multimodal sensory information could enhance the quality of semantic memory, hence leading to better recall. One of the predictions here is a “multimodal advantage” such that, for example, people learn better with words and pictures together than with words alone 37 .

There have been several studies that build on the encoding-specificity principle to account for bilingual language processing. Marian and Kaushanskaya 38 proposed a language-dependent memory hypothesis to explain bilingual semantic/conceptual representation, according to which language is encoded in the episodic memory of an event and therefore forms part of one’s autobiographical memory. It is this episodic encoding that influences the accessibility of semantic memories. They observed that memories were more accessible when retrieved in the same language in which they were originally encoded or learned. Furthermore, this language specificity in bilingual memory is influenced by variables such as AoA, proficiency in the L2, and history of usage in the two languages 39 , 40 ; for example, richer memories were associated with an earlier age of L2 learning.

The richness of memory with regard to AoA may be explained by the rich episodic experiences/events associated with specific perceptual-sensory features in the environments, perhaps because early L1 learning includes these experiences but late L2 learning typically does not. This leads us to the embodied cognition theory 41 , 42 , according to which body-specific (e.g., head, hand, foot) and modality-specific (e.g., auditory, visual, tactile) experiences form an integral part of the learner’s mental representation of concepts, objects, and actions. This contrasts with classic cognitive theories of symbolic representation that argue that cognition and cognitive operations are modular, and that language is unrelated to the rest of cognition including perception and action 43 , 44 . The embodied cognition theory highlights the whole-body interaction with the context, that is, “interaction between perception, action, the body and the environment” 45 , and when engaged, will also activate the brain’s perceptual and sensorimotor cortex 46 , 47 . Although the embodied cognition hypotheses have been examined in many studies of brain and behavior, so far, the focus has been on native L1 speakers; whether and how body-specific and modality-specific experiences play the same role in L2 learning has not received much attention 48 , 49 . Our SL2 model argues for the important role of social interaction for L2 learning and draws on the link between learning and perception and action, as suggested by the New Science of Learning framework 1 .

Social interaction for second language learning: neuroimaging evidence

How do the theoretical frameworks above shed light on our SL2 approach in understanding the social brain of L2 learning? Although many recent neuroimaging studies have examined brain changes resulting from L2 learning 50 , most of this literature has focused on traditional L2 learning methods such as rote memorization or translation-based learning, in either classroom settings or lab-based intensive training 51 , 52 , 53 , 54 , 55 . Their findings suggest largely the engagement of language-related neural networks (e.g., the classic frontal-parietal network) and memory-related brain regions (e.g., the medial temporal region for the learning and consolidation of linguistic information; see Fig. 1 for illustration). So far, only a handful of studies have provided initial evidence on the neural networks implicated in social-based L2 learning, pointing to the following key patterns.

First, the supramarginal gyrus (SMG) and the angular gyrus (AG) could play a significant role. In one of the first studies in this domain, Jeong et al. 56 trained Japanese speakers to learn Korean words under two conditions, either through L1 translation or simulated social interaction in which the participants watched videos that showed joint activities in real-life situations (e.g., the L2 target word “Dowajo”, meaning help me in English, is shown in the video with an actor trying to move a heavy bag and asking another actor for help). The authors then asked participants to retrieve the target L2 words in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) session. The results indicated that the words learned through videos with social interactions produced more activation in the right SMG whereas the words learned from translation produced more activity in the left middle frontal gyrus (MFG). Interestingly, retrieval of L1 words (acquired by these participants in childhood through daily life) also produced greater activation in the right SMG. These findings can be interpreted to suggest that L2 words learned via social interaction (as simulated in videos through short-term training) are processed in a similar fashion as L1 words.

Second, the right inferior parietal cortex (IPL, including both SMG and AG) has been implicated more strongly in virtual reality-based (VR) interactive learning as compared with non-virtual, word-to-picture association, learning 57 . Legault and colleagues found that cortical thickness, a structural brain measure of gray-matter thickness from the surface of the cortex to the white matter, is associated with different contexts of learning: after 2–3 weeks of intensive L2 vocabulary training across seven sessions, the VR learners showed a positive correlation in the right IPL with performance across all training sessions, while the non-VR learners showed a positive correlation at the final stages only in the right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), a region associated with effective explicit language training 58 (though there is counter evidence 59 ). Furthermore, cortical thickness in the right SMG was correlated with higher accuracy scores of the delayed retention test, but only for the VR learning group. The VR group was engaged in 3D virtual environments in which the learners could dynamically view or play with the objects in an interactive manner.

Third, the right SMG is shown to be more activated in simulated partner-based learning than individual-based learning of word meanings, indicating that the mere presence of a social partner would facilitate L2 word learning 59 , like in child language learning. Verga and Kotz 59 further found that participants with higher learning outcomes showed higher activity in the right IFG during an interactive learning condition but not during an individualized non-interactive learning condition. Levels of activity in the right lingual gyrus (LG) and right caudate nucleus (CN), previously implicated in visual search process and visuospatial learning, were also found to correlate with temporal coordination between a learner and a partner during simulated interactive learning.

These brain imaging data suggest that social-based L2 learning versus classroom-based individual learning conditions can lead to distinct neural correlates; for example, social learning of L2 may engage more strongly the brain regions for visual and spatial processing 57 , 59 , which may have consequences on both encoding (learning) and retrieval of information (memory). In contrast to the idea that only the child brain may respond to social learning, these findings suggest that the adult brain displays significant neuroplasticity in response to social interaction. Jeong et al. 56 showed that if an L2 word was initially encoded in a more socially interactive condition (through video simulations), it engaged the relevant brain areas as in L1, areas that would not become activated if learning had occurred through word association or translation as in a typical L2 classroom.

Figure 2 illustrates the proposed neural correlates of social interaction in the frontal, parietal, and subcortical regions for L2 learning. The strong engagement of the SMG, AG, IFG, along with the visual (LG) and subcortical regions (CN), may form an important neural network for understanding how SL2 is instantiated in the human brain. Importantly, this network highlights the stronger role of the right-hemisphere brain regions as compared with the typical left-lateralized language networks. The IFG has long been implicated in lexical-semantic processing and its integration with memory 60 , which is shown bilaterally in both hemispheres in Fig. 2 . The other regions, the SMG, AG, LG, CN, are illustrated in Fig. 2 on the right hemisphere. The role of this “right-heavy” network is evidence of the significant neurocognitive impacts of social L2 learning as opposed to traditional methods (Fig. 1 ).

The left hemisphere regions (blue) handle lexical-semantic processing, while the right hemisphere cortical plus the subcortical regions (green) participate in social learning. IFG inferior frontal gyrus, SMG supramarginal gyrus, AG angular gyrus, LG lingual gyrus, CN caudate nucleus, MTG/ITG middle temporal gyrus/inferior temporal gyrus (Note: the right hemisphere is depicted on the left side and left hemisphere on the right side).

There are a number of important issues for further consideration with regard to the SL2 network charted in Fig. 2 . First, it is important to understand how the various areas collaborate and communicate with each other during learning and memory. A true brain network is one that involves modules, communities, and pathways that are dynamically connected and organized. An important research direction in neuroscience today is the network science approach towards the analysis of functional/structural brain patterns underlying cognition, and significant advances have been made in applying this approach to the understanding of neural circuits of learning and memory, including L2 learning 61 , 62 , 63 . It remains to be understood how the left frontal IFG and right parietal IPL areas (including SMG and AG) form a dynamic network in support of SL2 learning, alongside the visual and subcortical regions (LG and CN). It is possible that the LG and CN regions play an important early role in visuospatial analysis and learning in social settings, which feeds into action-based lexico-semantic and conceptual integration that heavily involves the SMG and AG regions, as evidenced in studies by Verga and Kotz 59 , Jeong et al. 56 , and Legault et al. 48 . The IFG then coordinates this network with significant participation of semantic memory and cognitive control as well as lexical retrieval 64 . In this regard, the IFG also plays a significant role in modulating competition between L1 and L2 in a language control network 19 , 65 .

Second, a related issue for further study is how such neural networks evolve during development, which would allow us to understand the degree to which time of learning (e.g., AoA), extent of learning, and increased proficiency may impact the dynamic changes in the neural network 50 . Elsewhere significant progress has been made in this domain 20 , 66 , 67 , but the focus there has been on the relationship between cognitive control and bilingualism and the related debate on bilingual cognitive advantage (see a recent discussion 25 ). Methodologically, to study the developmental process we will also need to pursue longitudinal neuroimaging work 51 as well as short-term intensive training paradigms. Finally, much work is needed for understanding how the SL2 network may overlap with neural networks implicated in other types of social interaction 68 , 69 . Hagoort and Indefrey 7 , 70 suggested that pragmatic inference in language processing involves the “theory of mind” (ToM) or the mentalizing network 71 , 72 , in which the medial prefrontal (mPFC), along with the temporoparietal junction (TPJ) regions, play an important role in social reasoning such as thinking about other people’s beliefs, emotions, and intentions. Not surprisingly, the extended language network (ELN) hypothesis for narrative text comprehension 73 significantly overlaps with the ToM network, involving mPFC and the TPJ in building story coherence, drawing inference, and interpreting pragmatic meaning in the narrative story being read. The ELN network allows the reader to follow the plots, empathize with the characters, and take the protagonist’s perspectives 74 , 75 . We hypothesize that the SL2 network in Fig. 2 dynamically connects to mPFC and TPJ implicated in ToM and social reasoning, although this hypothesis needs to be examined carefully by comparing learning with social interaction versus without.

New approaches toward SL2 as a theoretical hypothesis and a practical model

Embodied semantic representation in l1 and l2.

In a typical adult L2 learning setting, students rely on translation/association of two languages and rote memory, unlike the child who acquires the L1 with sensorimotor experiences in an enriched perceptual environment. For example, in an L2 classroom, the teacher introduces a new L2 word (e.g., Japanese “inu”) by its translation equivalent in the L1 (e.g., English “dog”) and the learner’s task is to form paired associations between L1 and L2 when learning the L2 vocabulary. Although this method is efficient early on, it leads to what is called a parasitic lexical representation: the L2 word is conveniently linked to a conceptual system already established through the L1 19 , 22 . Because the task of word association or translation does not encourage direct L2-to-concept relations, the link from the L2 word to the concept is weak, and has to be indirectly mediated via the L1-to-concept link 23 . More significantly from the SL2 perspective is the “collateral damage” of this parasitism: the new L2 representation lacks the relevant perceptual-spatial-sensorimotor features (e.g., shape, size, motion and location of “inu” or dog), features that are an integral part of the lexical-semantic representation in the L1.

Why can’t the adult L2 learner take the newly acquired L2 representation and map it to the rich embodied features in the L1 representational system, given that would be the most efficient way? Several computational models 22 , 76 , 77 have systematically manipulated the timing of adding new L2 items to L1 lexical structure during simultaneous or sequential learning of the two languages and showed that the L2 lexical organization is sensitive to AoA: the later L2 is learned, the less well organized and more fragmented the L2 representations are. Thus, parasitism is characteristic of L2 semantic learning in late adulthood. Hernandez et al. 19 and Li 78 attributed this to the mechanism of “entrenchment”, in which the lexical structure established by the L1 early on is entrenched to resist radical changes during later L2 learning. The entrenchment may have led to late adult L2 learner’s inability to map L2 forms directly to the rich L1 lexico-semantic representations. In a recent neuroimaging study comparing L1 vs. L2 embodied semantic representations, Zhang et al. 79 showed that L1 speakers engage a more integrated brain network connecting key areas for language and sensorimotor integration during lexico-semantic processing, whereas L2 speakers fail to activate the necessary sensorimotor information, recruiting a less integrated embodied brain system for the same task.

The persistent parasitism could also be attributed to the different contexts in which the two languages have been learned. Recent evidence from affective processing indicates that affective-specific experiences are more strongly evoked in L1 than in L2 words due to the different contexts of social learning (e.g., family vs. workplace interactions) and the co-evolution of emotional regulation systems with early language systems 80 , 81 , 82 . Consistent with embodied semantic differences 79 , such emotionality differences between L1 and L2 have been found most reliable when the L2 is a later-learned or less proficient language 80 , showing evidence that the L2 representation, if acquired late, cannot easily incorporate the rich social and affective features of the L1 representation.

How can the L2 learner break away from this parasitism so as to establish the L2 representation on a par with the L1 representation? SL2 provides a theoretical framework for addressing this question from an embodied cognition perspective. Recent work suggests that embodied actions, even when no direct social interaction is involved, can impact learning outcomes simply by engaging the body, for example, through gestures. Mayer et al. 49 showed neurocognitive differences between (a) L2 vocabulary learning with gestures that activated the superior temporal sulcus, STS, and the premotor areas, versus (b) learning without gestures that activated the right lateral occipital cortex only. Critically, learners in the gesture condition showed significantly better memory for L2 words, hence more sustained retention, than the non-gesture learners, even after 2–6 months. Such findings point to the significance of embodied “body-specific” (hands in this case) activities for learning, and are consistent with the sensorimotor-based neural accounts of semantic representation 20 . According to the “hub-and-spoke model” 83 , 84 , “modality-specific” versus “modality-independent” (or “amodal”) representations are realized in different neural circuits, in visual/auditory/motor areas versus anterior temporal lobe, respectively. However, the outcome conceptual system must encode knowledge through integrating higher-order relationships among sensory, motor, affect, and language experiences. In this regard, one of the outstanding questions raised by Pulvermüller 84 was whether semantic learning from embodied experience and context could lead to different semantic representations in the mind and the brain. This question becomes particularly relevant when we examine the contexts of SL2 learning.

Simulated social interaction, technology, and the brain

In addition to the cognitive and neuroscience models that support SL2 theoretically, recent advances in technology have enabled us to study SL2 as a practical model toward building embodied representations in the L2 through technology-based learning. Because of the L1 vs. L2 embodied representation differences 79 , the L2 learner should aim at integrating modality-specific information with the newly acquired L2 amodal representations, in order to fully approach native-like conceptual-semantic representations. Technology-based learning could aid in this process from the earliest stages of learning, given the ample evidence from (a) technology-enhanced child language learning 85 , 86 , (b) prevalence of technology-based multimedia learning for both children and adults 36 , and (c) evidence of multimedia learning effects on the brain 37 . For example, in child language, despite a clear advantage of live learning compared to screen-based DVD learning 13 , it is now shown that direct face-to-face human interaction is not a necessary condition for infant foreign language learning. Children can benefit from technology such as Skype and other screen media platforms, provided that these technologies can deliver simulated social interactions, for example, through video chats 85 . Lytle et al. 86 showed that when the same learning materials from Kuhl et al. 13 were delivered to children through play sessions with an interactive touchscreen video, children can indeed learn from the videos. This study clearly points to both the role of interactive social play (simulated through touchscreen videos) and the impact of technology, breaking the simple dichotomy between live human learning (as effective) vs. screen-based learning (as ineffective).

In real-life learning situations, students observe and integrate multiple sources of information including actions and intentions of the speaker for using specific words in specific contexts. In a follow-up study of Jeong et al. 56 , Jeong et al. 87 examined fMRI evidence during learning (i.e., encoding), under both traditional translation and simulated social interaction conditions. The authors controlled for the amount of visual information in the two conditions by using L1 text and L1 videos as baseline comparisons. In the simulated video condition, participants had to infer the meaning of L2 target words by observing social interactions of others. Learning of L2 words in this condition resulted in additional activation in the bilateral posterior STS and right IPL. Compared with learning through L1 translation, this condition also resulted in significant positive correlations between performance scores at delayed post-test and neural activities in the right TPJ, hippocampus, and motor areas.

Jeong et al.’s new findings showed that simulated social interaction methods, compared with traditional translation/association methods, may result in stronger neural activities in key brain regions implicated for memory, perception and action, which can boost both recall and sustained long-term retention. These results are consistent with the semantic memory encoding and retrieval theories reviewed earlier. They are also consistent with recent multimedia learning effects on the brain, reflected in the bimodal encoding advantage that materials learned in multimodal conditions (e.g., learned from videos that engage both auditory and visual channels 37 ) may lead to sustained neural activities in AG, mPFC, hippocampus, posterior cingulate, and subcortical areas. These brain areas, including mPFC, TPJ, and hippocampus, significantly overlapped with the SL2 brain network and the ToM network that relies on social learning and reasoning (Fig. 2 ).

Videos or other multimedia platforms, although very effective as discussed, nevertheless have their limits with regard to social interaction and “whole-body” embodiment/engagement as in real life. Recent technological advances in immersive technologies (e.g., virtual reality, VR and augmented reality, AR) enable social interaction to a greater extent, by simulating real-world contexts and promoting student learning through active and self-exploratory discovery processes 88 . VR also provides a new platform to connect cognition, language learning, and social interaction, as it allows researchers to simulate the process of learning in its natural ecology without sacrificing experimental rigor 89 , 90 . In the current consideration, and in light of Competition Model and Embodied Cognition theories discussed, VR provides a tool for students to learn L2 in a new way. Specifically, it enables the adult learner, like the child L1 learner, to directly map (“perceptually ground”) the L2 material during learning onto objects, actions, and episodic memory to form embodied semantic representations in the L2.

Although VR has been applied to L2 teaching and learning, systematic and experimental research is still scarce in understanding the effects of VR as a function of both features of the technology and characteristics of the learner 90 . Lan et al. 91 and Hsiao et al. 92 provided early evidence in this regard. The authors trained American students to learn Mandarin Chinese vocabulary through Second Life , a popular desktop virtual platform of gaming and social networking, and demonstrated that (a) the virtual learners needed only about half of the number of exposures to gain the same level of performance as learners through traditional associative learning, and (b) virtual learners showed faster acceleration of later-stage learning. More importantly, clear individual differences in learning were observed: the low-achieving learners tended to follow a fixed route in the virtual space (using the “nearest neighbor” strategy to learn), whereas the high-achieving learners were more exploratory, grouping together similarly sounding words or similarly looking objects for learning. Interestingly, such individual difference patterns could be captured by statistical methods such as “roaming entropy” to quantify the degree or variability of movement trajectories in self-directed exploration of space, a measure previously shown to correlate with neural development during spatial navigation 93 : better learners showed higher roaming entropy, indicating more exploratory analyses of the virtual environment. Thus, navigation patterns in the VR may reflect how learners conceptually organize the environment and their abilities to explore it interactively.

Most L2 virtual learning studies, like Lan et al. 91 , have relied on desktop virtual platforms like Second Life rather than more interactive and immersive VR (iVR). Limited evidence suggests that iVR, with its more realistic simulation of the visuospatial environment and more bodily activity and interaction, leads to higher accuracy in memory recall tasks 94 . It is likely that iVR, compared to desktop VR, more strongly engages the perceptual-motor systems and maximizes the integration of modality-specific experience, and therefore generates better embodied representation 90 . In Legault et al. 48 , participants wore head-mounted displays to view and interact with objects/animals in an iVR kitchen or zoo, and showed significantly better performance of L2 vocabulary attainment than learning through the L2-to-L1 word-to-word association method. Further, the kitchen words were learned better than the animal words, presumably because the learner could more directly manipulate the virtual objects in the kitchen (e.g., squatting and picking up a broom and moving it around; see Fig. 3 for an illustration) than they could with the virtual animals in the zoo. The iVR kitchen environment thus conferred more “whole-body” interactive experience to the learner, especially with respect to the engagement of the sensorimotor system 95 .

a In the iVR kitchen, the learner used her handset to point to any item and hear the corresponding word (e.g., “dao”, Chinese knife in the example). b The learner could pick up and move objects (broom in the example) by pressing a trigger button with index finger; ( c ) position of the learner picking up the item (broom)—the learner consented to the use of her photo here. d Left panel: Effect of learning context (iVR vs. word-word association); Right panel: effect of category of learning (iVR kitchen vs. iVR zoo). Error bars indicate 95% confidence intervals (CIs). * indicates significant effect (from Legault et al. 48 ; copyright permission from MDPI).

In terms of the SL2 framework, VR has the promise of providing a context of learning for children and adults on equal footing, and in particular, it simulates “situated learning”, a condition whereby learning takes place through real-world experiences and visuospatial analyses of the learning environment, experiences and analyses that are often absent in a typical classroom 88 . Therefore, the positive benefits of SL2 learning based on either real or simulated social interactions are clear, including at least the aforementioned aspects of (a) embodied, native-like, neural representation 56 , (b) more sustained long-term memory 49 , and (c) less susceptibility to L1 interference 24 . These benefits not only apply to foreign language learning, but also other educational contents such as spatial learning and memory 90 and learning of subjects in STEM (i.e., science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) 88 .

VR is an excellent example of the power of today’s technology-based learning, and it urges us to study how students can take advantage of rapidly developing technologies for better learning outcomes. We need to pay attention to the specific key features that support VR learning (e.g., immersive experience, spatial navigation, and user interactivity), the individual differences therein (e.g., cognitive characteristics of the learner including memory and motivation), and the underlying neurocognitive mechanisms (e.g., sensorimotor integration) that enable VR as an effective tool 90 . In this regard, the SL2 approach we advocate here will have the potential of not only benefitting students in terms of reaching native-like linguistic representation and communicative competence, but also providing specific recommendations to teachers in the classroom, especially for those struggling students who may need help in integrating multiple sources of information through contextualized learning. For example, as indicated by Legault et al. 48 , it is the struggling students (“the less successful learners”) who benefitted more from VR learning than from non-VR learning, whereas for the successful learners, VR versus non-VR learning did not make a significant difference. Consistent with the larger trend in education to promote personalized learning and active learning in STEM 96 , there is a movement for today’s classroom instructions to be structured differently from the traditional “teacher-centered” instructional methods, to encourage more “student-centered” interactions and in-depth discussions (e.g., the “flipped classroom” model). E-learning technologies including VR play a significant role in this movement.

Future directions

New exciting research in the neurocognitive mechanisms of SL2 has just begun. To understand different aspects of L2 learning from a multi-level language systems and multiple networks perspective 7 , neuroimaging studies should extend their focus from the lexico-semantic level to phonological, morphological, syntactic, and discourse levels with the SL2 approach. For example, if, as in infant L1 learning, L2 phonology can be learned through socially enriched linguistic exposure (e.g., multi-talker variability, visible articulation), then even late L2 adult learners may advance to native competence 97 . It is also important to examine how social interaction impacts the acquisition of different types of syntactic rules (e.g., cross-linguistically different syntactic features), as demonstrated in a recent fMRI study of the acquisition of possessive constructions in Japanese Sign Language 98 . The relationship between lexical versus syntactic acquisition is also a topic of significant research interest. While lexical learning typically elicits stronger involvement of the declarative system, morphosyntactic learning likely involves to a greater extent the procedural memory system 99 , 100 . How L2 lexical learning may also engage the procedural memory system in light of the SL2 brain network (Fig. 2 ) needs to be seriously considered and carefully examined in future studies.

Despite the significant effects of social L2 learning, individual differences have been observed as discussed 48 , 92 . It is therefore important to examine in greater detail both the contexts of learning and the characteristics of the learner 90 . Specifically, the magnitude of the effects might depend on the interaction between features of social learning and the learner’s cognitive and linguistic abilities. It is possible that highly interactive, embodied experiences are more helpful to some than to others 48 : learners who are poor at abstract associative learning may benefit more from social-interactive learning. A challenge to future research will be to identify the nature of the interaction between the individual learner’s inherent abilities and the richness of the social learning context.

Finally, a number of new directions present further research opportunities. For example, systematic investigation is needed for understanding the role of various types of non-verbal information that may contribute to positive L2 learning outcomes. Previous cognitive neuroscience studies have provided empirical evidence that non-verbal information (e.g. gesture, communicative intention) facilitates speech comprehension and production, as well as language learning in children and adults 49 , 101 , 102 . Furthermore, it is important to study how SL2 facilitates affective processing such as emotion and motivation 81 , 103 and consequently how it engages the brain’s limbic and subcortical reward systems. As discussed earlier, there is evidence that emotional responses are more strongly associated with L1 than L2 and social contexts may be a significant contributor to this association 80 , 81 . Indeed, social interaction has been studied as one of the most crucial contributors to the development of learning motivation in L2 acquisition 104 , 105 . The SL2 approach provides a framework for integrating previous findings and hypotheses with new insights from affective and cognitive neuroscience to fully understand the social brain of language learning.

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the generous support to the research reported in this article by the US National Science Foundation’s Integrative Neural and Cognitive Systems (NCS) program (NCS-1533625; BCS-1633817) and by a Faculty Startup Fund from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University to PL and the MEXT KAKENHI Grant of Japan (#18K00776) to HJ. We thank Peter Hagoort for his helpful comments on an earlier version of this article.

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What you need to know about languages in education

Why does unesco consider multilingual education and multilingualism so important .

UNESCO has been promoting multilingual education as a means to improve learning and learning outcomes and give life to linguistic and culture diversity since 1953 when a meeting of specialists in vernacular languages led to the Organization publishing the Use of Vernacular languages in education. Its position was strengthened in 1999 when the UNESCO General Conference adopted a resolution crystallising the definition of ‘multilingual education’ as the use of at least three languages: the mother tongue(s), a regional or national language and an international language. UNESCO promotes multilingualism, that is, the use of more than one language in daily life, which is normal practice where different linguistic groups exist in the same country. Literacy programmes and methodologies respond to the needs of learners best when they are context-related, bilingual and support intercultural understanding within the framework of lifelong learning. (cf. The Education 2030 Framework for Action, Target 4.6, para. 59). Multilingual education based on the mother tongue (s) in the early years of schooling plays a key role in the transition from home to school and fosters respect for diversity. As such, multilingualism contributes to learning to live together, in line with Target 4.5 and 4.7 of SDG 4.

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UNESCO produces studies and reports that help advance the recognition of multilingual education, notably in early years of schooling, with the overall objective of supporting the achievement of SDG 4 on Education, and Target 4.5 and 4. 7 in particular. It also undertakes advocacy and awareness-raising work through the annual celebration of International Mother Language Day on February 21 (see below). Finally, UNESCO pays particular attention to the promotion of multilingual education in support of indigenous peoples. UNESCO participates in, and contributes to, the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous issues (UNPFII). UNESCO is the lead agency of the United Nations International Decade of Indigenous languages (IDIL). The Organization has developed the Global Action Plan (LINK) in cooperation with the Global Task Force for Making a Decade of Action for Indigenous Languages.

What is the International Decade of Indigenous Languages? 

People’s ability and freedom to use their chosen language is essential for human dignity, peaceful co-existence and the general well-being of a society. In 2019, as a way of recognizing the challenges faced by indigenous people and the important role played by their languages in culture, knowledge, communication and education, the United Nations General Assembly declared 2022-2032 the International Decade of Indigenous Languages (IDIL) with UNESCO tasked to lead global efforts. Indigenous people are disproportionately represented among people missing out an education and their languages serve to exercise human rights, preserve history, customs and traditions and for freedom of personal expression and thought. IDIL is a global call to action to preserve, revitalize and promote indigenous languages while mainstreaming linguistic diversity and multilingualism into sustainable development efforts. Through an online platform it aims to build a global community for indigenous languages, facilitate information-sharing on activities and events organized all over the world, promote relevant resources and tools, report and monitor progress made, and create new opportunities for exchange and dialogue. #WeAreIndigenous #Indigenouslanguages. 

What is the purpose of International Mother Language Day? 

Each year on February 21 UNESCO celebrates International Mother Language Day (IMLD) highlighting different aspects of linguistic diversity and multilingualism. IMLD, an initiative from UNESCO member State Bangladesh, promotes the importance of multilingual education and cultural and linguistic diversity for sustainable societies. Multilingual education based on mother tongue (s) is still an exception in many countries and regions of the world. Globally 40 per cent of the population does not have access to an education in a language they speak or understand.  At the same time linguistic diversity is increasingly threatened as more and more languages disappear. It is critical that these languages are kept alive since multilingual and multicultural societies exist through their languages which transmit world views and preserve local and traditional knowledge and cultures in a sustainable way. 

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The power of language: How words shape people, culture

Speaking, writing and reading are integral to everyday life, where language is the primary tool for expression and communication. Studying how people use language – what words and phrases they unconsciously choose and combine – can help us better understand ourselves and why we behave the way we do.

Linguistics scholars seek to determine what is unique and universal about the language we use, how it is acquired and the ways it changes over time. They consider language as a cultural, social and psychological phenomenon.

“Understanding why and how languages differ tells about the range of what is human,” said Dan Jurafsky , the Jackson Eli Reynolds Professor in Humanities and chair of the Department of Linguistics in the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford . “Discovering what’s universal about languages can help us understand the core of our humanity.”

The stories below represent some of the ways linguists have investigated many aspects of language, including its semantics and syntax, phonetics and phonology, and its social, psychological and computational aspects.

Understanding stereotypes

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Language can play a big role in how we and others perceive the world, and linguists work to discover what words and phrases can influence us, unknowingly.

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Cops speak less respectfully to black community members

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Jurafsky said it’s important to study languages other than our own and how they develop over time because it can help scholars understand what lies at the foundation of humans’ unique way of communicating with one another.

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Bilingual education for young children: review of the effects and consequences

Ellen bialystok.

Department of Psychology, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada

Bilingual education has been an educational option in many countries for over 50 years but it remains controversial, especially in terms of its appropriateness for all children. The present review examines research evaluating the outcomes of bilingual education for language and literacy levels, academic achievement, and suitability for children with special challenges. The focus is on early education and the emphasis is on American contexts. Special attention is paid to factors such as socioeconomic status that are often confounded with the outcomes of bilingual education. The conclusion is that there is no evidence for harmful effects of bilingual education and much evidence for net benefits in many domains.

In the US, bilingual education has been a controversial topic almost since the founding of the nation, and from the beginning, the discussions were imbued with political rhetoric (for reviews see Nieto 2009 ; Ovando 2003 ). The Bilingual Education Act of 1968 recognized the situation of minority children with limited proficiency in English and created funding for programs that would assist these children to succeed in American schools and develop their proficiency in both English and their home language. The act was largely focused on Spanish speakers, but subsequent groups, such as Chinese speakers, brought about amendments to the act to expand its scope ( Lau vs. Nichols, 1974 ). Other countries have had a different experience with bilingual education and a different set of political and social associations with these programs. A prime example is Canada, where the social, demographic, and political situations were different from those in the US. Although Canada is officially a bilingual country, there is not a single language that defines most bilinguals as there is in the US, because the majority of bilinguals in Canada speak one of the official languages (English or French) and a heritage language. Surprisingly, few citizens are actually proficient in both official languages. In the 2011 census, about 17% of respondents stated they could conduct a conversation in both English and French, a considerable increase from the estimate of 12% who could achieve this in 1961 ( Lepage and Corbeil 2013 ), although still below what would be expected in a bilingual society. One factor that may be responsible for the growth in French-English bilingualism over the 50-year period is the impact in the past generation of popular French immersion programs in which children who would otherwise have had little exposure to French became very proficient and in many cases, fully bilingual.

In Europe, attitudes to languages, educational systems, and bilingualism in general, to name a few factors, are very different from those in North America. Garcia (2011) makes a strong case for the widespread appropriateness of bilingual education globally, but the context in which education takes place is crucial; there is no universal prescription for bilingual education and no universal outcomes. As Baker (2011) points out, the perspective on bilingual education depends largely on the point of view, and studies conducted in one context may have little relevance for bilingual education in another context. Therefore, this review will focus primarily on North American contexts and address some of the central issues regarding the efficacy of bilingual education for that region, in particular for the US.

Finally, the review will focus on the early school years because they are the foundation for academic outcomes. Education is a long-term process and results continue to influence outcomes throughout life. However, the early years are crucial for establishing basic skills and attitudes toward education, so the examination of bilingual education in the present review will focus on the first three years of schooling. To summarize, the review is restricted in that it selectively reviews studies whose empirical properties are considered sufficiently reliable to form conclusions, with a focus on primary education in the context in the US, and addressing specific questions, namely, language outcomes, cognitive outcomes, and generalized appropriateness of the programs.

Bilingual education is an umbrella terms that encompasses a range of education programs that have been designed for an even wider range of children and a host of special circumstances. Essentially, bilingual education refers to any school program in which more than one language is used in the curriculum to teach non-language academic subject matter or the language of schooling does not match the language of the home or community, but the reasons for incorporating the languages, the specific languages chosen, the structure of the program, and the relation between the school languages and the community vary widely and influence educational outcomes. Over-riding all this is the distinction between ‘bilingual education’ and the ‘education of bilingual children’, concepts that are importantly different from each other. Consider the following two definitions for bilingual education. Genesee (2004 , 548) defined bilingual education as ‘education that aims to promote bilingual (or multilingual) competence by using both (or all) languages as media of instruction for significant portions of the academic curriculum’. In contrast, Rossell and Baker (1996 , 7) defined bilingual education as ‘teaching non-English-speaking students to read and write in their native tongue, teaching them content in their native tongue, and gradually transitioning them to English over a period of several years’. Clearly these definitions are describing different situations and carry different goals.

This distinction between bilingual education and the education of bilingual children is part of the historical difference between the development of bilingual education in the US and elsewhere. For bilingual education of minority language students in the US, the motivation was to create an educational program for children who were at-risk of academic failure because of low proficiency in English, the language of schooling, by engaging them in the education process through the use of their home language (e.g. including Spanish in the education of Hispanic children). The success of these programs was judged primarily by proficiency in English (the majority language), with the main criterion being English language literacy. For bilingual education in Canada, in contrast, the motivation was to offer an educational alternative designed to make majority language children (i.e. English speakers) bilingual. Thus, success of these programs was judged by the extent to which children mastered the minority language while maintaining proficiency in the majority language. Similar immersion programs were developed for children to gain proficiency in both national (e.g. children of Finnish immigrants in Sweden, Troike 1978 ) and heritage languages (e.g. Hawaiian programs in the US, McCarty and Watahomigie 1998 ; Navajo programs in the US, Rosier and Holm 1980 ; Maori programs in New Zealand; Durie 1998 ; May and Hill 2005 ). All these programs fall under the general rubric of bilingual education but are importantly different from each other. A more complete range of the diversity of bilingual education programs is described by Fishman (1976) and more recently by Mehisto and Genesee (2015) .

In spite of substantial differences between them, the two goals of educating bilingual children and creating programs to make children bilingual are interrelated. In the US, there is large overlap between them because the largest number of bilingual education programs was developed to educate bilingual or limited English proficient (EP) students, primarily Spanish-speaking, who were otherwise at-risk for school failure. The present review will focus on bilingual education in general and not on the specific issues involved in the education of this particular group of children (for a detailed discussion of this issue, see August and Shanahan 2006 ). Ultimately, it is important to know if education through two languages is viable, if young children can learn in this kind of an environment, and if the outcomes of these programs meet the needs of all children. The present paper reviews evidence relevant for those judgments.

Development of language and literacy in bilingual education

Evaluation of the effectiveness of bilingual education on language and literacy outcomes requires well-controlled research. The clearest evidence for the unique contribution of bilingual education programs to these outcomes would come from randomized control trials, but such a design is almost impossible to achieve (but see Genesee and Lindholm-Leary 2012 , for discussion). The closest design to this methodological ideal is in studies that investigate bilingual education programs for which spaces are allocated by lottery because of over-demand so that comparisons can be made between children who were admitted to the program and those who were not. Children in this latter group generally enter regular classrooms and may remain on a waiting list. Even here, however, there is the possibility of bias in terms of who enters the lottery. The results of the few studies that have had the opportunity to compare these populations (e.g. Barnett et al. 2007 ) are largely consistent with the majority of the literature in which children in bilingual or single language programs are compared on critical outcome measures.

The primary goal of early schooling is to establish the foundational skills upon which children will build their educational futures. The most important of these abilities are language and literacy competence. Not surprisingly, therefore, the majority of research that has evaluated bilingual education programs has focused on children’s development of these crucial linguistic abilities. The research is complicated because the type of education program is only one of many factors that shape these emerging abilities so clear evidence for the role of the education program as distinct from other sources of variance in the child’s background requires carefully controlled designs. For example, children who are Hispanic but are native speakers of English have education outcomes in terms of dropout rates and academic failure that are similar to Hispanic children who are Spanish-speaking, ruling out English proficiency as the explanation ( Forum for Education and Democracy 2008 ). Just as English proficiency alone cannot explain school outcomes, neither can the educational program.

In part for this reason, conclusions regarding the development of language and literacy through bilingual education in the US is complicated by the confounding of ethnicity and social class with Spanish proficiency and bilingualism (for discussion see Francis, Lesaux, and August 2006 ). Nonetheless, two studies by Lindholm-Leary and colleagues have provided reasonably clear results on these issues. In one study, Lindholm-Leary and Block (2010) assessed the English and mathematics achievement of 659 Hispanic students attending either mainstream English or various types of bilingual programs in California. In the bilingual schools, the proportion of instruction shifted from predominantly Spanish to predominantly English over the period from kindergarten to fourth grade. Students were classified as EP or English Language Learner (ELL) prior to the study. The main result was that standard scores on the English proficiency test were higher for both ELL and EP students who were in the bilingual programs than they were for children in the mainstream English programs. Similar results were found for scores on the mathematics test. Overall, students in the dual language program in this low socioeconomic status (SES) community achieved at least as well and in some cases better in both English and mathematics than did comparable students in a program in which all instruction was in English. Students in the bilingual programs also made more rapid progress across the grades in these tests than did students in the English program and, therefore, were more advanced in their trajectory to close the achievement gap with statewide norms for these tests.

In a similar study that included children in kindergarten through second grade, Lindholm-Leary (2014) assessed 283 low SES Hispanic children in either English or bilingual programs. Children entering the English kindergarten programs had higher language scores than those entering the bilingual programs, but these differences disappeared within one or two years and then reversed, with children in the bilingual program outperforming the English-only instruction group in both English and Spanish test scores by the end of second grade. Not surprisingly, children in the English program showed significant loss of Spanish proficiency, making them in fact less bilingual, a topic that will be discussed below.

Barnett et al. (2007) compared performance of low SES preschool children (3 and 4 years old) in bilingual or English-only programs, but importantly, children were assigned to these programs by lottery, thereby controlling to some extent for pre-existing differences among the children or their families. The programs were in a school district in which 76% of the children qualified for free or reduced-price lunch. The outcome measures were largely experimental tasks that assessed phonological awareness and language knowledge (primarily vocabulary), but the results were consistent with those reported in other studies. Specifically, children in both programs made comparable progress in skill development in English, but children in the bilingual program also developed these skills in Spanish, indicating that dual language instruction did not impede development of English, the L2.

In these examples, bilingual instruction had long-term benefits for children’s language and literacy proficiency in both languages. In a review and meta-analysis of this literature, Francis, Lesaux, and August (2006) concluded that ‘bilingual education has a positive effect on English reading outcomes that are small to moderate in size’ (392). Thus, overall, bilingual education for Hispanic children in the US leads to English outcomes that are equivalent to those found for children in mainstream English programs, with better outcomes for Spanish.

These results are broadly consistent with those found for bilingual education programs serving other communities, with other languages, in other countries, where students are more likely to belong to majority language groups than minority language, as in the US. Thus, the outcomes obtained with children at risk for educational failure produce patterns of results similar to those found for children with entirely different linguistic and demographic backgrounds. The most studied of these programs is Canadian French immersion in which Anglophone children in Canada are educated through French. Results of studies over the past 50 years have shown that English outcomes are equivalent to or better than those found for children in English programs (even though most instruction is in French in the primary grades) and French outcomes are moderate to high, although below levels found for native-speaking French children ( Genesee 1983 , 2004 ; Hermanto, Moreno, and Bialystok 2012 ; Swain and Lapkin 1982 ).

Three further examples with similar results come from bilingual programs operating in Italian and English, Mandarin and English, and Hebrew and Russian. Assessment of the Italian-English program was a small-scale study in which 60 children attending this program in California were evaluated from first through third grades for language and literacy ability in English and Italian ( Montanari 2013 ). Results showed that these children developed strong literacy skills in both Italian and English by first grade, even though instruction was exclusively in Italian. The second program, also implemented in California, provided instruction through Mandarin beginning in kindergarten to children who either had Mandarin exposure at home or were only English speaking ( Padilla et al. 2013 ). Like the Italian-English program, this was a small-scale study. The results showed that all children gained proficiency in both English and Mandarin and importantly achieved at least equivalent and sometimes greater than state levels on standardized tests of English, math, and science in spite of being educated through Mandarin. Finally, two studies investigated language and literacy development in Russian-Hebrew bilingual 4-year-olds who were attending either bilingual Hebrew-Russian or Hebrew schools in Israel, where Hebrew is the majority language. Again, the results showed that children in the bilingual programs developed language proficiency ( Schwartz 2013 ) and narrative skills ( Schwartz and Shaul 2013 ) in Hebrew, the majority language, at least as well as did children in the Hebrew only programs and at the same time maintained higher levels of Russian. Across all these studies, therefore, the majority language of the community was mastered whether or not it was the primary language of instruction, but the minority language required environmental support to reach high proficiency levels.

The studies that compared English-only and bilingual education in Hispanic children were generally conducted with low SES populations, but that is not the case for the non-Spanish programs: children in the Italian-English program were described as ‘middle class’; children in the Mandarin-English program were described as ‘upper middle class’; and children in the Hebrew-Russian program were described as ‘mid-level socioeconomic’. Thus, even though none of the students was at-risk in the manner generally understood for Hispanic children in Spanish-English bilingual programs, the patterns of language and literacy outcomes were similar, even if the absolute levels of achievement were different. Therefore, there is no evidence that education through two languages impedes progress in the development of language and literacy skills in the majority language and has the added benefit of developing and sustaining these skills in the minority language. This generalization about positive outcomes is confirmed by a study in which at-risk low performing children attending bilingual education or majority language English-only programs were compared for their English language and literacy performance ( Lopez and Tashakkori 2004 ). There was no evidence of additional burden on the development of English skills for children in the bilingual program.

Other academic and cognitive achievements

However important language and literacy are for children’s development, they are not the only outcomes that need to be considered in evaluating educational options for children. The impact of education through a weak or non-proficient language on children’s academic success has long been a concern. Dire warnings about harmful effects of these programs were expressed by Macnamara (1967) in his evaluation of children attending an Irish immersion program in Ireland. He reported that children in the Irish program performed more poorly in mathematics than did children in regular English programs, but he neglected to point out that the differences were found only in mathematics ‘word’ problems and not in mathematical operations. Unsurprisingly, children’s knowledge of Irish at that point was weak and interfered with their comprehension of the test questions; in tests of arithmetic calculations, there were no differences between groups. These challenges have been known for a long time (e.g. Cummins and Macnamara 1977 ) but the research remained influential. More recent research demonstrates that even simple arithmetic calculation is faster and easier in the language in which it was taught ( Spelke and Tsivkin 2001 ) and engages different parts of the brain than when the same calculations are performed in the non-school language ( Mondt et al. 2011 ), but the Irish proficiency of the children in Macnamara’s (1967) study may have been too weak to show this effect.

Other studies have generally found no academic cost for children studying in a bilingual program. In the Mandarin-English bilingual education program described above ( Padilla et al. 2013 ), for example, children in the dual language immersion and the English programs performed equivalently on standardized tests of mathematics until third grade, but immersion children began outperforming non-immersion children in fourth grade. Thus, these program effects sometimes take time to demonstrate. For tests of science achievement, there were no differences between children in the two programs.

There is evidence that bilingualism alone, aside from bilingual education, may be beneficial for aspects of academic achievement. Han (2012) conducted a longitudinal study in the US of a national cohort of over 16,000 children in kindergarten and followed their academic progress until fifth grade. Because of national education policies requiring standardized testing on English literacy and math scores, large data bases are available for such investigations. In the study by Han (2012) , the children included in the analyses were Hispanic, Asian, or non-Hispanic native-born White and outcome variables were results on standardized reading and math achievement scores. Although the analyses did not explicitly control for the effect of education program, the quality of education was defined in terms of the resources and interventions for English support available in the school program, quality of the teachers, and other such factors and included in the analyses. The results were based on a complex classification of children according to their language abilities. Most relevant is a group called ‘mixed bilingual’, referring to children who spoke a non-English language at home to a high degree of fluency. Although these children entered kindergarten with limited English proficiency and obtained initial scores on both English and math tests that were lower than native English-speaking children, they fully closed the math gap by fifth grade, an achievement that the Han attributes to bilingualism. Nonetheless, English scores still lagged by fifth grade. The focus of the analyses were on quality of school programs, availability of resources, and quality of school personnel, all of which contributed significantly to children’s success. The study was not designed to evaluate the effectiveness of bilingual education but the results are consistent with the conclusion that children’s bilingualism can be a positive factor in school achievement.

Much of this research has focused on children in low SES environments, but Marian, Shook, and Schroeder (2013) extended the question to investigate whether these results would be similar for Spanish-speaking low SES children and monolingual English-speaking middle-class children who were in Spanish-English bilingual programs and were instructed through Spanish from kindergarten. The numbers of children in each of the relevant groups defined by language and social background, grade, and education program were vastly different (ranging from 6 to 624), so non-parametric analyses were used and results need to be interpreted cautiously. The analyses of children’s performance on standardized tests of reading and mathematics showed better outcomes for children in bilingual programs than monolingual programs for both minority Spanish and majority English-speaking children, although there were differences in the size and timing of these effects for children from the two language backgrounds. Thus, all children profited from the bilingual education program, although not surprisingly their progress depended as well on other factors known to affect education outcomes.

One explanation that Marian and colleagues offer for the better mathematics outcomes for children in the bilingual programs is that the bilingualism achieved in these programs led to higher levels of executive function and that better executive function was the mechanism for the improvement in math performance. Several studies of young children in the early grades have demonstrated a direct relationship between children’s executive functioning and mathematics achievement ( Blair and Razza 2007 ; Bull, Espy, and Wiebe 2008 ) and a large body of research has established that bilingualism promotes the development of executive function in young children (see Barac et al. 2014 for review; Adesope et al. 2010 for meta-analysis). Importantly, children’s level of executive functioning predicts academic success ( Best, Miller, and Naglieri 2011 ; McClelland, Morrison, and Holmes 2000 ), and academic success predicts long-term health and well-being ( Duncan, Ziol-Guest, and Kalil 2010 ). Therefore, bilingual education may have a serendipitous effect in that it not only promotes bilingualism but also enhances a crucial aspect of cognitive performance.

There is a large and growing literature investigating the relation between bilingualism and executive functioning in young children, but three studies are particularly relevant. The first study is interesting because the results were unexpected. Mezzacappa (2004) used the children’s Attention Network Task ( Fan et al. 2002 ) to assess executive functioning in 6-year-old children who varied in SES (middle-class or low) and ethnicity (White, African-American, or Hispanic). In addition to expected effects of SES, he found that Hispanic children outperformed the other groups, particularly on the most difficult condition. Although he did not collect information about children’s language proficiency or level of bilingualism, he noted that 69% of the Hispanic children spoke Spanish at home, making them at least somewhat bilingual. Mezzacappa proposed that this bilingualism was responsible for the superior executive function performance by children in that group.

The second study was a relatively small-scale study that examined children from low SES communities in which about 90% of children received free or reduced-price lunch. Esposito and Baker-Ward (2013) administered two executive function tasks to children in kindergarten, second grade and fourth grade who were in a bilingual education or English-only program. Their results showed that children in second and fourth grades in the bilingual program outperformed children in the English program on the trail-making task, an executive function task that has previously been shown to be performed better by bilingual than monolingual 8-year-olds ( Bialystok 2010 ). There were no differences between children in the two kindergarten programs, but all these children found the task to be difficult. Because of the small sample size, the results need to be considered more suggestive than definitive, but they point to the possibility that even limited exposure to bilingual education improves children’s executive function.

Another small-scale study conducted with a population of middle-class children from kindergarten through second grade produced somewhat different results. Kaushanskaya, Gross, and Buac (2014) examined the effects of classroom bilingualism on executive functioning as measured by task shifting as well as measures of verbal memory and word learning. For task switching, they used the Dimensional Change Card Sorting Task ( Frye, Zelazo, and Palfai 1995 ), a task previously found to be performed better by bilingual than monolingual preschool children ( Bialystok 1999 ). There were no performance differences between children in the two programs on the executive function shifting task, but the task was arguably too easy for the children since it is typically used with younger children, or on a test of verbal short-term memory. However, tests of verbal working memory and word learning were performed better by the children in the bilingual education program.

In these three examples, children who were assigned to groups either because of ethnicity ( Mezzacappa 2004 ) or education program ( Esposito and Baker-Ward 2013 ; Kaushanskaya, Gross, and Buac 2014 ) were compared to controls for their performance on executive function tasks. A different approach is to use exposure to bilingual education as a scaled variable to determine if it is associated with executive function performance and thereby avoid between-groups comparisons. Two studies by Bialystok and Barac (2012) investigated the relation between the amount of time young children had spent in an immersion program and performance on executive function tasks. Children from monolingual English-speaking homes who were attending schools in which instruction was either in Hebrew (Study 1) or French (Study 2) were administered executive function and metalinguistic tasks. The tasks were different in both studies, but the results were the same: performance on the metalinguistic task was related to children’s verbal ability and intelligence but performance on the executive function task was related to the length of time children had spent in the bilingual program and their degree of bilingualism. Similar results were reported in two studies by Nicolay and Poncelet (2013 , 2015 ) showing better performance on executive function tasks for children in French immersion programs. In these studies, children were followed longitudinally, ruling out initial differences in ability. Thus, the results show that children’s level of executive function performance is related to their degree of bilingualism and experience with bilingual education.

Is bilingual education for everyone?

There have always been questions about whether bilingual education programs were appropriate for all children or whether they were an exclusive option best suited for high-achieving students with strong family support (see review and discussion in Cummins and Swain 1986 ). Equally, some have argued that bilingualism itself is difficult and should be reserved as a ‘privilege’ for children who face no additional burdens from linguistic or other cognitive challenges, a position strongly disputed by Kohnert (2007) . Unsurprisingly, the answer is not simple, but the evidence that exists supports Kohnert’s view that bilingualism adds no further cost to children’s achievement regardless of their initial levels of language and cognitive ability.

Consider first the role of intelligence, a variable on which all children differ. In one of the first studies on this issue, Genesee (1976) examined the role of IQ as measured by a standardized test on the development of French second-language abilities for children who were learning French either through immersion or foreign language instruction in school. The main result was that IQ was related to reading ability and language use for all children, but there was no association between IQ and overall communication ability; children at all levels of intelligence communicated with similar effectiveness. Importantly, there were no interactions with the type of program in which children were learning French: low IQ children in the immersion and foreign language program performed similarly to each other on all language and cognitive measures, in both cases performing more poorly than children with higher IQ scores in both programs. Thus, there was no evidence of any negative effect of participation in an immersion program for children whose measured intelligence was below average.

More serious than low IQ, however, is the possible role that a learning disability, such as specific language impairment (SLI), might play in children’s response to bilingual education. The limited evidence for this question is similar to that found for IQ, namely, that the deficit associated with SLI is not further exacerbated by bilingual education and has the additional consequence of imparting at least some measure of proficiency in another language. Few studies have investigated this question in the context of bilingual education, perhaps because children with language impairment are widely discouraged from attending bilingual education programs, but an early study by Bruck (1982) assessed language and cognitive outcomes for children in kindergarten and first grade in French immersion programs, some of whom had been diagnosed with language impairment. These were Anglophone children being educated through French, and linguistic measures for both French and English were included. The crucial comparison was the progress found for language-impaired children in the French immersion program and similar children in a mainstream English instruction program. There were no significant differences between these groups. Even though these children struggled, they did not struggle more than they would if they were in the bilingual program. This issue of selecting the appropriate comparison is central to the debate. Trites (1978) , for example, argued against placing children with learning disabilities in French immersion programs, but his comparison was based on children without learning disabilities in those programs rather than children with learning disabilities in monolingual English programs.

Aside from the role of bilingual education in children’s language development, it is difficult to compare skills in the two languages for children with SLI because the areas of linguistic difficulty associated with this disorder vary across languages ( Kohnert, Windsor, and Ebert 2009 ). With this caveat in mind, a few studies have examined the effect of SLI on language development for children who grow up bilingually. Korkman et al. (2012) compared monolingual Swedish speakers and Swedish-Finnish bilingual children who were 5–7 years old on a range of language assessments in Swedish. About half of the children in each language group were typically developing and half had been diagnosed with SLI. As expected, children with SLI performed more poorly than typically developing children on these linguistic measures, an outcome required by definition, but there was no added burden from bilingualism and no interaction of bilingualism and language impairment. Bilingual children also obtained lower scores on some vocabulary measures, but this occurred equally for bilingual children in the typically developing and SLI groups and is consistent with large-scale studies comparing the vocabulary of monolingual and bilingual children ( Bialystok et al. 2010 ).

Paradis et al. (2003) took a different approach to investigating syntactic proficiency in children with SLI. Rather than comparing children with SLI to typically developing children, they compared three groups of 7-year-old children, all of whom had been diagnosed with SLI: monolingual English speakers, monolingual French speakers, and English-French bilinguals. The sample was small and consisted of only 8 bilingual children, 21 English monolingual children, and 10 French monolingual children, so data were analyzed with non-parametric tests and results must be interpreted cautiously. The results showed no significant differences between the three groups of children in their mastery of morphosyntax; in other words, no additional delay to language acquisition could be attributed to bilingualism for children with SLI.

The most salient risk factor generally considered in this literature is not individual differences in children’s ability to become bilingual but rather low SES, a situation that applies to many bilingual Hispanic children in the US. Although it was discussed above in the context of testing outcomes of bilingual education, the issue is sufficiently important to warrant further consideration.

The main concern for Hispanic children from Spanish-speaking homes in the US is whether they will acquire adequate levels of English language proficiency and literacy to function in school and beyond. Although there is some controversy over this question, the majority of studies have shown improved outcomes with bilingual education ( Genesee and Lindholm-Leary 2012 ). This conclusion is supported by two major reviews and meta-analyses conducted first by Willig (1985) and then by Rolstad, Mahoney, and Glass (2005) for papers published after the Willig review. In a later review and meta-analysis, Francis, Lesaux, and August (2006) came to a broader and more emphatic conclusion: ‘there is no indication that bilingual instruction impedes academic achievement in either the native language or English, whether for language-minority students, students receiving heritage language instruction, or those enrolled in French immersion programs’ (397). The most persuasive evidence on this point comes from the large-scale longitudinal study and review conducted by Collier and Thomas (2004) that included every variety of bilingual education; the authors decide unequivocally for the superiority of bilingual education in developing the skills and knowledge of Hispanic and other at-risk children.

Contrary to this conclusion, Rossell and Baker (1996) argued that the effectiveness of bilingual education is inconclusive. As stated earlier, Rossell and Baker defined bilingual education narrowly and considered only programs that provided instruction through the first language for limited EP children, in other words, Spanish-speaking children in the US (although curiously they included some studies of Canadian French immersion in their analyses). However, this is only one of the many incarnations of bilingual education so while an evaluation of its effectiveness is important, that evaluation does not necessarily generalize to the broader concept, a point that Rossell and Baker acknowledge. Their review began with a list of 300 studies and then excluded 228 of them for a variety of methodological reasons, so the final sample of 72 studies that entered the meta-analysis may not be representative of this literature. However, Greene (1997) conducted a follow-up study from the same database using different inclusion criteria and reported that a meta-analysis found positive outcomes for bilingual education. The decision about inclusion or exclusion of specific studies is obviously crucial to the outcome; Rossell and Baker acknowledge that Willig’s (1985) positive conclusion can be traced to her choices on this important decision. However, it is impossible to adjudicate between these two conclusions regarding whether bilingual education is the most effective way to promote English language skills in limited English proficiency children ( Willig 1985 ) or not ( Rossell and Baker 1996 ) because the conclusions were based on different evidence. Yet, whether or not there are advantages, the evidence is clear that there is no cost to the development of English language skills in bilingual programs. What is completely uncontroversial is that bilingual education additionally maintains and develops Spanish skills in these children, an outcome that Rossell and Baker note but dismiss as irrelevant.

A different way of considering the impact of bilingual education on school outcomes for low SES Hispanic children in the US is to use data on the reclassification of children from ELL to EP, a decision made on the basis of English language and literacy test scores. In that sense, reclassification is an indication that adequate levels of English proficiency have been achieved. Lindholm-Leary and Block (2010) note that the probability of these children being designated as EP after 10 years of essentially mainstream English classrooms is only 40%, so the standard is low. However, Umansky and Reardon (2014) compared this reclassification rate for Hispanic students enrolled in either bilingual or English-only classrooms and found that these rates were lower in elementary school for children in bilingual programs than in English classrooms, but that the pattern reversed by the end of high school at which time children in bilingual programs had an overall higher rate of reclassification and better academic outcomes. As with some of the studies based on test scores, English proficiency takes several years to develop, but according to the reclassification data, it developed sooner in the bilingual programs.

In a review of studies that have examined the effect of various risk factors on children’s response to bilingual education, Genesee and Fortune (2014) found no case in which the bilingual education program contributed to lower academic outcomes for these children than for similar children in monolingual programs. Children with language disability, for example, will always find language tasks to be difficult; the important outcome of this research is that they do not find such tasks to be any more difficult in two languages than they are in one.

Evaluation of bilingual education for young children

In most evaluation research for educational programs, the conclusion tends to converge on a binary answer in which the program is considered to be either effective or not, or more or less effective than a control or alternative program. Given the complexity of bilingual education, such binary conclusions are inadequate. One reason is that independently of the quality of the program, bilingual education to some extent will almost inevitably help children to become bilingual or maintain bilingualism, an outcome that in itself is valuable but rarely considered in strict program evaluations. Some research has shown that even at early stages of bilingual education the cognitive advantages of bilingualism can be detected. Therefore, beyond the possible cognitive benefits of bilingualism described above are the intangible benefits of bilingual education such as potential to connect to extended family, increased opportunity for employment in a global economy, facilitation of travel and broadening of social spheres, and enrichment from widened horizons from language, arts, and culture. When successful, bilingual education offers a unique opportunity to impart the resources to sustain a valuable lifestyle asset. As one example, recent research has shown that lifelong bilingualism contributes to cognitive reserve and delays the onset of symptoms of dementia (reviews in Bak and Alladi 2014 ; Bialystok et al. 2016 ).

These consequences of bilingualism, however, should not bias the interpretation of the evidence regarding the educational efficacy of bilingual education. To undertake that assessment, it is necessary to return to the distinction between bilingual education and the education of bilingual children. The first is a general question about the feasibility of educating children through a language in which they may not be fully proficient; the second is a specific question about the appropriateness of this option for children whose circumstances and abilities may mitigate those educational outcomes.

Both questions can be considered in terms of two factors that permeate many of these studies: the type of outcome measured and the demographic profile of the children in the program. Regarding the first, the main distinction is whether the studies assessed language proficiency or some other cognitive or academic outcome. Most studies included an evaluation of language proficiency in the majority language (English for Hispanic children in the US, French immersion children in Canada, community language for indigenous language programs in the US and elsewhere) and some included assessments of proficiency in the minority language, which is often the language of instruction (e.g. Spanish in the US, French in Canada, Maori in New Zealand). Fewer studies examined assessments of other educational outcomes, such as mathematics, subject curricula, cognitive ability, retention rates, attitudes, or enrollment in higher education. The second factor is whether the children assessed in these studies were at risk of academic failure for any number of reasons, such as low SES, poor language proficiency, or individual difficulty from learning, language, or social challenges. This combination of factors creates four categories for which there are three possible outcomes: (a) no measurable difference between bilingual and standard programs, (b) some advantage for participation in a bilingual program, or (c) hardship for students in bilingual programs that leads to poorer outcomes than would be obtained in traditional programs. If we consider that all bilingual programs additionally support some degree of bilingualism, then the only negative outcome would be (c).

Regarding language assessments, most studies show that proficiency in the majority language is comparable for children in bilingual and mainstream classes, providing that an appropriate comparison group is used and sufficient time is allowed. Children in Canadian French immersion programs develop English language skills that are at least comparable to those of other middle-class children in English programs (and sometimes higher but there may be other factors involved because of the selectivity of French immersion, see Hutchins 2015 ), and Hispanic children in US bilingual education programs eventually develop English language skills that are comparable to those of similar Hispanic children in English programs, although it takes several years to reach that level. Proficiency in the minority language is inevitably lower than is found for a native speaker of those languages, even when it is the language of instruction, but is invariably higher than levels obtained by children in English programs who have had little exposure to that language. For language proficiency, therefore, there is no evidence of a cost to the development of either language, although it may take several years to establish desired levels.

For other subject material, outcomes depend in part on the language of testing. As Macnamara (1967) showed long ago, the extent to which a weak language is used to conduct achievement tests can make the test equally a test of language proficiency, impeding children’s demonstration of proficiency in the tested content. In many cases, studies that assess academic achievement provide inadequate information about the potential involvement of language proficiency so the test results are sometimes indeterminate. At the same time, Mondt and colleagues (2011) demonstrated that simply by teaching a subject through a particular language makes proficiency in that subject more fluent when tested in the language of schooling. Thus, there are reciprocal relationships between academic achievement and the language of school instruction, and these relationships are flexible.

The second factor is the characteristics of the children themselves. Children entering school with any learning or language disability or social disadvantage will struggle to succeed, so an evaluation of bilingual education needs to hold constant these abilities and select the appropriate comparison group. Thus, the relevant question is whether children struggle disproportionately more if they are in a bilingual education program. Here, too, the evidence seems clear: there is no additional burden for children with specific challenges in bilingual programs than in single language programs if the appropriate comparison is made. But even if there were additional effort required by bilingual education, it needs to be evaluated in terms of the potential benefits for that child – the possibility of acquiring a heritage language, the opportunity to develop at least some proficiency in another language, and the potential for attaining the cognitive benefits of bilingualism.

Bilingual education is not perfect and it is not one thing. At the same time, the quality of the research is uneven and it is difficult to determine how much weight should be assigned to contradictory outcomes. The research generally pays inadequate attention to the social context in which these complex processes play out, such as home literacy, parental education, children’s levels of language proficiency, ability of parents to support children’s education in that language, and numerous other factors. Rossell and Baker (1996) claim that the research is inconclusive, and although there is still much to be learned, the weight of evidence is firmly on the side of bilingual education. In this brief review of a small portion of bilingual education programs in different countries and aimed at educating different kinds of children, there is no evidence that it creates measurable obstacles to children’s school achievement. Some studies show no advantage of bilingual education over other programs, but those need to be interpreted in terms of the benefits of learning another language and gaining access to the cognitive advantages of bilingualism. Ultimately, a proper evaluation of bilingual education requires detailed description of the structure of the program, the quality of the teaching, and the match between children’s needs and abilities and the specific educational program being offered.

There is no single factor that can override the deep complexity of children’s development and prescribe a solution for an individual child, let alone a solution for all children. For both gifted children who are certain to excel and children who face challenges, the education program they follow, including participation in a bilingual program, may not fundamentally change their school experience. There is no credible evidence that bilingual education adds or creates burden for children, yet it is incontrovertible that it provides the advantage of learning another language and possibly the cognitive benefits of bilingualism. The over-riding conclusion from the available evidence is that bilingual education is a net benefit for all children in the early school years.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the US National Institutes of Health [grant number R01HD052523].

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

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How English as a Second Language Affects Learning

Millions of U.S. students must learn English to access the rest of the curriculum -- and teachers are stepping up to help.

How ESL Affects Learning

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To meet the need, a growing number of schools and districts seek out teachers with ESL training and some require teachers with ESL certification, regardless of the subject they teach.

Almost one in 10 U.S. students in grades K-12 — about 5 million children total — are pulling double duty in school, learning English as a second language while absorbing math, science, social studies and all of the other subjects they need.

That number increased by about 1 million students over the past two decades, according to the latest statistics available from the U.S. Department of Education. While about three-quarters of those students speak Spanish at home, Arabic, Chinese, Vietnamese, Somali and Russian are also on the top 10 list, according to federal data .

The increasingly multilingual character of America’s student population creates a high-stakes challenge for all parties involved, including children in classrooms, parents who want to see them flourish and educators charged with teaching an increasingly diverse population.

A student’s ability to learn English impacts their ability to learn other subjects, and decades of research have gone into evolving frameworks and curriculum to support English learners. Now, schools are increasingly looking for teachers with specialized skills, training and cultural sensitivity to ensure that English is accessible.

“Unless you’re explicit and purposeful about language development, it won't happen,” says Tomás Galguera, a professor of education at Mills College in Oakland, California. “It must be done in a hands-on, direct way. That’s why teacher education must have a framework. It is so much more complex than vocabulary.”

Teaching An Increasingly Diverse Student Population

A Brookings Institution report in 2017 noted that America’s need for teachers with ESL training is growing. The increasing immigrant population and the move to more integrated instruction, in which English language learners are educated alongside native speakers in the same classroom, means that teachers nationwide are more likely to be confronted with students who are still learning English.

“Most teachers, regardless of where they teach, will have a very good chance of encountering ELs (English learners) during their careers,” the report says. “This creates a need not only for specialists but also for general teachers who are prepared to support ELs in the classroom.”

There are few better examples than the Los Angeles Unified School District, which serves 600,000 K-12 students across more than 1,000 schools. Roughly 45% of those students are either in the process of learning English as a second language or have transitioned out of that phase.

“If you look at the makeup of Los Angeles, LA Unified represents a tapestry of multiculturalism and multilingualism,” says Lydia Acosta Stephens, executive director of the district’s Multilingual and Multicultural Education Department.

Teaching English, experts say, goes far beyond the basics of oral and written language instruction. It often requires cultural understanding.

“We believe in the value of every child,” Stephens says. “It always begins by knowing a child’s name and then their potential, needs, and social and emotional assets — and we don't stop there. Our ultimate goal is building on who they are.”

Experts say that starts with eliminating any stigma for those learning English. Stephens, herself once an English learner in Los Angeles schools, says that was not always the case. “There was shame for me to use my home language at school,” in the 1980s, she says. “It was not honored.”

“We’re beginning to change labels,” Galguera says. “Instead of ‘English learner,’ we call the students ‘bilingual.’”

Challenges for English Language Learners

Teaching English to students who have been raised speaking Spanish, Russian, Armenian, Vietnamese or other languages from around the world can present a variety of challenges, experts say.

For example, there is often trauma involved in making the transition to a new school system in a new country with a different language. A student who arrives in a U.S. school with a strong academic background from a stable country has different needs than one whose family fled war or poverty and who may have little schooling, Galguera says.

“There are more basic needs that the teacher needs to tend to than ever before,” he says.

Because some English learners may have witnessed “the ugly side of life,” Galguera says young teachers are taught to be more aware of their actions and to see classroom policies and procedures through the lens of the student. “For example, putting a hand on the shoulder of a student can be triggering,” Galguera says, rather than the caring gesture that was intended.

Local or national attitudes about immigrants can also present a problem, Stephens says. In recent years, immigration has become a flashpoint in the national political conversation, and children can be confronted with hurtful, negative rhetoric.

Yet ensuring that students are able to feel safe and learn amid all of this is vital because learning English is integral to accessing the rest of the curriculum.

“The bottom line is they have to learn valuable content like math,” Galguera says.

The Importance of ESL Training

To meet the need, a growing number of schools and districts seek out teachers with ESL training and some require teachers with ESL certification, regardless of the subject they teach. Many colleges and universities have integrated that training into their teacher education programs so new teachers can apply it throughout their careers.

At Bradley University in Illinois, for example, the school’s education program embeds ESL, culture and history within the curriculum, says Dean Cantu, associate dean and chair of the Department of Teacher Education.

“ESL plays a major role for our students,” Cantu says. “We have embedded [ESL] in many of our degree programs, including childhood education, elementary education, special education and middle school education.”

The highest percentage of English learners in K-12 are in the western portion of the country, in states such as California (20%), Texas (17%), Nevada (16%), New Mexico (13%) and Colorado (12%), according to federal statistics. But the number jumped 28% nationwide between 2000 and 2017, with 43 states seeing an increase.

“The need is here today and it’s also going to be here tomorrow,” Cantu says of the demand for ESL teacher training. “It’s an essential skill set for our students to have over the course of their career. It’s in high demand.”

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The Importance of Language-Learning Environments to Child Language Outcomes

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Heidi M. Feldman; The Importance of Language-Learning Environments to Child Language Outcomes. Pediatrics October 2019; 144 (4): e20192157. 10.1542/peds.2019-2157

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A strong foundation in language skills is associated with positive, long-term academic, occupational, and social outcomes. Individual differences in the rate of language development appear early. Approximately 16% of children experience delays in initial phases of language learning; approximately half of those show persistent difficulties that may lead to clinical disorders. 1   Because of the high prevalence of language disorders and lifelong implications of early delays, prevention is of utmost importance. Primary prevention takes place before any problems are detected, preventing the condition from occurring. Secondary prevention takes place after early detection of a disorder, resulting in a mild rather than severe variant. Children learn language from their interactions with caregivers in their environment. An obvious direction for both primary and secondary prevention is improving language-learning environments.

In the study entitled “Parenting Behavior and Child Language: A Meta-analysis” by Madigan et al 2   in this issue of Pediatrics , the authors summarize evidence about “2 primary types of parenting” in relation to child language outcomes. Sensitive responsiveness refers to a parent’s ability to perceive, interpret, and respond quickly and appropriately to the children’s signals. The authors assume that sensitive responsiveness implies contingent responding to foster coordinated communicative exchanges. Warmth refers to caregiver physical affection or positive affect with the child. In the meta-analysis, it was found that sensitive responsiveness and warmth both contributed to child language outcomes. The effect size was greater for sensitivity than warmth and greater in studies of children from low or diverse socioeconomic status (SES) than from high SES.

The authors have performed an excellent service by conducting this meta-analysis and presenting it to a pediatric audience. So important are the features of the learning environment to language development that they have been referred to as “language nutrition.” 3   Pediatric clinicians routinely counsel families about food nutrition. We should address language nutrition with similar urgency. Of course, demonstrating the association between parenting qualities and child outcomes, as in the meta-analysis, does not yet imply which, if any, interventions would successfully change the learning environment or improve child outcomes. Data are accumulating that home-based interventions can raise the level of sensitivity and warmth, 4   although the effectiveness of less-intense interventions must be evaluated.

It is worth noting that sensitivity and warmth do not necessarily represent 2 distinct parenting types but rather 2 features of parenting. Definitions of parental sensitivity in other studies include warmth as a feature. 4   Sensitive responsivity can be disentangled from qualities specifically related to caregiver-child connections in verbal exchange. 5   Precision in the description of language-learning environments is difficult because a meta-analysis depends on the researchers’ characterization.

Sensitivity and warmth do not represent all the critical ingredients of healthy language nutrition. Three other features have been associated with language outcomes. First is the quantity of child-directed speech. Hart and Risley 6   made seminal observations that children of highly educated parents heard many more words than children of less-educated parents and then had better language skills at school entry. Findings that quantity of input is important, irrespective of SES, have been made by using all-day-long audio recordings of the child’s language environment in English- and Spanish-speaking children 7   and in children born term and preterm. 8   These studies corroborate the importance of quantity of child-directed speech and collectively form the foundation of public policy efforts to reduce the “30 million word gap” before a child’s entering school. 9   Second is the quality of the language input. 10   Quality includes diversity of the vocabulary and complexity of grammar. Third is the nature of the caregiver-child interactions, beyond responsivity and warmth. 5   Important qualitative features include degree of caregiver-child engagement with symbols, such as words or signs; frequency of routines and rituals, such as naming or book-reading; and the connectedness of exchange, reflected in topic maintenance and turn-taking.

The proportion of the various ingredients that comprise language nutrition likely varies as a function of the child’s stage of development. 4   Early on, especially in infancy, parental sensitivity and warmth (the focus of the meta-analysis) likely has substantial impact. Once children have begun speaking, cognitive and language features of the input, reflected in quantity and quality of linguistic input and qualitative features of verbal interactions, likely become increasingly impactful. 4   Although features of the environment may be modifiable, promoting stable change and sustainable results may be challenging. 11  

Meta-analyses on the topic of language development are extremely helpful. However, now we also need well-designed treatment studies to inform us about the nature and intensity of interventions to improve language-learning environments and child outcomes. On the basis of the results of the meta-analysis, primary care clinicians should educate caregivers about the importance of their parenting to their children’s language development. If families demonstrate limited warmth, responsiveness, or other components of language nutrition, it is imperative to counsel them and refer to community-based programs to educate and support them in improving their children’s language-learning environment.

Opinions expressed in these commentaries are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the American Academy of Pediatrics or its Committees.

FUNDING: Support for this work was provided by a grant from the NIH RO1- HD069150. Funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

COMPANION PAPER: A companion to this article can be found online at www.pediatrics.org/cgi/doi/10.1542/peds.2018-3556 .

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Language and Literacy Development: Research-Based, Teacher-Tested Strategies

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“Why does it tick and why does it tock?”

“Why don’t we call it a granddaughter clock?”

“Why are there pointy things stuck to a rose?”

“Why are there hairs up inside of your nose?”

She started with Why? and then What? How? and When? By bedtime she came back to Why? once again. She drifted to sleep as her dazed parents smiled at the curious thoughts of their curious child, who wanted to know what the world was about. They kissed her and whispered, “You’ll figure it out.”

—Andrea Beaty, Ada Twist, Scientist

I have dozens of favorite children’s books, but while working on this cluster about language and literacy development, Ada Twist, Scientist kept coming to mind. Ada is an African American girl who depicts the very essence of what it means to be a scientist. The book is a celebration of children’s curiosity, wonder, and desire to learn.

The more I thought about language and literacy, the more Ada became my model. All children should have books as good as Ada Twist, Scientist read to them. All children should be able to read books like Ada Twist, Scientist by the end of third grade. All children should be encouraged to ask questions about their world and be supported in developing the literacy tools (along with broad knowledge, inquiring minds, and other tools!) to answer those questions. All children should see themselves in books that rejoice in learning.

Early childhood teachers play a key role as children develop literacy. While this cluster does not cover the basics of reading instruction, it offers classroom-tested ways to make common practices like read alouds and discussions even more effective.

The cluster begins with “ Enhancing Toddlers’ Communication Skills: Partnerships with Speech-Language Pathologists ,” by Janet L. Gooch. In a mutually beneficial partnership, interns from a university communication disorders program supported Early Head Start teachers in learning several effective ways to boost toddlers’ language development, such as modeling the use of new vocabulary and expanding on what toddlers say. (One quirk of Ada Twist, Scientist is that Ada doesn’t speak until she is 3; in real life, that would be cause for significant concern. Having a submission about early speech interventions was pure serendipity.) Focusing on preschoolers, Kathleen M. Horst, Lisa H. Stewart, and Susan True offer a framework for enhancing social, emotional, and academic learning. In “ Joyful Learning with Stories: Making the Most of Read Alouds ,” they explain how to establish emotionally supportive routines that are attentive to each child’s strengths and needs while also increasing group discussions. During three to five read alouds of a book, teachers engage children in building knowledge, vocabulary, phonological awareness, and concepts of print.

Next up, readers go inside the lab school at Stepping Stones Museum for Children. In “ Equalizing Opportunities to Learn: A Collaborative Approach to Language and Literacy Development in Preschool ,” Laura B. Raynolds, Margie B. Gillis, Cristina Matos, and Kate Delli Carpini share the engaging, challenging activities they designed with and for preschoolers growing up in an under-resourced community. Devondre finds out how hard Michelangelo had to work to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and Sayo serves as a guide in the children’s classroom minimuseum— taking visitors to her artwork!

Moving into first grade, Laura Beth Kelly, Meridith K. Ogden, and Lindsey Moses explain how they helped children learn to lead and participate in meaningful discussions of literature. “ Collaborative Conversations: Speaking and Listening in the Primary Grades ” details the children’s progress (and the teacher’s methods) as they developed discussion-related social and academic skills. Although the first graders still required some teacher facilitation at the end of the school year, they made great strides in preparing for conversations, listening to their peers, extending others’ comments, asking questions, and reflecting on discussions.

Rounding out the cluster are two articles on different aspects of learning to read. In “ Sounding It Out Is Just the First Step: Supporting Young Readers ,” Sharon Ruth Gill briefly explains the complexity of the English language and suggests several ways teachers can support children as they learn to decode fluently. Her tips include giving children time to self-correct, helping them use semantic and syntactic cues, and analyzing children’s miscues to decide what to teach next.

In “ Climbing Fry’s Mountain: A Home–School Partnership for Learning Sight Words ,” Lynda M. Valerie and Kathleen A. Simoneau describe a fun program for families. With game-like activities that require only basic household items, children in kindergarten through second grade practice reading 300 sight words. Children feel successful as they begin reading, and teachers reserve instructional time for phonological awareness, phonics, vocabulary, and other essentials of early reading.

At the end of Ada Twist, Scientist , there is a marvelous illustration of Ada’s whole family reading. “They remade their world—now they’re all in the act / of helping young Ada sort fiction from fact.” It reminds me of the power of reading and of the important language and literacy work that early childhood educators do every day.

—Lisa Hansel

We’d love to hear from you!

Send your thoughts on this issue, as well as topics you’d like to read about in future issues of Young Children , to [email protected] .

Would you like to see your children’s artwork featured? For guidance on submitting print-quality photos (as well as details on permissions and licensing), see NAEYC.org/resources/pubs/authors-photographers/photos .

Is your classroom full of children’s artwork? To feature it in Young Children , see the link at the bottom of the page or email [email protected] for details.

Lisa Hansel, EdD, is the editor in chief of NAEYC's peer-reviewed journal, Young Children .

Vol. 74, No. 1

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When English becomes the global language of education we risk losing other – often better – ways of learning

Professor and Dean of Education, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

Adjunct Research Fellow Victoria University of Wellington; Head of the Quality Assurance Institute and Senior Lecturer, Universitas Islam Negeri Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta

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Muhammad Zuhdi terafiliasi dengan UIN Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta.

Stephen Dobson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington provides funding as a member of The Conversation NZ.

Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington provides funding as a member of The Conversation AU.

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The English language in education today is all-pervasive. “Hear more English, speak more English and become more successful” has become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Some say it’s already a universal language, ahead of other mother tongues such as Arabic, Chinese, Russian, Spanish or French. In reality, of course, this has been centuries in the making. Colonial conquest and global trade routes won the hearts and minds of foreign education systems.

These days, the power of English (or the versions of English spoken in different countries) has become accepted wisdom, used to justify the globalisation of education at the cost of existing systems in non-English-speaking countries.

The British Council exemplifies this, with its global presence and approving references to the “ English effect ” on educational and employment prospects.

English as a passport to success

In non-English countries the packaging of English and its promise of success takes many forms. Instead of being integrated into (or added to) national teaching curricula, English language learning institutes, language courses and international education standards can dominate whole systems.

Among the most visible examples are Cambridge Assessment International Education and the International Baccalaureate (which is truly international and, to be fair, also offered in French and Spanish).

Read more: Beyond the black hole of global university rankings: rediscovering the true value of knowledge and ideas

Schools in non-English-speaking countries attract globally ambitious parents and their children with a mix of national and international curricula, such as the courses offered by the Singapore Intercultural School across South-East Asia.

Language and the class divide

The love of all things English begins at a young age in non-English-speaking countries, promoted by pop culture, Hollywood movies, fast-food brands, sports events and TV shows.

Later, with English skills and international education qualifications from high school, the path is laid to prestigious international universities in the English-speaking world and employment opportunities at home and abroad.

But those opportunities aren’t distributed equally across socioeconomic groups. Global education in English is largely reserved for middle-class students.

This is creating a divide between those inside the global English proficiency ecosystem and those relegated to parts of the education system where such opportunities don’t exist.

For the latter there is only the national education curriculum and the lesson that social mobility is a largely unattainable goal.

The Indonesian experience

Indonesia presents a good case study. With a population of 268 million, access to English language curricula has mostly been limited to urban areas and middle-class parents who can afford to pay for private schools.

At the turn of this century, all Indonesian districts were mandated to have at least one public school offering a globally recognised curriculum in English to an international standard. But in 2013 this was deemed unconstitutional because equal educational opportunity should exist across all public schools.

Read more: Lessons taught in English are reshaping the global classroom

Nevertheless, today there are 219 private schools offering at least some part of the curriculum through Cambridge International, and 38 that identify as Muslim private schools. Western international curricula remain influential in setting the standard for what constitutes quality education.

In Muslim schools that have adopted globally recognised curricula in English, there is a tendency to over-focus on academic performance. Consequently, the important Muslim value of تَرْبِيَة ( Tarbiya ) is downplayed.

Encompassing the flourishing of the whole child and the realisation of their potential, Tarbiya is a central pillar in Muslim education. Viewed like this, schooling that concentrates solely on academic performance fails in terms of both culture and faith.

Learning is about more than academic performance

Academic performance measured by knowledge and skill is, of course, still important and a source of personal fulfilment. But without that cultural balance and the nurturing of positive character traits, we argue it lacks deeper meaning.

Read more: The top ranking education systems in the world aren't there by accident. Here's how Australia can climb up

A regulation issued by the Indonesian minister of education in 2018 underlined this. It listed a set of values and virtues that school education should foster: faith, honesty, tolerance, discipline, hard work, creativity, independence, democracy, curiosity, nationalism, patriotism, appreciation, communication, peace, a love of reading, environmental awareness, social awareness and responsibility.

These have been simplified to five basic elements of character education: religion, nationalism, Gotong Royong (collective voluntary work), independence and integrity.

These are not necessarily measurable by conventional, Western, English-speaking and empirical means. Is it time, then, to reconsider the internationalising of education (and not just in South-East Asia)? Has it gone too far, at least in its English form?

Isn’t it time to look closely at other forms of education in societies where English is not the mother tongue? These education systems are based on different values and they understand success in different ways.

It’s unfortunate so many schools view an English-speaking model as the gold standard and overlook their own local or regional wisdoms. We need to remember that encouraging young people to join a privileged English-speaking élite educated in foreign universities is only one of many possible educational options.

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Ensuring That ELLs Feel Comfortable Learning a New Language

These strategies for supporting English language learners, especially older students, can help reduce any embarrassment they may feel.

The process of learning a language requires risk-taking, perseverance, and feeling uncomfortable. This is especially true for English language learners (ELLs) studying in the United States, where peers who are native speakers of English may not have the experience of learning a language outside of their home country. The process of language acquisition can last for years, even a lifetime. Embarrassment is a common feeling, but there are ways that educators can help reduce this to encourage language growth.

Doing some of the following strategies on a regular basis one-on-one or in classroom settings can encourage language learners and remind them that language learning can be a struggle for everyone and it comes with an array of challenges and feelings. It is also important to use these methods as you feel appropriate (in moderation) in order to create a welcoming learning environment that is free of criticism and full of encouragement and positive reinforcement. 

Helping ELLs to be comfortable learning a new language

Acknowledge effort. This may include something as simple as coming to school on a regular basis. Some students, especially older teenagers in high school, may have a difficult time maintaining good attendance. So anytime they come to school, show them how proud you are to see them and how you recognize that they are working hard at school or, in some cases, making an effort to attend classes even when they work at jobs outside of school in the evenings and on weekends. 

Recognize growth. Remind students of the progress they have made since first arriving in the United States or in your school or classroom. Use specific examples of their growth that may encourage them (show them a sample of their writing from previous months or years).  

Show sincere and frequent interest in talking with them. Make small talk with ELLs as they are comfortable. Ask them about their interests and their home country and culture. In addition, encourage classmates to talk with ELLs. Create opportunities for one-on-one and small group communication. Ensure that all classmates have a translator on their phone so they can use it in their interactions with ELLs as needed. Also encourage ELLs to share words in their native language with native speakers of English during their informal chats. This can help build their confidence to engage with others in the classroom and is a way to encourage their assets. 

Make an effort to learn words and phrases in their home language. If you know their language, that’s great. Use it. Integrating the learner’s native language is a scaffold to help students learn English. Encourage classmates to learn some words in the ELL’s home language, as well. 

If you don’t know their language, ask them to teach you words and phrases. Greet them with “Hello” in their language when they arrive to class and “Goodbye” when they leave so that you’re showing them how you are also in the process of language learning. Have fun with it and smile when you make mistakes. Model this language exchange for the native speakers in the classroom, and encourage them to also learn words in the native languages of their ELL classmates. 

Compliment language skills. Praise anything you feel warrants a good word about a particular language skill—pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, handwriting, reading, writing, even risk-taking with language production. A study published in Harvard Business Review found that in business, “top performing teams give each other more than five positive comments for every criticism.” Consider this when supporting language learners.

Focus less on pronunciation and more on comprehension. When I first started teaching the English language, I worked primarily with Japanese, Korean, and Chinese students who were studying abroad in the United States. They placed much focus on improving their pronunciation—so much that this impeded their opportunity to socialize extensively with native speakers of English. They frequently expressed insecurities with their pronunciation and asked to be corrected.

Although identifying pronunciation mistakes may be welcome to some language learners, this may discourage others from trying more or cause them to feel less confident. As a language learner myself, I remember feeling hopeless when I was told by an older native speaker of the language (through a translator) that I wouldn’t be able to have a conversation with her until I perfected my pronunciation.

The above methods can equally be applied in the world language classroom, where students may feel embarrassment, which can inhibit their proclivity to speak or use the language creatively and take risks in their writing. As both a learner and a teacher of languages, I hope that the process of acquiring language is a joyful one for all those who experience it. Anyone who engages with a nonnative speaker— whether a teacher, administrator, or classmate— plays an important role in this. 

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Most Alaska students are behind in math, science and language arts, latest statewide assessments show

A classroom at Bartlett High School in Anchorage. (Emily Mesner / ADN file)

The majority of Alaska students scored below grade level proficiency in statewide math, science and language arts assessments taken last spring — even after the state lowered the standard for what is considered proficient.

The latest results of the Alaska System of Academic Readiness, known as AK STAR, were released Wednesday by the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development.

The scores showed slight improvements in student achievement from the previous year , though an administrator cautioned that the latest results did not allow for an apples-to-apples comparison to the earlier results because the proficiency metrics had been lowered.

The spring 2023 results released Wednesday “are not comparable to the 2022 results,” DEED assessment administrator Elizabeth Greninger wrote in an email. “This is due to the changes to the achievement levels (cut scores) for English language arts and mathematics assessments, as adopted by the State Board in January 2024.”

[ Dunleavy lays out efforts to preserve ability to spend public funds at private and religious schools ]

Both the Alaska Science Assessment and AK STAR were distributed to most Alaska public students, from elementary to high school. The AK STAR assessment was new last year.

Here’s how students performed:

• 68% of Alaska students tested were not proficient in English language arts.

• 68% of students tested were not proficient in math.

• 63% of students tested were not proficient in science.

• 73% of third-graders were not proficient in English language arts, and 73% of ninth-graders were not proficient in math.

• Less than a fifth of correspondence students participated in the assessments.

• In Anchorage, 36% of students were proficient in English language arts and 37% were proficient in math.

An Anchorage School District spokesperson said the district declined to comment on the results. A DEED spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment.

In January, the Alaska Board of Education approved lowering the standards of what’s considered proficient, citing the fact that Alaska had set the bar unusually high compared to other states.

The change involved an adjustment to cut scores, which are standardized test results that indicate whether the student has performed above or below grade level. Alaska’s proficiency standards have long been among the highest in the nation, and are still in the top third even after the change, education commissioner Deena Bishop told the state board at the time.

The change drew some pushback from educators who said lowering the bar for student performance wasn’t the answer to improving outcomes.

But despite the change, the latest scores in most categories closely mirrored the previous year.

In 2022, 70% of students were not proficient in English language arts; 77% were not proficient in math; and 62% were not proficient in science.

Last year, education advocates attributed the score drops in part to learning disruptions brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, which set many students behind. However, student performance on standardized tests in Alaska had been low before the pandemic: In 2018, half of the students who took statewide assessments didn’t meet grade-level standards .

Alaska student performance on standardized tests has become a highly politicized topic in Alaska this legislative session as lawmakers have tried to pass a sweeping education reform bill after years of mostly flat education funding.

Some Republican lawmakers have cited lagging student performance as an indication that public schools should be reformed as a condition for receiving additional funding. Education advocates have said the scores are a result of underfunding.

As part of that debate, Gov. Mike Dunleavy touted a national study finding Alaska charter school students far outperformed their peers at other public schools in Alaska and nationwide, which the governor said was evidence that the state needed to expand charter school offerings. That study relied on a single standardized test and drew scrutiny from lawmakers and education advocates.

Meanwhile, some rural educators say standardized tests aren’t the only or best measure of student performance, and that schools off the road system often struggle with poor internet connections that interrupt test-taking.

In an email, Anchorage School Board member Kelly Lessens cautioned against relying too heavily on the standardized test results as a measure of student achievement without considering additional context.

“We know that student achievement (proficiency) is highly correlated with poverty (economic status) in ASD and around Alaska,” she wrote. “We also know that absenteeism rates were extremely high in Alaska last year and that (class sizes) have been growing.”

Lessens said the Anchorage board would likely discuss the results in depth as a way to set reading goals for the district.

The change to the cut scores caused the results, usually released in the fall, to be delayed this year, the state education department said.

Annie Berman

Annie Berman is a reporter covering health care, education and general assignments for the Anchorage Daily News. She previously reported for Mission Local and KQED in San Francisco before joining ADN in 2020. Contact her at [email protected].

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Biden’s new Title IX rules protect LGBTQ+ students, but avoid addressing transgender athletes

FILE - Demonstrators advocating for transgender rights and healthcare stand outside of the Ohio Statehouse on Jan. 24, 2024, in Columbus, Ohio. The rights of LGBTQ+ students will be protected by federal law and victims of campus sexual assault will gain new safeguards under rules finalized Friday, April19, 2024, by the Biden administration. Notably absent from Biden’s policy, however, is any mention of transgender athletes. (AP Photo/Patrick Orsagos, File)

FILE - House Education and the Workforce Committee Chair Rep. Virginia Foxx R-N.C., speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington, April 17, 2024. The rights of LGBTQ+ students will be protected by federal law and victims of campus sexual assault will gain new safeguards under rules finalized Friday, April19, 2024, by the Biden administration. Foxx said the new regulation threatens decades of advancement for women and girls. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)

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The rights of LGBTQ+ students will be protected by federal law and victims of campus sexual assault will gain new safeguards under rules finalized Friday by the Biden administration.

The new provisions are part of a revised Title IX regulation issued by the Education Department, fulfilling a campaign pledge by President Joe Biden. He had promised to dismantle rules created by former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos , who added new protections for students accused of sexual misconduct.

Notably absent from Biden’s policy, however, is any mention of transgender athletes.

The administration originally planned to include a new policy forbidding schools from enacting outright bans on transgender athletes, but that provision was put on hold. The delay is widely seen as a political maneuver during an election year in which Republicans have rallied around bans on transgender athletes in girls’ sports.

Instead, Biden is officially undoing sexual assault rules put in place by his predecessor and current election-year opponent, former President Donald Trump. The final policy drew praise from victims’ advocates, while Republicans said it erodes the rights of accused students.

The new rule makes “crystal clear that everyone can access schools that are safe, welcoming and that respect their rights,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said.

“No one should face bullying or discrimination just because of who they are, who they love,” Cardona told reporters. “Sadly, this happens all too often.”

Biden’s regulation is meant to clarify schools’ obligations under Title IX , the 1972 sex discrimination law originally passed to address women’s rights. It applies to colleges and elementary and high schools that receive federal money. The update is to take effect in August.

Among the biggest changes is new recognition that Title IX protects LGBTQ+ students — a source of deep conflict with Republicans.

The 1972 law doesn’t directly address the issue, but the new rules clarify that Title IX also forbids discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. LGBTQ+ students who face discrimination will be entitled to a response from their school under Title IX, and those failed by their schools can seek recourse from the federal government.

Many Republicans say Congress never intended such protections under Title IX. A federal judge previously blocked Biden administration guidance to the same effect after 20 Republican-led states challenged the policy .

Rep. Virginia Foxx, a Republican from North Carolina and chair of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, said the new regulation threatens decades of advancement for women and girls.

“This final rule dumps kerosene on the already raging fire that is Democrats’ contemptuous culture war that aims to radically redefine sex and gender,” Foxx said in a statement.

In the last few years, many Republican-controlled states have adopted laws restricting the rights of transgender children , including banning gender-affirming medical care for minors. And at least 11 states restrict which bathrooms and locker rooms transgender students can use, banning them from using facilities that align with their gender identity.

But the rule makes clear that treating transgender students differently from their classmates is discrimination, putting the state bathroom restrictions in jeopardy, said Francicso M. Negron Jr., an attorney who specializes in education law.

The revision was proposed nearly two years ago but has been slowed by a comment period that drew 240,000 responses, a record for the Education Department.

Many of the changes are meant to ensure that schools and colleges respond to complaints of sexual misconduct. In general, the rules widen the type of misconduct that institutions are required to address, and it grants more protections to students who bring accusations.

Chief among the changes is a wider definition of sexual harassment. Schools now must address any unwelcome sex-based conduct that is so “severe or pervasive” that it limits a student’s equal access to an education.

Under the DeVos rules, conduct had to be “severe, pervasive and objectively offensive,” a higher bar that pushed some types of misconduct outside the purview of Title IX.

Colleges will no longer be required to hold live hearings to allow students to cross-examine one another through representatives — a signature provision from the DeVos rules.

Live hearings are allowed under the Biden rules, but they’re optional and carry new limits. Students must be able to participate from hearings remotely, for example, and schools must bar questions that are “unclear or harassing.”

As an alternative to live hearings, college officials can interview students separately, allowing each student to suggest questions and get a recording of the responses.

Those hearings were a major point of contention with victims’ advocates, who said it forced sexual assault survivors to face their attackers and discouraged people from reporting assaults. Supporters said it gave accused students a fair process to question their accusers, arguing that universities had become too quick to rule against accused students.

Victims’ advocates applauded the changes and urged colleges to implement them quickly.

“After years of pressure from students and survivors of sexual violence, the Biden Administration’s Title IX update will make schools safer and more accessible for young people, many of whom experienced irreparable harm while they fought for protection and support,” said Emma Grasso Levine, a senior manager at the group Know Your IX.

Despite the focus on safeguards for victims, the new rules preserve certain protections for accused students.

All students must have equal access to present evidence and witnesses under the new policy, and all students must have equal access to evidence. All students will be allowed to bring an advisor to campus hearings, and colleges must have an appeals process.

In general, accused students won’t be able to be disciplined until after they’re found responsible for misconduct, although the regulation allows for “emergency” removals if it’s deemed a matter of campus safety.

The American Council on Education, which represents higher education institutions, praised the new guidelines. But the group criticized the Aug. 1 compliance deadline. The timeline “disregards the difficulties inherent in making these changes on our nation’s campuses in such a short period of time,” ACE said in a statement.

The latest overhaul continues a back-and-forth political battle as presidential administrations repeatedly rewrite the rules around campus sexual misconduct.

DeVos criticized the new rule, writing on social media site X that it amounts to “ an assault on women and girls .” She said the new procedures for handling sexual assault accusations mark a return to “days where sexual misconduct was sent to campus kangaroo courts, not resolved in a way that actually sought justice,” she wrote.

The DeVos rules were themselves an overhaul of an Obama-era policy that was intended to force colleges to take accusations of campus sexual assault more seriously. Now, after years of nearly constant changes, some colleges have been pushing for a political middle ground to end the whiplash. ___

Associated Press writers Geoff Mulvihill, Annie Ma and Moriah Balingit contributed to this report.

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org .

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Yale-EPFL AI Model for Medicine Featured in 2024 AI Index Report

2024 ai index report.

Yale researchers from the Laboratory for Intelligent Global Health and Humanitarian Response Technologies (LiGHT) at the Section of Biomedical Informatics and Data Science are collaborating with a team at EPFL and the International Committee of the Red Cross to build Meditron , currently the world's best-performing open-source large language model (LLM) for medicine. Meditron was recently included in the 2024 AI Index Report released by the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence.

The index is recognized as a global leader in AI insight and has been cited by policymakers, the New York Times, and hundreds of academic publications.

LLMs, like ChatGPT, are algorithms with the power to compress complex information into a conversational interface. This is useful in medical contexts, especially in resource limited settings, according to Meditron’s developers. The student-powered collaborative teams at Yale School of Medicine and EPFL hope that Meditron will make high quality medical information more accessible.

Meditron is currently the leading open-source LLM for medicine, and performs within 1% of multi-billion dollar models like GPT-4 on tasks of medical reasoning. Meditron is adapted from Meta’s Llama 2 model and is open source, meaning that its underlying code is available for the public to evaluate and adapt. Within the first 3 months of its launch, Meditron was downloaded over 30,000 times.

“With so many start-ups using open models like Meditron as a base, venture capital and donors should recognize the value of investing in academia to create ambitiously rigorous and cost-effective development of large-scale artificial intelligence,” said Mary-Anne Hartley, MD, PhD, MPH , Assistant Professor of Biomedical Informatics and Data Science and director of LiGHT. “Academia plays an essential role in ensuring that this transformative technology is not only accessible, but openly validated in a neutral space for public good.”

The AI Index was launched in 2018.

Featured in this article

• Mary-Anne "Annie" Hartley, MD, PhD, MPH Assistant Professor of Biomedical Informatics and Data Science; Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health