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- Herausgeber: Narr Francke Attempto Verlag
- Kategorie: Fremdsprachen
- Serie: Multilingualism and Language Teaching
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
This volume examines interactions between second/foreign language acquisition and the development of cognitive abilities in learners who acquire an additional language in preschools, primary or secondary schools. The chapters explore possible links between cognitive and linguistic skills displayed by multilingual learners. This book should appeal to different kinds of readers such as linguists, psychologists and language teachers.
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Thorsten Piske / Anja Steinlen
Cognition and Second Language Acquisition
Studies on Pre-School, Primary School and Secondary School Children
DOI: https://doi.org/10.24053/9783823391944
© 2022 • Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KGDischingerweg 5 • D-72070 Tübingen
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ISSN 2199-1340
ISBN 978-3-8233-9194-4 (Print)
ISBN 978-3-8233-0161-5 (ePub)
Inhalt
Introduction
Examining possible relations between linguistic and cognitive skills in pe-school, primary schoolprimary school and secondary schoolsecondary school children
The chapters in this book examine possible links between linguistic and cognitive abilitiescognitive abilities displayed by learners who learn an additional language, i.e. a second (L2) or third (L3) language in pre-schools, primary schools and secondary schools.
Since the beginning of the 20th century, a large number of studies have examined cognitive abilitiescognitive abilities such as metalinguistic awarenessmetalinguistic awareness, intelligenceintelligence, mental flexibility and cognitive/executive control shown by learners learning more than one language at home or in different educational institutions. The results of many of these studies suggest that bi- or multilingual children may show advantages over monolingualmonolingual children in terms of learning and memorisation skills (e.g. Kuska, Zaunbauer & Möller, 2010). Multilingual children have also been reported to show advantages over monolingual children in studies, for example, examining executive functions, concentration, attention and metalinguistic awareness (e.g. Bialystok, 1999; Bialystok & Martin 2004). Furthermore, the results of several studies examining adults suggest that bi- or multlingualism may have long-term effects on adults’ cognitive skills and that it can even be associated with a substantial delay in Alzheimer’s disease and Mild Cognitive Impairment (e.g. Bialystok, Craik, Binns, Ossher & Freedman, 2014). The extent to which multilinguals show advantages over monolinguals in cognitive skilks appears to be dependent on different factors, e.g. the amount of exposure to different languages, the level of competence reached in the languages learnt and the amout of actual language use (e.g. Festman & Kersten, 2010).
The assessment of possible links between multilingualismmultilingualism and cognitive ability has changed quite drastically from the early 19th century until today (e.g. Baker, 2001; Jansen, Higuera del Moral, Barzen, Reimann & Opolka, 2021). During a first phase, which lasted until the 1960s, it was often claimed that multilingualism would be a risk for children’s mental and emotional development. According to some authors, multilingualism was a burden on the brain, would inhibit the acquisition of the majority languagemajority language spoken in a country, and could lead to mental confusion, identity conflicts, split loyalties and even schizophrenia (see e.g. the review in Baker, 2001 or Bialystok, 2015).
During the second phase, which began in the 1960s, attitudes towards the interaction between multilingualismmultilingualism and cognitive skills changed completely. An article by Peal & Lambert (1962) inspired a lot of research suggesting that the co-existence of two language systems in a human mind would not lead to mental confusion, but rather to increased mental flexibility. Peal & Lambert (1962) had examined 10-year-old monolingualmonolingualFrenchFrench and bilingual French/EnglishEnglish children in Canada in several verbal and non-verbal intelligenceintelligence tests. They found that bilingual French/English children, who were more or less equally proficient in both languages, achieved higher scores than monolingual children in a number of tasks, in particular in those that required a high degree of mental manipulation and reorganisation of visual stimuli, concept formation and symbolic flexibility. According to the authors, the results of their study suggested that bilingual children “have a language asset, are more facile at concept formation, and have a greater mental flexibility” (Peal & Lambert, 1962, p.1).
In a third phase starting around the end of the 1990s (see e.g. Bialystok, 1999; Miyake, Friedman, Emerson, Witzki, Howerter & Wager, 2000), a large number of increasingly detailed experimental studies focused on individual aspects of multilingualismmultilingualism and examined in which way monolingualmonolingual and bilingual individuals differ in the development of executive functions. The term executive functions is used to refer to basic cognitive processes such as attentional control, cognitive inhibitioninhibition, inhibitory control, working memoryworking memory, and cognitive flexibility. In addition, there are higher-order executive functions such as planning, reasoning and problem-solving (e.g. García-Madruga, Gómez-Veiga & Vila, 2016). Many studies have reported that multilinguals show advantages over monolinguals in the development of executive functions, and that this ‘bilingual advantage’ in executive function is related to degree of bilingual experience, i.e. to increased language proficiency in the different languages spoken by a multilingual (for a review, see e.g. Bialystok, 2015). The advantages shown by multilinguals in executive function tasks are often explained by referring to the simultaneous activation of more than one language in multilinguals. According to Bialystok (2015, p.118), “bilingualismbilingualismtrains executive function through its constant recruitment for language selection.” Bialystok (2015) also points out that an enhancement of executive function is not trivial because some studies have identified it as a major predictor of academic success (e.g. Best, Miller & Naglieri, 2011) and that academic success may predict long-term health and well-being (e.g. Duncan, Ziol-Guest & Kalil, 2010).
Finally, it has to be noted that more recently, an increasing number of researchers have also questioned possible cognitive benefits of bi- or multilingualismmultilingualism, because different studies have produced conflicting evidence regarding the relationship between multilingualism and cognitive skills (see e.g. Duñabeitia, Hernández, Antón, Macizo, Estévez, Fuentes & Carreiras, 2014). According to Laine & Lehtonen (2018, no page number), mixed results obtained in studies examining the possible enhancement of executive function through multilingualism may be due to three major problem areas: “the use of research designs that are weak for the task at hand, the lack of a detailed theory on how bilingual experience would modify cognition, and the employment of measures of bilingual behavior and executive functions that are troublesome”. The two authors emphasise that for a long time, research had focused too much on a possible bilingual advantage and that more attention should be given to individual features of bilingual experience likely to be responsible for putative cognitive effects. Moreover, Cox, Bak, Allerhand, Redmond, Starr, Deary & MacPherson (2016) point out that it is still unclear whether learning other languages indeed improves executive functions or whether people with better executive abilities are simply more likely to become bi- or multilingual.
The chapters in this volume do not only address possible links between linguistic and cognitive development, but they also examine effects of other variables such as linguistic processing, socio-economicsocio-economic status, ethnic background, minority vs. majority languagemajority language status, type of school programme and prior L2 knowledge on research outcomes. Altogether, this volume consists of four parts: Each of the first three parts focuses on learners of a different ageage group, i.e. pre-schoolpre-school, primary and secondary schoolsecondary school children. The fourth part consists of only one chapter that takes a critical look at the way in which certain metaphors are used in a large number of scientific papers in order to construct an appealing story of a putative ‘bilingual advantage’, which is sometimes hastily interpreted in terms of its possible relevance for educational, cultural and even medical policies.
Part 1: Linguistic and cognitive abilitiescognitive abilities in pre-schoolpre-school children
Part 1 starts with a chapter that addresses ethnic differencesethnic differences in early cognitive and language skills in migrant children living in Germany. Nicole Biedinger presents the results of a study examining children with a TurkishTurkish background whose cognitive and language development was followed from the beginning of pre-schoolpre-school until the end of primary schoolprimary school. The main finding of the study, i.e. that ethnic differences in cognitive skills (in this case, sequential and simultaneous processing skills) decrease with ageage whereas differences in language skills (in this case, GermanGerman language skills) persist, are discussed by referring to the children’s social background, the early pre-school education they received and their home environment.
In chapter 2, Katja Schmidt and Yvonne Blumenthal turn to GermanGerman-EnglishEnglish bilingual pre-schools and examine a possible connection between non-verbal intelligenceintelligence and receptivereceptive L2 vocabularyL2 vocabulary knowledge. The results of their study suggest that in bilingual pre-schoolpre-school programmes, children with a high (i.e. an above-average) level of non-verbal intelligencenon-verbal intelligence may progress much faster in receptive L2 vocabularyvocabulary acquisition than children with low and average non-verbal intelligence. According to the authors, the children with a high level of non-verbal intelligence may have shown advantages in receptive L2 vocabulary acquisition in their study because they appeared to demonstrate a relatively high level of metalinguistic awarenessmetalinguistic awareness and seemed to use specific language learning strategies that the children with low and average non-verbal intelligence did not seem to use.
Claire Goriot closes Part 1 by examining possible relations between language development (DutchDutch and EnglishEnglishreceptivereceptivevocabularyvocabulary) and executive functioningexecutive functioning development (switching and working memoryworking memory). She presents data obtained from children of three ageage groups (4-5, 8-9, and 11-12 years), who are Dutch-English bilinguals, Dutch children learning English from kindergartenkindergarten onwards or Dutch monolinguls. The bilingual children are reported to have developed greater knowledge of English vocabulary than the children in the other two groups, whereas no group differences were shown with regard to their Dutch vocabulary knowledge. Moreover, the bilingual and the monolingualmonolingual children are reported to have shown more advanced executive functioning skills than the children learning English from kindergarten onwards. According to Claire Goriot, the results obtained in her study suggest that both early bilinguals’ language and excutive functioning development is different from that of monolingual children and from children who have only little exposure to a language other than their first language (L1). However, she also points out that her study in general produced relatively mixed results, which supports the assumption that it is rather difficult to operationalise bilingualismbilingualism.
Part 2: Linguistic and cognitive abilitiescognitive abilities in primary schoolprimary school children
The second part of this volume examines different factors that may have an influence on primary schoolprimary school children’s linguistic development. In chapter 4, Gerda Videsott and Rita Franceschini compare attention mechanisms in six-year-old children growing up in the multilingual (GermanGerman, ItalianItalian, Ladin) region of South Tyrol in northern Italy. They asked children without a migrant background, whose L1 was either German or Italian, and children with a migrant background, whose L1 was a language other than German or Italian, to answer questions of a short language background questionnairequestionnaire and to take the Attentional Network TestAttentional Network Test (ANT). This test examines alertingalerting, orientingorienting, and executive control/conflictconflict. Independent of the ANT component tested (i.e. alerting orienting, conflict), children without a migrant background were found to respond more accurately but slower than their peers with a migrant background, who responded faster but less accurately. According to Videsott and Franceschini, the results of their study support the assumption that experience with multilingual surroundings has an influence on neurocognitive processes and, in particular, on the mechanism of attention. The two authors also point out that the two types of reactions shown by children with and without migrant backgrounds may have both advantages and disadvantages and that in the classroom, different didactic interventions may help children to learn to answer more quickly or to respond more accurately.
Whereas Gerda Videsott and Rita Franceschini focus exclusively on the first year of primary schoolprimary school in chapter 4, chapter 5 examines children in year 1 and in year 4, which is the last year of primary school in most federal states in Germany. In chapter 5, Anja Steinlen and Thorsten Piske explore possible effects of non-verbal intelligenceintelligence on GermanGerman and EnglishEnglishreadingreading comprehension skills shown by children attending either a partial immersion (IM) programme or a regular foreign languageforeign language (FL) programme. With regard to non-verbal intelligencenon-verbal intelligence, significant differences between the children in the two teaching programmes were found for children in year 4, but not for those in year 1. Moreover, teaching programme, parental background (education and relative wealth), gendergender and language background (majority vs. minority languageminority language children) were not identified as significant predictors of non-verbal intelligence in year 4. Finally, whereas no significant differences were found between the IM and FL children in the German reading test, the IM children outperformed the FL children in the English reading test. According to the authors, the results of their study support the findings of previous research that a) irrespective of language background and gender IM students perform better in tests examining foreign language skills than FL students and b) that there may be a positive relationship between non-verbal intelligence and L1 as well as L2 readingL2 reading comprehension.
Like Videsott & Franceschini and Steinlen & Piske, Jana Chudaske also examines non-migrant children whose L1 is a majority languagemajority language and migrant children growing up with at least one minority languageminority language. In Germany, children from minority language backgrounds have repeatedly been found to score significantly lower in tests examining their academic achievements and their achievements in the majority language GermanGerman. In chapter 6, Chudaske examines possible effects of language background and fluid intelligencefluid intelligence relating to children’s ability to think abstractly, reason quickly and problem solve independent of any previously acquired knowledge in the majority language German. As in previous research, the migrant children examined by Chudaske are reported to have scored lower in five out of six subtests of the German language test. However, the effect of migrant status on the results obtained in the German test and on teachers’ assessments of the migrant and non-migrant children’s competence in the German language was considerably reduced when basic cognitive skills were controlled for. This is why Chudaske concludes that studies examining the relationship between migrant status/language background and linguistic achievements should always also examine the relative contribution of cognitive variables to the results obtained in tests examining linguistic skills.
In contrast to chapters 4, 5 and 6, chapter 7, as the concluding chapter of part 2, focuses not only on one cognitive variable such as attention, non-verbal intelligenceintelligence or fluid intelligencefluid intelligence, but it examines the role different cognitive factors (i.e. non-verbal intelligencenon-verbal intelligence, working memoryworking memory, phonological awareness and executive control) may play in primary schoolprimary school children’s multilingual development. Holger Hopp, Teresa Kieseier, Markus Vogelbacher and Dieter Thoma examine the relative impacts of cognitive and linguistic factors on the EnglishEnglishvocabularyvocabulary and grammargrammar skills acquired by minority and majority languagemajority language students learning English as an L2 or an L3 in grades 3 and 4 of primary school. The results clearly suggest that both cognitive and linguistic factors contribute to the development of primary school children’s English skills, but that their relative impacts may differ according to linguistic domain (e.g. vocabulary or grammar), mode (i.e. productiveproductive vs. receptivereceptive skills), stages in development and group (i.e. majority language students vs. minority languageminority language students). Among many other things, the results presented by Hopp et al. suggest that majority and minority language children may differ in the way cognitive and linguistic factors affect foreign languageforeign language achievement and that for minority language children proficiency in the majority language becomes more important over time than L1 proficiency in foreign language learning.
Part 3: Linguistic and cognitive abilitiescognitive abilities in secondary schoolsecondary school children
The third part of this volume comprises of six chapters that examine linguistic and cognitive abilitiescognitive abilities in secondary schoolsecondary school students. In the initial chapter of this part, Tanja Angelovska reviews theoretical and empirical research on Input ProcessingInput Processing in order to explore the role of cognitive aspects in Processing Instruction as the pedagogical application of Input Processing. She also presents the results of an exemplary study that examines in which way Processing Instruction may affect both school-ageage (M age ≈ 10.5 years) and adult (M age ≈ 26 years) native GermanGerman learners’ acquisition of the EnglishEnglish simple past tense marking –ed. According to the results obtained in this study, Processing Instruction has positive effects on both both school-age and adult learners’ acquisition of L2 grammargrammar, but older learners may show greater improvements than younger learners, which may, among other things, be due to differences in the processing capacity of older and younger learners.
In chapter 9, Dominik Rumlich explores the role of prior L2 knowledge, cognitive abilitiescognitive abilities and demographic factors in the development of L2 proficiency in a formal classroom setting. He presents the results of a pre-post study investigating students’ ‘prior’ knowledge of EnglishEnglish as a foreign languageforeign language in a pre-test in year six (Mageage ≈ 12 years) and their ‘final’ proficiency in English as a foreign language as measured in a post-test one year later. The findings obtained in the study suggest that whereas prior knowledgeprior knowledge of the foreign language and verbal cognitive abilitiesverbal cognitive abilities are both highly relevant for the development of students’ general English as a foreign language proficiency, demographic factors such as sex are less important predictors of students’ L2 proficieny. Based on the results of his study, Dominik Rumlich calls for an incorporation of factors such as prior L2 knowledge and verbal cognitive abilities into studies on the development of classroom students’ general foreign language proficiency.
Sara Dallinger also examines students learning an L2 in a bilingual institution, and in particular, in secondary schools following a CLILCLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) approach. Although students’ figural and verbal cognitive skills have been assessed in the study, her major focus is not on cognitive factors but on the role language use factors play in CLIL students’ development of L2 proficiency in EnglishEnglish and of their subject knowledge in history. Particular attention is paid to teachers’ use of the L1 GermanGerman in different teaching situations (e.g. when new technical terms are introduced) and to teachers’expectations of students’ correct use of the foreign languageforeign language English. The results of Dallinger’s study indicate that in a CLIL context L1 use may have positive effects on learning technical terms and that higher expectations of students’ correct use of the L2 may positively affect both their L2 proficiency and their competence in a subject such as history. As the author points out, her results may have important implications for the development of a specific CLIL methodology, which still appears to be largely non-existent.
Chapter 11 continues to examine factors that may have an influence on CLILCLIL students’ achievements. Nils Jaekel points out that in countries such as Germany, schools offering CLIL programmes often select their students on the basis of a variety of high achievement criteria, which may be one of the reasons why CLIL students have in most studies been found to achieve higher levels of L2 EnglishEnglish proficiency than students in mainstream English as a foreign languageforeign language(EFLEFL) classes. In his chapter, Jaekel examines to what extent 9th grade CLIL students’ above average L2 proficieny is indeed due to positive selectionpositive selection biases into CLIL streams. He compares the composition of CLIL versus EFL classes with regard to variables such as gendergender, ageage, socioeconomic status, home language and cognitive abilitiescognitive abilities, and he measures the students’ English language proficiency by considering their last grade in English and by using a C-Test battery. The CLIL and EFL streams examined by Jaekel were indeed found to differ significantly with regard to age, socio-economicsocio-economic status and cognitive abilities, and the CLIL students performed significantly better on the C-Tests than their EFL peers. However, controlling for the positive selection bias into CLIL stream classes did not change the strong positive effect of CLIL on L2 proficiency. According to Jaekel, this finding clearly suggests that the specific characteristics of the CLIL approach, i.e. extensive L2 exposure and authentic content-related communication, are a ‘key factor’ in predicting high L2 proficiency scores.
In chapter 12, Ewa Dąbrowska and Ashley Blake explore the relationship between the acquisition of two types of grammargrammar, i.e. ‘decorative grammar’ (aspects of grammar which have abstract and largely redundant meanings) and ‘functional grammar’ (aspects of grammar that provide a clear contribution to meaning), and two cognitive abilitiescognitive abilities, i.e. the ability to automatise a complex cognitive procedure and explicit language aptitudeaptitude. They report on the results of a study examining 36 10th grade students (Mageage ≈ 15.5 years) from a Grammar School in Germany who were learning EnglishEnglish as a foreign languageforeign language and who were asked to complete a) a grammaticality judgment task used to assess performance on decorative grammar, b) a picture selection task used to assess performance on functional grammar, c) a language analysis task used to test explicit language aptitude and d) the Multiple Tower-trial of Hanoi task used to assess the ability to automatise a complex cognitive procedure. According to Dąbrowska and Blake, the results of their study suggest that speed of automatisationautomatisation is more strongly associated with decorative grammar, whereas explicit language aptitude appears to play a role in the acquisition of both decorative and functional grammar. The two authors also provide an interesting discussion of the validity of their different measures.
Part 3 finishes with a chapter in which Cordula Glass shares insights into her research on adult (Mageage ≈ around 21 years) and adolescent (M age ≈ around 15 years) native and non-native speakers’ performance in a test on collocational competence. In Glass’ study, highly educated adult native speakers of EnglishEnglish performed close to ceiling in the test on collocational competence in English. Adolescent native speakers of English, on the other hand, scored significantly lower than adult native speakers of English, which according to Glass suggests that even at the age of 15 years, the L1 acqusition of collocations is not complete. Moreover, L2 speakers with a high amount of exposure to the L2 English were found to perform equally well in the test on collocations as L1 speakers of the same age group. According to the author, this finding may indicate that a speaker’s L1 background is a less influencing factor than the amount and quality of exposure to the L2.
Part 4: Metaphors used in the context of a putative ‘bilingual advantage’
Part 4 of this volume consists of only one chapter. This chapter is different from all the other chapters in this book, because it does not include data from different groups of L1, L2 or L3 speakers, but it provides an analysis of metaphorical language used in studies examining the so-called ‘bilingual advantage’. Silke Jansen points out that scientific papers focusing on possible cognitive differences between monolinguals and bilinguals largely rely on two conceptual metaphors, i.e. ‘language learning is moving forward on a predetermined path’ and ‘language learning is being exposed to an active substance’. She describes how authors who use a ‘pathforce schema’ of linguistic and cognitive development often adopt a rather ideological perspective and construe bilinguals as high performing, healthy individuals who act as ‘ideal economic subjects’. Silke Jansen’s chapter represents a reasonable and adequate warning that we should not overinterpret the findings of research examining the relationship between linguistic and cognitive development and leap to hasty conclusions regarding the implications these findings may supposedly have for educational, cultural and maybe even medical policies.
This book could not have been completed without the support we received from different colleagues. We would like to thank Nina Rogotzki for translating two of the chapters included here. Special thanks also go to our editorial assistants Jessica Schmidt, Anna-Christin Schrötter and, in particular, Jessica Westhues. Unfortunately, it took us much longer than we had originally planned to finish working on this volume and some of the contributors have in the meantime published additional interesting studies on the relationship between multilingualism and cognitive skills. It is mainly due to Jessica Westhues’ tireless support that it was finally possible to publish the studies included in this book.
References
Baker, C. 2001. Foundations of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. 3rd ed. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Best, J.R., Miller, P.H. & Naglieri, J.A. 2011. Relations between executive function and academic achviement from ages 5 to 17 in a large, representative national sample. Learning and Individual Differences, 21 (4), 327-336.
Bialystok, E. 1999. Cognitive complexity and attentional control in the bilingual mind. Child Development, 70 (3), 636-644.
Bialystok, E. 2015. Bilingualism and the development of executive function: The role of attention. Child Bilingual Perspectives, 9 (2), 117-121.
Bialystok, E. & Martin, M.M. 2004. Attention and inhibitioninhibition in bilingual children: Evidence from the dimensional change card sort task. Developmental Science, 7 (3), 325-339.
Bialystok E., Craik F.I.M., Binns M. A., Ossher L. & Freedman M. 2014. Effects of bilingualismbilingualism on the ageage of onset and progression of MCI and AD: Evidence from executive function tests. Neuropsychology, 28 (2), 290-304.
Cox, S.R., Bak, T.H., Allerhand, M., Redmond, P., Starr, J.M., Deary, I.J. & MacPherson, S.E. 2016. Bilingualism, social cognition and executive functions: A tale of chickens and eggs. Neuropsychologia, 91, 299-306.
Duñabeitia, J.A., Hernández, J.A., Antón, E., Macizo, P. Estévez, A., Fuentes, L.J. & Carreiras, M. 2014. The inhibitory advantage in bilingual children revisited: Myth or reality? Experimental Psychology, 61 (3), 234-251.
Duncan, G.J., Ziol-Guest, K.M. & Kalil, A. 2010. Early childhood poverty and adult attainment, behavior and health. Child Development, 81 (1), 306-325.
Festman, J. & Kersten, K. 2010. Kognitive Auswirkungen von Zweisprachigkeit. In: Massler, U. & Burmeister, P. (Eds.), CLILCLIL und Immersion: Fremdsprachlicher Sachfachunterricht in der Grundschule. Braunschweig: Westermann. 38-52.
García-Madruga, J.A., Gómez-Veiga, I. & Vila, J.Ó. 2016. Executive functions and the improvement of thinking abilities: The intervention in readingreading comprehension. Frontiers in Psychology, 7 (58). doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00058.
Jansen, S., Higuera del Moral, S., Barzen, J.S., Reimann, P. & Opolka, M. 2021. Demystifying Bilingualism. How Metaphor Guides Research Towards Mystification. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
Kuska, S., Zaunbauer, A.C.M. & Möller, J. 2010. Sind Immersionsschüler wirklich leistungsstärker? Ein Lernexperiment. Zeitschrift für Entwicklungspsychologie und Pädagogische Psychologie, 42 (3), 143-153.
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Part 1: Linguistic and cognitive abilitiescognitive abilities in pre-schoolpre-school children
Ethnic differences in early cognitive and language skills: Children from ageage three to ten years
Abstract
Profound ethnic differencesethnic differences in cognitive and language skills have been reported in many studies. However, only a few studies have dealt with the early stages of such developments. This article introduces the project “Preschool Education and Educational Careers among Migrant Children” (ESKOM-VESKOM-V), Preschool Education and Educational Careers among Migrant ChildrenESKOM-Vwhich involved 1250 families in Germany with a Preschool Education and Educational Careers among Migrant ChildrenESKOM-VTurkishTurkish migration backgroundmigration background and without any migration background. It is the first study on early ethnic educational inequality in Germany and also the first longitudinal study which takes into consideration the period from pre-school to the end of primary schoolprimary school, including the choice for the secondary schoolsecondary school track. The main goal of this project is to account for ethnic differences regarding pre-schoolers’ language and cognitive skills in Germany and to determine how these skills affect school achievements and educational decisions later in life. The present study focuses on children with a Turkish background in Germany, whose cognitive and language development was followed from ageage three to ten. The results indicate that ethnic differences in cognitive skills decrease with age, whereas differences in language skills persist. These findings are discussed in the light of the children’s social background, early pre-school education, and a stimulating home environment. This chapter will conclude with some practical implications and further challenges for future research.
1Introduction
In most Western countries ethnic educational inequality is a well-established phenomenon (Heath & Brinbaum, 2007). As a major cause for this discrepancy, it is often pointed out that immigrantimmigrant children’s language skills in the school language (in this case: GermanGerman in Germany) are not ageage-appropriately developed (Kristen, Edele, Kalter, Kogan, Schulz, Stanat & Will, 2011). This disadvantage in host country language abilities already exists in early childhood even before these immigrant children attend primary schoolprimary school (Niklas, Schmiedeler, Pröstler & Schneider, 2011). Due to processes of cumulation of skills over time (Heckman, 2006), these early differences can lead to disadvantageous positions for children in their later lives, for example regarding their educational or occupational careers.
Germany is one of the countries in which rather high performance discrepancies between children with and without an immigration backgroundimmigration backgroundmigration background have been observed (Stanat & Christensen, 2006). At the beginning of the 21st century, about one-quarter of all fourth graders in Germany grew up in families with an immigration background (Kristen et al., 2011), but as of 2014, this number rose to 31 % (Statistisches Bundesamt, 2017). Given this growing number, it is a pressing political and societal task to reduce any educational discrepancies due to ethnic background. Adequate educational and occupational prospects among all groups of society are not only essential to guarantee individuals the same quality and quantity of educational opportunities but are also important on a societal level, e.g. with regard to the future economic potential of Germany (Hinte, Rinne & Zimmermann, 2012).
Thus, to enhance a smooth integration of children from families with an immigration background, it is crucial to examine conditions and activities that are likely to improve their receiving country language proficiency and consequently to promote their future life prospects. For example, within the family context, engaged parent-child interactions during early childhood, which create a stimulating home environment (e.g. readingreading aloud to children, telling stories, or playing), positively influence children’s cognitive and language development (e.g. Crosnoe, Leventhal, Wirth, Pierce, Pianta & NICHD Early Child Care Research Network, 2010; Forget-Dubois, Dionne, Lemelin, Pérusse, Tremblay & Boivin, 2009; Melhuish, Phan, Sylva, Sammons, Siraj-Blatchford & Taggart, 2008; Raviv, Kessenich & Morrison, 2004). Recent research on ethnic differencesethnic differences in cognitive and linguistic abilities of young children is quite rare in Germany, though. Especially studies on achievement within the pre-schoolpre-school sector, particularly comparisons of achievements by different ethnic groups, are lacking (Dubowy, Ebert, von Maurice & Weinert, 2008). However, in the last years, some large-scale studies have been set out to fill this gap.
This chapter will introduce such a project conducted in Germany, and it will describe the development of cognitive and language skills by children between the ageage of three and ten years. Following the presentation of the project (section 2) and its results (section 3), the findings will be discussed in relation to other large-scale national and international datasets (section 4), pointing to possible explanations for the ethnic differencesethnic differences. This paper concludes with some suggestions for future research in section 5.
2Method
The project “Preschool Education and Educational Careers among Migrant Children” (Erwerb von sprachlichen und kulturellen Kompetenzen von Migrantenkindern, ESKOM-VESKOM-V) deals with GermanGerman and immigrantimmigrant (in this case: TurkishTurkish) children’s development of cognitive and language abilities. It was carried out at the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research at the University of Mannheim (Germany) and funded by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG). German families and families of Turkish origin with a three- to four-year-old child were randomly selected from registration offices in thirty cities and communities of a local region in South-West Germany. Within the context of the study, all families with at least one of the child’s parents or grandparents being born in Turkey were considered as having a Turkish immigration background. This rather broad definition of ‘immigrant background’ was used because studies have shown that in Germany, even third-generation immigrant children at pre-schoolpre-schoolageage have lower language skills than native German children (e.g. Becker, 2011).
A computer-assisted personal interview was conducted with the child’s primary caregiver, 95 % of them were mothers. The interviews comprised questions concerning the child’s family activities, pre-schoolpre-school attendance, the social and cultural capitalcultural capital of the parents, the demography of the family members, as well as specific questions concerning the immigrantimmigrant families’ migration history and background. After the interview, the GermanGerman version of the standardised developmental test “Kaufman Assessment Battery for ChildrenKaufman Assessment Battery for ChildrenK-ABC” (K-ABCK-ABC) was conducted with the child (Melchers & Preuß, 2001) to assess children’s cognitive skills as well as their German language skills. Because the interviewers were fluent in both languages, it was possible to administer both the interview and the K-ABC instructions in either German or TurkishTurkish, depending on the preferred language of the families.
The project was designed as a longitudinal study, following children and their families from ageage three to ten. Overall, 1283 children with their families participated at the first time of testing (wave 1) in 2007. The response rates were 69 % in families of TurkishTurkish origin and 63 % in non-immigrantimmigrant (aka GermanGerman) families, respectively. Because of local limitation, the sample is not representative of the population in Germany of Turkish origin or non-immigrant families with a three-year-old child. The project continued until all children were about ten years old and left for secondary schoolsecondary school (wave 6). The children were tested five times, and about 1000 children participated each time (for details see Becker, Biedinger, Klein & Koch, 2017). In this study, however, only the data of the first five waves (children between three and eight years) are reported.
GermanGerman language abilities
The K-ABCK-ABC includes a sub-test on ‘expressive vocabularyexpressive vocabulary’ which is an adaptation of the ‘picture vocabularypicture vocabulary’ subtest of the Stanford-BINET (Melchers & Preuß, 2001), consisting of 24 tasks. The children were shown pictures of objects and were asked to name them. Although TurkishTurkish could be used for test instructions, all children had to provide the answers in GermanGerman. One point was given for each correct answer, and the raw score of correct answers was used as the dependent variable in the analyses.
Cognitive abilities
The K-ABCK-ABC includes several subtests for measuring cognitive abilitiescognitive abilities. This study focussed on gestalt closure, number recall and numeracy, which was assessed in each of the testing times. These subtests measured the children’s sequential processing and their simultaneous processing skills (for more details, see Melchers & Preuß, 2001).
In the task for gestalt closure, an inkblot drawing was shown to the child and the depicted object (e.g. a butterfly) had to be identified and named, with 24 items. In the number recall task, the child repeated a series of digits (e.g. 5-1-4-2), which were read aloud by the tester. Only such digits were used that are monosyllabic in GermanGerman and in TurkishTurkish. A maximum of 19 points could be reached. With respect to the numeracy task, the child answered 37 questions with very basic mathematical content, e.g. “How many elephants do you see?” or “Are there more elephants or tigers?”.
Early school abilities
In grade 3 (wave 5), two tests were added to assess the children’s GermanGermanreadingreading skills (i.e. Würzburger Leise Leseprobe Revidiert, WLLP, Schneider, Blanke, Faust & Küspert, 2011) and their math abilities (i.e. Deutscher Mathematiktest für dritte Klassen, DEMAT 3+, Roick, Gölitz & Hasselhorn, 2004): The WLLP is a German test for reading fluency at word level. The children silently read a word which they matched with one of four given pictures. Within three minutes the children had to identify as many words as possible out of a total of 140 items. The DEMAT-3+ includes mathematical tasks specific to grade 3. Because of time restrictions and curricular differences between schools and the different Federal States of Germany, only the subtest ‘arithmetics’ was used to assess the children’s abilities to add, subtract, and multiply. The children had ten minutes to complete the tasks.
3Results
This section presents the main results relating to ethnic differencesethnic differences in the development of cognitive and language skills of children between three and eight years. Table 1 provides an overview of the mean values as obtained for the tests for the children with a TurkishTurkish and a GermanGerman background for each of the five waves.
As Table 1 shows, significant differences between TurkishTurkish and GermanGerman children regarding their German language abilities (vocabularyvocabulary) are found for the waves 1-4. This group difference becomes smaller in wave 5 but remains significant, with some children obtaining ceiling effects in the K-ABCK-ABC.1 In general, the Turkish children start out with poorer results but eventually catch up with the German group. In contrast, the German children already have good results at the beginning of testing and continue to perform at this high level.
German
Turkish
Mean
SD
Mean
SD
Wave 1
Gestalt closure
6.16
3.03
4.52*
2.89
(4 years)
Number recall
4.96
2.48
4.81
2.37
Numeracy
5.87
3.49
4.04*
3.42
Vocabulary
13.72
2.99
4.24*
4.38
Age
42.05
3.73
42.06
3.90
N
556
544
Wave 2
Gestalt closure
10.33
3.46
9.74*
3.90
(5 years)
Number recall
7.23
2.24
7.53
2.59
Numeracy
11.61
4.04
9.58*
4.80
Vocabulary
18.03
3.07
10.50*
5.28
Age
54.61
3.95
54.79
3.97
N
580
525
Wave 3
Gestalt closure
13.97
2.86
13.53
3.23
(6 years)
Number recall
9.11
2.34
9.40
2.80
Numeracy
17.35
4.18
16.24*
4.35
Vocabulary
20.49
2.26
15.50*
4.51
Age
72.29
4.16
73.58*
4.30
N
564
481
Wave 4
Gestalt closure
16.38
2.36
15.81*
2.60
(7 years)
Number recall
10.38
2.40
10.43
2.56
Numeracy
22.24
3.82
21.10*
4.01
Vocabulary
21.58
1.73
17.56*
3.58
Age
85.06
4.09
86.04*
4.27
N
551
435
Wave 5
Gestalt closure
18.99
2.11
18.55*
2.48
(8 years)
Number recall
11.63
2.28
12.11*
2.52
Numeracy
28.59
2.55
27.70*
2.64
Vocabulary
22.82
1.32
20.73*
2.36
Age
109.55
4.71
111.06*
5.18
N
510
395
Raw scores of the tests for cognitive abilitiescognitive abilities (gestalt, recall, numeracy) and language abilities (vocabularyvocabulary). SD refers to standard deviations, N to sample size, *indicates that mean group differences are statistically significant at the 1 %-level (t-test).
With regard to cognitive abilitiescognitive abilities, the results, as shown in Table 1, are less consistent because they differ from subtest to subtest. The GermanGerman group outperformed the TurkishTurkish group in the subtest gestalt closure, with significant group differences in wave 1, 2, 4, and 5 but not in wave 3. Independent of their language background, the children’s cognitive abilities develop as a function of ageage, and group differences also change over time: The differences between Turkish and German children are more pronounced at the age of four years (wave 1) than at eight years of age (wave 5). For the subtest number recall, no significant differences between Turkish and German children are noted for waves 1-4. However, Turkish children outperform German children at the age of eight years (wave 5), with significant differences between the groups. Finally, the results for the test on numeracy are consistent. Throughout waves 1-5, the German children outperform the Turkish children, with group differences being significant, independent of the children’s age.
In wave 5 the children in grade 3 also completed the readingreading test WLLP and the math test DEMAT to assess their academic success in school. The results are presented in Table 2.
German children
Turkish children
Mean
SD
Mean
SD
WLLP
87.44
22.35
79.12*
21.35
DEMAT (add)
2.36
1.35
2.15
1.41
DEMAT (sub.)
1.53
1.52
1.26*
1.43
DEMAT (mul.)
2.28
1.35
2.09
1.32
DEMAT (total)
6.17
3.04
5.50*
3.16
N
510
395
Raw scores of the tests for the school tests for readingreading (WLLP) and maths (DEMAT, subdivided for addition, subtraction and multiplication). * indicates that the mean differences are statistically significant at the 1 %-level (t-test).
As Table 2 shows, a comparison of the results revealed significant differences between GermanGerman and TurkishTurkish children, with the German group outperforming the Turkish group in the WLLP and the DEMAT. However, in the subtests on addition and multiplication, the group differences were not significant.
4Discussion
In the following, several factors are discussed which have been shown to account for the differences between children with a GermanGerman and a TurkishTurkish background regarding their development of cognitive and language skills between three and eight years of ageage.
Cognitive abilities
Many studies have shown that children of immigrants perform worse in cognitive tests than native children (e.g. Glick, Baes & Yabiku, 2009). These differences extend to the first as well as to the second generation (see also Biedinger, 2007; de Feyter & Winsler, 2009). In studies focusing on Germany, three-year-old children with a TurkishTurkish background achieved lower scores in cognitive tests, whereas only one year later they performed even slightly better than comparable native GermanGerman children (Becker, 2010a, 2010b). A similar result was found in the present study, namely that German children generally outperformed Turkish children in cognitive tests on gestalt closure and numeracy, independent of the children’s ageage. However, no such group differences were noted for the test on number recall.
It has often been argued that ethnic differencesethnic differences are not caused by subjects’ ethnic origin itself but rather by their social background. For example, Hansen & Jones (2010) reported significant differences between native and immigrantimmigrant five-year-old children regarding their cognitive skills even when their social background (e.g. birth weight, parental education, income and living in social housing) was controlled for. Glick et al. (2009) confirmed such a finding with children under the ageage of seven when their socio-economicsocio-economic background was controlled for. However, until recently there has been a lack of large-scale datasets (in Germany and elsewhere) to verify the influence of social background, at least with respect to children’s cognitive development during pre-schoolpre-school and early primary schoolprimary school years. The results of the ESKOM-VESKOM-V project (and some additional data collected in the city of Osnabrück) indicated that even when the social background is controlled for, there are still significant differences between GermanGerman and TurkishTurkish children, with the latter obtaining lower scores in cognitive tests (Biedinger, 2009; Biedinger & Becker, 2006). However, when the home environment1 is additionally controlled for, these differences disappear (Biedinger, 2010). A more detailed analysis revealed that Turkish children even perform slightly better than native German children if additional factors like the acculturation of the parents are taken into account (Becker, Klein & Biedinger, 2013). For the city of Osnabrück, where data of school entrance tests were re-examined and controlled for social background and pre-school education, Biedinger & Becker (2006) reported that in contrast to German children, Turkish children’s cognitive, linguistic and social tests were considerably lower. However, other groups (like children from the former Soviet Union) performed as well as German children. More research is needed to examine such effects of ethnic groups in more detail.
Early cognitive differences between immigrantimmigrant and non-immigrant children may also be caused by factors influenced by the migration process, for example, the time of maternal arrival in the host country as well as maternal competence in and her usage of the language of the host country (Glick, Walker & Luz, 2013; Glick et al, 2009). These variables, unfortunately, were not assessed in the present study but could, for example, also account for the differences between TurkishTurkish and GermanGerman children in their performance on the cognitive tests on gestalt closure and numeracy.
Language skills
Regarding GermanGerman language skills (with a focus on vocabularyvocabulary), the findings of the present study are consistent with other studies: Immigrant children displayed poorer language abilities than non-immigrantimmigrant children (e.g. de Feyter & Winsler, 2009; Magnuson, Lahaie & Waldfogel, 2006; Washbrook, Waldfogel, Bradbury, Corak & Ghanghro, 2012). Dubowy et al. (2008) also found significant differences between native German and immigrant children regarding German grammargrammar, vocabulary, verbal memoryverbal memory, and early school language abilities. Moreover, Becker & Biedinger (2006) reported that in Germany 50 % of children with a TurkishTurkish background, 25 % of children from the former Soviet Union and 32 % of children from other nationalities require a German language course before entering school. In contrast, only 1 % of children with a German background are in need of such a German course (cf. Becker, 2006; Biedinger & Becker, 2010). Additionally, children whose parents are both immigrants (first generation) displayed poorer German abilities than, for example, children of mixed couples (Becker, 2011; Biedinger, 2007). Finally, third-generation immigrant children obtained significantly better scores in German vocabulary tests than second-generation immigrant children (Becker, Klein & Biedinger, 2013).
Other studies also reported that including the parental social background in the statistical analyses did not affect the results to a great extent (Becker, 2011; Biedinger, 2009). Even when the data were controlled for the children’s home environment, TurkishTurkish children still obtained lower scores in the test on GermanGerman expressive vocabularyexpressive vocabulary than German children (Biedinger, 2009). This effect remained stable even when the family’s migration history (e.g. first, second, third generation) was taken into account (Becker, 2011; see also Niklas & Schneider, 2010). Similar results have been reported in studies from other countries. For example, Washbrook et al. (2012) compared immigrantimmigrant and non-immigrant children in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States and reported that some ethnic groups (especially children from Asia) showed even better results in EnglishEnglish language tests than English native children (see also Han, 2006).
Early math and readingreading abilities
Many studies examined school-related abilities during the early primary schoolprimary school years. In general, children with an immigration background start school later than GermanGerman children, and they show lower cognitive and social skills in school entry screenings (Biedinger et al., 2008; Tuppat & Becker, 2014). Regarding early math abilities in Germany, early ethnic differencesethnic differences have been reported for example by Anders, Rossbach, Weinert, Ebert, Kuger, Lehrl & von Maurice (2012), Becker & Schmidt (2013) and Biedinger, Becker & Rohling (2008). In addition, for the United States, Magnuson et al. (2006) also found ethnic differences with regard to early mathematic abilities but not regarding readingreading abilities (also see Han, 2006). In fact, the ethnic origin of the parents seems to play a crucial role (Koury & Votruba-Drzal, 2014): Children from Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, or Laos performed better in tests on reading and math than comparable EnglishEnglish children (Han, 2006). Such ethnic differences may also depend on the generation: Even children of the third generation seem to have poorer reading abilities than native-language peers (Palacios, Guttmannova & Chase-Lansdale, 2008). Whether such effects also hold true for the present sample will be examined in a future study.
Similar to the results for cognitive skills, ethnic differencesethnic differences in early school abilities for readingreading and math are less pronounced when the children’s social background is controlled for, although they do not completely disappear (Becker & Biedinger, 2006; Biedinger et al., 2008). However, these ethnic differences disappear once the duration of children’s pre-schoolpre-school attendance and their cognitive abilitiescognitive abilities have been controlled for (Becker & Biedinger, 2006). With the ESKOM-VESKOM-V-data the differences in early abilities persist after controlling for the social background but disappear after additionally controlling for the home environment (Becker & Schmidt, 2013). Tuppat & Becker (2014) showed that after controlling for social background there are still ethnic differences with regard to the ageage at which children enter school. When Niklas & Schneider (2012) controlled for social background, they did not find any ethnic differences for early math abilities.
For the international context, the results are rather inconsistent: On the one hand, many studies from the U.S. reported that ethnic differencesethnic differences in early readingreading abilities persisted after controlling for social background, which was not the case for all studies on early math abilities (Han, 2006; Lahaie, 2008; Lee & Kao, 2009). On the other hand, studies from Great Britain found immigrantimmigrant children to perform considerably worse than non-immigrant children in both tests on reading and math (Dustmann & Trentini, 2008; Sammons, Elliot, Sylva, Melhuish, Siraj-Blatchford & Taggart, 2004).
5Future research
The results of the present study and other studies clearly indicate that further research is warranted in Germany and elsewhere. First, even though young children even at ageage three are able to take ability tests of various kinds, only very few studies have so far indeed examined the development of cognitive and language skills of this age group (i.e. for very young children) quantitatively.
Second, national and international results indicate that early cognitive abilitiescognitive abilities may be affected by various factors, for example by early stimulation in pre-schoolpre-school or by a stimulating home environment. This also holds true for children’s language abilities which depend on the stimulation at home and which is ideally provided in the language in which parents are most proficient (which is not necessarily the language of the host country). However, studies which examine the influence of pre-school and home environment in more detail are still needed because it is not clear whether, for example, a stimulating home environment is more important than a stimulating pre-school environment and how such factors may interact in immigrantimmigrant children’s language development.
Third, international studies (e.g. Han, 2006; Koury & Votruba-Drzal, 2014) reported that different ethnic groups (e.g. groups with an Asian or RussianRussian background vs. groups with a TurkishTurkish background) perform differently in language tests. Therefore, studies for the educational contexts in Germany should also take into consideration different ethnic groups in more detail. ESKOM-VESKOM-V only focused on Turkish children, but further studies on immigrantimmigrant pre-schoolers’ language skills should differentiate groups of different ethnic origin, language background and recency of immigration.
Fourth, especially longitudinal studies are needed to examine children’s language biography throughout the educational system. It is, for example, possible that some of the ethnic differencesethnic differences reported here will level out with ageage as the TurkishTurkish children’s GermanGerman language skills improve over time. Other group differences may change in rather unexpected ways (e.g. due to puberty, peer-group pressure or related issues) which is why it would be worthwhile to examine immigrantimmigrant students’ skills until they leave school and beyond.
In sum, this longitudinal study analysed TurkishTurkish and GermanGerman children’s cognitive, linguistic and academic development from three to eight years of ageage and found ethnic differencesethnic differences in language skills to persist whereas cognitive skills decreased with age. Although many of these findings could be attributed to the children’s social background, early pre-schoolpre-school education as well as a stimulating home environment, many questions need to be addressed in future studies in order to strengthen children’s educational participation in society, independent of their (migration) background.
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