Finally, I dedicate this work to the many foreign language teachers who open doors and windows to their students and encourage the exploration of horizons beyond their own. Early foreign language education has been shown to have a positive effect on students' performance on state-mandated standardized results. This work provides an overview of the history of foreign language education, as well as a description of a specific program at an elementary school in North Texas.
In order to analyze the effects of early foreign language immersion on the performance of students enrolled in the program at Bedford Heights Elementary School, a statistical evaluation was conducted.
Introduction
This method of foreign language teaching concentrated on learning the grammar rules and "translating sentences and texts into and out of the target language" (Richards and Rodgers 5). This is because "the insistence on using grammar through error correction will cause high anxiety at the early stage," leading to Krashen's affective filter hypothesis (Gurunathan and Geethanjali 113). The natural approach was a method that focused on understanding the foreign language, rather than memorizing dialogue.
However, it focuses on the interactions with the human element in the environment and how caregivers change “the content of a child's utterances.
History of Foreign Language Programs
12 language, then the student will not have enough experience to achieve proficiency in the target language. They are also expected to converse fully in the second language within the classroom. This promotes the immersion environment and enables the student to start thinking in the second language instead of translating from the mother tongue.
Cognitive abilities of students immersed in foreign languages have also been measured, particularly in relation to test scores.
Spanish Immersion at Bedford Heights Elementary
Along with requiring students' parents to sign a commitment form, students must submit a She returned in subsequent years to monitor the program and guide teachers on how to conduct an immersion class, specifically, having teachers write a language policy that outlines the obligations of students, teachers and any visitors to speak only in Spanish when entering the classroom boundaries. 24 the most obvious of which has to do with demographics, as well as the socio-economic status of students.
In HEBISD, the Spanish Immersion program is now offered at three (Bedford Heights, Meadow Creek, and Viridian) of the twenty (compared to the two in AHISD) elementary schools, with two classes of Spanish Immersion at two of the schools. They can also choose to apply to all three campuses at the lottery if they are not already attending one of the schools. Then students with siblings enrolled in the program who did not attend the school with the program are selected.
Then, home campus students, in-district transfer students, and out-of-district transfer students fill the remaining slots in that order. In days three to five of teacher training, "teacher participants will have more time to plan curriculum and instructional innovation in their own settings" (CARLA). The goals of the CARLA Institute training include clarifying the goals and principles that define immersion and dual language education, which have previously been established as separate references.
Finally, the CARLA Institute's training session instructs teachers on how to "design activity structures and use instructional techniques that promote sustained student-to-student interaction and language use" while taking advantage of the 7-category observation checklist. With all these policies that have developed the program into what it is today, students can be expected to be offered all the opportunities their non-immersion counterparts get, with the added benefit of bilingualism at the end of their primary school years.
Statistical Analysis Results and Discussion
Tables showing student means and standard deviations will now be organized into immersion or non-immersion by grade level for reading and math. These statistics help determine whether or not there is a grade-level difference between immersion and non-immersion students on standardized tests. Mean and standard deviation of scores by grade level and immersion or non-immersion in reading.
The final Table 4 presents the means and standard deviations for students organized into immersion or non-immersion by grade level for the mathematics test. Mean and standard deviation of scores by grade level and immersion or non-immersion for mathematics. In this analysis, the two independent variables tested for each standardized test were student grade level and whether or not the student was immersed in Spanish, and the dependent variables were the scores on each test.
In other words, the ANOVA tests sought to determine whether any differences that occurred were due to the students' grade level, whether the students were immersed in Spanish or not, or whether the effect was dependent on how long the student had been immersed in Spanish by combining grade level and whether the students were immersed or not. On the reading test, the grade level was found to have a significant effect on the percentage of correct answers. Tukey's HSD found that there was a significant difference between the scores of Spanish immersion students versus non-immersion students on the reading test, p <.
An analysis of the simple effects of immersion on test scores for each grade level was found to be significant for the third grade reading test, with p <. An analysis of the simple effects of immersion on test scores for each grade was found to be significant for the math test at all grades, with p = 0.027 for 3rd grade, p = 0.021 for 4th grade, and P .
Conclusion
Therefore, this study shows that students who are exposed to a foreign language during early education, specifically Spanish during the first through fifth grade levels, do indeed score better than their non-immersive counterparts on mandated standardized tests. from the state. These findings support previous research that students who are exposed to a foreign language during early education score better on standardized tests than their counterparts who are not given some foreign language exposure. While this study specifically focuses on directly assessing attentional and executive skills rather than measuring cognitive skills indirectly through state standardized core subject testing, it is appropriate for the current study because it aims to measure the cognitive benefits of early foreign language immersion education.
Although this study differs from previously mentioned studies in that it is not a foreign language immersion program, it also found that "both second-grade student achievement and third-grade student achievement on The implications of these studies may mean that school districts that are able to offering an early foreign language instruction option will have an advantage over schools that do not offer a foreign language option in state-mandated testing, in part because of the beneficial effects of foreign language instruction on other core subjects.
This benefit was found in classes immersed in the foreign language for the elementary years, as was the case in this study, and in classes exposed to foreign languages for less time (i.e., 30 minutes per day). As noted by Semmes, introduction to foreign language teaching with three weeks of teaching for 30 minutes a day. In general, foreign language "immersion does not negatively impact students' literacy and math skills in English" (Turnbull 24).
Some recommendations that can be given based on the results of this study are the implementation of some foreign language teaching during the early elementary years. If there is not enough interest in the program to fill an entire class of immersion students, devoting a small amount of time daily to foreign language exposure will still benefit the students, and by extension the school.
List of References
If the number of eligible candidates exceeds the number of available seats, a random lottery will be used. Parents can sign up to participate in the lottery at one campus or at all campuses where a Spanish immersion program is offered. Any HEB ISD resident or inter-district transfer applicant who will be entering Grade 1 the following school year can participate in the Immersion Lottery.
Campuses may continue to accept students into the program using current Lottery Waitlist applicants if space becomes available during the fall semester for first-year students. A student currently enrolled in a Spanish immersion program who transfers to another campus in the district or moves out of the district may continue at the current campus as long as they remain in the Spanish immersion program. A student currently enrolled in a Spanish immersion program who transfers to another SI campus will be placed in the program based on the availability of space in the program.
If the ARDC determines that the IEP cannot be implemented on campus, the student is otherwise ineligible to participate in the Schools of Choice program. Schools of Choice siblings o Home campus siblings enrolled in the same Schools of Choice program o Transfer siblings enrolled in the same Schools of Choice program. Also included is a checklist for verification based on your observation of certain behaviors that affect success in an advanced Spanish course.
You may remember that almost 100% of the content instruction in first grade is taught in Spanish. TukeyHSD(aov(X.Corr..R~Immersion)) TukeyHSD(aov(X.Corr..M~Immersion)) TukeyHSD(aov(X.Corr..R~as.factor(Grade))) TukeyHSD(aov (X.Corr..M~as.factor(Grade))). TukeyHSD(aov(third.degree$X.Corr..R~third.degree$Immersion)) TukeyHSD(aov(third.degree$X.Corr..M~third.degree$Immersion)) TukeyHSD(aov(fourth. degree$X.Corr..R~fourth.degree$Immersion)) TukeyHSD(aov(fourth.degree$X.Corr..M~fourth.degree$Immersion)) TukeyHSD(aov(fifth.degree$X.Corr. .R~fifth grade$Immersion)) TukeyHSD(aov(fifth grade$X.Corr..M~fifth grade$Immersion)).
Remember that all University of Mississippi research activities involving human participants, regardless of whether the research is subject to federal regulations, must be governed by the ethical principles of The Belmont Report: Ethical Principles and Guidelines for the Protection of Human Subjects of Research.
