Teaching New Concepts to Non-English Speaking Preschool Children

Many Mexican-American children entering schools where English is the language of instruction have serious language-related problems. This study was an attempt to determine three things: first, whether children whose first language is Spanish and who are instructed in Spanish will require significantly less trials to learn a new concept than children instructed either in English or bilingually; second, whether children receiving the first set of new concepts in English will learn a second instance of the new concept taught in English more readily than children who were taught the first use of the concept in Spanish; and third, on a Spanish language criterion test, children taught concepts in English will do as well as children taught those concepts in Spanish or bilingually. Results of the study showed that the Spanish-speaking children did not do better when they were taught a new concept in Spanish rather than in English or bilingually. Also, there was no evidence that the children who had been taught the new concept in English would be able to acquire a similar concept presented in English more readily than the group which was taught the first concept in Spanish. Finally, on a Spanish language criterion test, the children taught the concepts in English did indeed do as well as the children who were taught the concepts in in Spanish or bilingually

Linguistics · Mathematics education · Pedagogy · Sociology · EFL/ESL Teaching and Learning · Philosophy · Psychology · Spanish Linguistics and Language Studies

• The Use of Parallel Tests in the Study of Foreign Language Teaching

  Open Access•Herschel T Manuel•Educational and Psychological…•1953

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• Effects of Dialect and Instructional Procedures On Children's Oral Language Production and Concept Acquisition

  Open Access•Evan R Keislar, Evan Keislar et al.•Urban Education•1968

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