Dual Language Immersion: A Quantitative Study to Examine Academic Achievement Differences between Elementary English Learners and Native English Students
Date
2024-03
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Abstract
While America is becoming increasingly diverse, educational stakeholders seek programs that address varied language and cultural needs, which is reflected by the growing popularity of dual language immersion (DLI) programs in recent decades. The problem is an extensively persistent academic achievement gap between students with native English and non-English backgrounds exists in elementary schools in the United States. DLI aims to facilitate students’ acquisition of two languages and ultimately close the achievement gap between native English and English learner (EL) subgroups. While studies have concluded that DLI pupils academically outperform peers in traditional monolingual programs, existing research fails to establish whether DLI eliminates the language-based achievement gap. The purpose of this quantitative study was to determine whether the academic performance gap between EL and English-only (EO) subgroups persists in the DLI program within an elementary school in California. Grounded in usage-based theory, which claims children acquire language through repeated exposure and practice, this study contributes to the current understanding surrounding the need for authentic experiential language learning, while also filling the gap related to academic performance disparities between language-based subgroups in DLI programs. The target population included DLI students in Grades 3 and 4 (N = 91). The two sample t-test was applied to a non-randomized sampling (n = 80) to evaluate archival English language arts (ELA) and mathematics academic performance records, which found a statistically significant difference between Grade 4 EL and EO ELA performance. Implications for program refinement and a call for future research are discussed.
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