BILINGUAL SCHOOLING AND SPANISH LANGUAGE MAINTENANCE: AN EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS

Evaluations of bilingual education programs are beginning to appear, but rarely is there any systematic study of the long-term effects of bilingual schooling on children's language use--specifically with respect to native language maintenance--at school or at home. To date, only small-scale studies have appeared in the literature, but this particular study covered the effects of several years of bilingual schooling on Spanish language maintenance. Ss were 14 bilingually schooled & 16 conventionally schooled Mexican-American children who were kindergarteners at the outset of the study & 1st graders at its end. The children's parents, who were predominantly Spanish language dominant, also took part in the study. The students were individually administered a Pupil's Language Use Inventory at school, on a pretest/post-test basis, in October, 1970 & again in April, 1972. Each child was asked which language he used & which language was used by others to address him when he was with various members of his family at home, with classmates at school, with peers in the neighborhood, & at church with his companions. As part of a Home Interview Questionnaire, the parents were asked about the student's language use patterns by domain. Both the student and parent interview data were collected by bilingual Mexican-American college students. A Language Use Observation instrument was used to obtain a direct measure of the children's language use in 4 different contexts at school. After several years, Mexican-American students in the bilingual program were found to be using Spanish more than comparable children schooled conventionally. The Mexican-American students in the bilingual program continued to use Spanish more than English, while comparison students schooled only in English shifted to greater use of English. Family language use patterns were not noticeably associated with their child's participation or non-participation in the bilingual program. Student report, parent report, & direct observation all contributed to the conclusion that the students going from kindergarten to 1st grade in the bilingual education program were using more Spanish over time than comparison students. The fact that the students were given formal schooling in Spanish & used Spanish as a vehicle for learning subject matter appeared to have acted as an incentive for them to continue to use Spanish regularly in a variety of social interactions. Modified AA