Within- and Cross-Language Relations Between Oral Language Proficiency and School Outcomes in Bilingual Children With an Immigrant Background

TLDR

Stimulating oral language proficiency in both languages can be a key factor in improving school outcomes of bilingual immigrant background children. Sixteen meta‑analyses examined how first‑ and second‑language oral proficiency relates to early literacy, reading, spelling, mathematics, and academic achievement in typically developing bilingual immigrant‑background children. The meta‑analyses revealed moderate‑to‑strong within‑language correlations for all school outcomes (r = .22–.43) and weaker cross‑language links for early literacy and reading (r = .12–.22), with within‑language effects consistently larger (d = .14–.35); only six of 96 moderators were significant, leading the authors to propose a task‑dependent bidirectional transfer hypothesis.

Abstract

Sixteen meta-analyses were conducted to examine relations of typically developing bilingual immigrant-background children’s oral language proficiency in their first and second language with the school outcomes of early literacy ( k = 41), reading ( k = 61), spelling ( k = 9), mathematics ( k = 9), and academic achievement ( k = 9). Moderate to strong within-language relations were found for all school outcomes (.22 < r < .43), and cross-language relations for early literacy and reading (.12 < r < .22). Within-language relations were stronger than cross-language relations (.14 < d < .35). Only 6 out of 96 moderator effects tested were significant. Based on our findings, we propose a task-dependent bidirectional transfer hypothesis: The strength of cross-language transfer depends on the type of language proficiency task and the type of school outcome. Stimulating oral language proficiency in both languages can be a key factor in improving school outcomes of bilingual immigrant background children.