Bilingual Education: Social Psychological Consequences

The author set out to assess the effects of bilingual education the social development of elementary school children. Three groups of children were tested--all were Montreal native speakers of English: one group attended English schools with English-speaking teachers (Control); one attended English schools with French-speaking teachers (Immersion); and the third group attended French schools with French-speaking teachers (French). The children's communication skills were evaluated in terms of sensitivity and effectiveness in two different situations. As well, the children were evaluated using two other tasks which manipulated perceptual and ethnolinguistic clues. The author found that in the communication situation, the French and Immersion groups were more differentially sensitive to their listeners than were the Control children; but they were neither more nor less effective as communicators than the monolingual children. He notes that in addition, the bilingual groups did not differ from the monolingual group in terms of role-taking -- either in the perceptual task or in the social task. The bilingual children did, however, perceive themselves in a different way from the monolingual children. The results were discussed in terms of the impact of bilingual education on the children's social sensitivity to others.

PhD dissertation

McGill University

Montreal

1974

[vii]-128-37 p.

en