Academic Achievement, Language Proficiency and Socialisation of Bilingual Children in a Monolingual Greek Cypriot-speaking School Environment

Abstract

The present study (1) investigates the academic success of bilingual primary school children from various language backgrounds in a monolingual Greek Cypriot-speaking school environment and their mastery of Modern Greek by comparison with their monolingual counterparts and (2) examines whether these children face any problems of socialisation, adjustment and cultural identity. Thirty-nine bilingual primary school children and 210 monolingual Greek Cypriot children between the ages of 9 to 13 took part in this study. The bilingual children completed a questionnaire which examined such issues as socialisation, simultaneous acquisition of their languages, mastery and proficiency of their languages, code-switching and feelings of loyalty towards the language communities they belong to. Also, the teachers whose children took part in this study were asked to provide end-of-year class reports (that included final grades of academic achievement) of all their pupils (210 monolingual and 39 bilingual). The obtained results from several statistical tests (comparisons of responses, correlations and a chi-square) are in line with findings of recent studies which claim that bilingualism enhances childrens educational, social and intellectual achievements (Cummins, 1996).