Mixing Languages during Learning? Testing the One Subject-One Language Rule.

Eneko Antón,Jon Andoni Duñabeitia,Guillaume Thierry,Antoni Rodriguez-Fornells

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0130069

Eneko Antón, Jon Andoni Duñabeitia + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0130069

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Abstract

In bilingual communities, mixing languages is avoided in formal schooling: even if two languages are used on a daily basis for teaching, only one language is used to teach each given academic subject. This tenet known as the one subject-one language rule avoids mixing languages in formal schooling because it may hinder learning. The aim of this study was to test the scientific ground of this assumption by investigating the consequences of acquiring new concepts using a method in which two languages are mixed as compared to a purely monolingual method. Native balanced bilingual speakers of Basque and Spanish—adults (Experiment 1) and children (Experiment 2)—learnt new concepts by associating two different features to novel objects. Half of the participants completed the learning process in a multilingual context (one feature was described in Basque and the other one in Spanish); while the other half completed the learning phase in a purely monolingual context (both features were described in Spanish). Different measures of learning were taken, as well as direct and indirect indicators of concept consolidation. We found no evidence in favor of the non-mixing method when comparing the results of two groups in either experiment, and thus failed to give scientific support for the educational premise of the one subject—one language rule.

Highlights

Some of the positive consequences of bilingualism in domain-general cognition [1,2,3] remain debated on the basis of data showing similar performance in bilinguals and monolinguals in executive control tasks [4,5,6], benefits of bilingualism at a linguistic level seem to be less controversial and appear generalizable
More importantly for the purposes of the current study, it has been shown that children immersed in a bilingual educational context learn new words better than children immersed in a monolingual context [16]
Error rates did not differ between groups in Test A (mean error rates of 2.4% and 2.9% for the mixed-language context (MLC) and single-language context (SLC) groups, respectively; t(48) = -.47, p>.64), suggesting that

Summary

Introduction

Some of the positive consequences of bilingualism in domain-general cognition [1,2,3] remain debated on the basis of data showing similar performance in bilinguals and monolinguals in executive control tasks [4,5,6], benefits of bilingualism at a linguistic level seem to be less controversial and appear generalizable. The positive–linguistic–consequences of bilingualism are well-accepted, and the negative impact of early bilingual immersion is at the very least debatable, considering that bilingual children have been shown to reach the same linguistic milestones as monolinguals over the same developmental periods [9,10]. It is a widely held view in bilingual education that introducing more than one language “too early” in life may be detrimental to learning by delaying language acquisition or even triggering confusion between languages in children. More importantly for the purposes of the current study, it has been shown that children immersed in a bilingual educational context learn new words better than children immersed in a monolingual context [16]

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