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

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.