Learning English Bilingually: Age of Onset of Exposure and Rate of Acquisition Among English Language Learners in a Bilingual Education Program

This article asks whether children enrolled in a bilingual education program learn English in a reasonable amount of time, and whether older children learn English faster than younger children. Children (N = 89) were found to achieve parity with native English speakers in a range of 1 to 6.5 years and in an average of 3.31 years on measures of English language. Indirect comparisons with other data suggest that children in bilingual education programs learn English as fast as or faster than children in all-English programs, and an ANOVA analysis indicates that older school-age children in the sample learn English faster than younger children, F(4, 84) = 9.037, p < .001, adjusted R = .268. The evidence supports the underlying rationale of bilingual education programs; in addition, the authors argue that English-only programs may inhibit successful learning of academic subject matter.