A Comparison of Teacher-Rated Classroom Conduct, Social Skills, and Teacher–Child Relationship Quality Between Preschool English Learners and Preschool English Speakers

Bilingualism and Development of Social Competence of English Language Learners: A Review

“…The participants across the 13 studies varied in terms of ethnicity (i.e., single versus mixed ethnicities), immigrant status (i.e., first, second, and non-immigrants), and years of residence in host countries. Some studies took native English-speaking children as control groups without controlling confounding factors such as socioeconomic status (Han, 2010;Han & Huang, 2010;Luchtel et al, 2010). The effects of these factors may be mixed up with English levels on social competence ratings and future research should try to disentangle these confounding factors.…”

“…Of the 12 studies examining the relationship between English levels and internalizing behaviours, eight found a negative association, two found a positive association and two did not report significant associations (Chang et al, 2007;Dawson & Williams, 2008). Of the 11 studies examining relationship between English levels and social skills, eight studies found a positive association and three found no association (Chang et al, 2007;Luchtel, Hughes, Luze, Bruna, & Peterson, 2010;Vaughan et al, 2007). Three studies investigated relationships with others with reference to English.…”

“…ELLs with lower levels of English had 1. less positive peer relationship (Chen & Tse, 2010); and 2. less positive teacher-child relationships than English-speaking peers (Luchtel et al, 2010).…”

“…ELLs had 1. lower levels of teacher-rated classroom conduct and acting-out problems than those who spoke English native-likely or fluently (Han, 2010;Luchtel et al, 2010;Spomer & Cowen, 2001); and 2. fewer parent-rated externalizing behaviours than children who were from immigrant backgrounds but spoke English at home (Winsler et al, 2014).…”

“…ELLs displayed fewer behavioural concerns than peers who only spoke English (Luchtel et al, 2010;Winsler et al, 2014).…”