Bilingualism and the Academic Achievement of First- and Second-Generation Asian Americans: Accommodation with or without Assimilation?

Abstract

Recent scholarship claims that bilingualism has a positive effect on the academic achievement of immigrant children. According to this perspective, growing up speaking two languages is beneficial because it stimulates cognitive development and allows immigrants a means of resisting unwanted assimilation. Immigrant children who are fluent bilinguals can use their native-language ability to maintain beneficial aspects of their ethnic culture while accommodating to the linguistic demands of an English-speaking society. Using data on first-and second-generation Asian American students from the 1988 National Educational Longitudinal Study, we test for these hypothesized effects of bilingualism. We find no evidence that bilingualism per se has a positive effect on achievement. Instead, speaking a native language with parents has a temporary positive effect if the parents are not proficient in English. These results indicate that the academic importance of bilingualism is transitional: The educational benefits of delaying linguistic assimilation exist only before immigrant parents achieve a moderate level of English-language proficiency. he relationship between bilingualism and academic achievement draws much attention from both social scientists and policymakers because of the large presence of bilingual students in the American school system. Although immigrant groups overwhelmingly tend to become native English speakers within several generations (Veltman 1983), the continued influx of immigrants has kept the number of children who speak non-English languages at high levels. In the * Direct all correspondence to Ted Mouw

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