The effect of bilingualism on monolingualism on the identification of foreign languages
School Name
Spring Valley High School
Grade Level
10th Grade
Presentation Topic
Psychology and Sociology
Presentation Type
Non-Mentored
Abstract
Learning a new language is a slowly dying fad in the United States for college students even though the benefits are abundant. The purpose of this study was to identify if there was a significant difference in identifying languages that were not familiar to their original tongue. It was hypothesized that the bilingual individuals would be able to identify more foreign languages than the monolingual individuals because of the exposure to a culturally different language. Participants were given three tries to identify as many languages as possible that were read off in 20 second phrases by the computer program. The 20 second phrases could be replayed as many times as wanted. After three incorrect attempts, the program ended and displayed the score. Each correct answer boosted the score by 50; incorrect answers were not penalized. This procedure was repeated three more times to produce a mean and to reduce outliers. Results showed that the mean amount of languages identified by bilingual individuals was 5.4 and the amount of languages identified by monolingual individuals was 3.8. The highest mean score was 10 but one participant identified 13 languages in a single attempt. On three separate occasions no languages were identified. A 2-sample T-test was conducted to test the significance of the study. The p-value was p=0.043 and the alpha value was 0.05 so the null hypothesis was rejected and the claim of the alternate hypothesis was supported.
Recommended Citation
Lee, Christian, "The effect of bilingualism on monolingualism on the identification of foreign languages" (2018). South Carolina Junior Academy of Science. 204.
https://scholarexchange.furman.edu/scjas/2018/all/204
Location
Neville 321
Start Date
4-14-2018 11:30 AM
Presentation Format
Oral and Written
The effect of bilingualism on monolingualism on the identification of foreign languages
Neville 321
Learning a new language is a slowly dying fad in the United States for college students even though the benefits are abundant. The purpose of this study was to identify if there was a significant difference in identifying languages that were not familiar to their original tongue. It was hypothesized that the bilingual individuals would be able to identify more foreign languages than the monolingual individuals because of the exposure to a culturally different language. Participants were given three tries to identify as many languages as possible that were read off in 20 second phrases by the computer program. The 20 second phrases could be replayed as many times as wanted. After three incorrect attempts, the program ended and displayed the score. Each correct answer boosted the score by 50; incorrect answers were not penalized. This procedure was repeated three more times to produce a mean and to reduce outliers. Results showed that the mean amount of languages identified by bilingual individuals was 5.4 and the amount of languages identified by monolingual individuals was 3.8. The highest mean score was 10 but one participant identified 13 languages in a single attempt. On three separate occasions no languages were identified. A 2-sample T-test was conducted to test the significance of the study. The p-value was p=0.043 and the alpha value was 0.05 so the null hypothesis was rejected and the claim of the alternate hypothesis was supported.
