Resumen de The effect of total L2 immersion education on concept development
This paper is based on a study, financed by the Welsh Office and carried out by the Faculty of Education, the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth. It involved some 200 children from 65 different infant schools distributed throughout Wales. The pupils were tested annually over a period of three years at ages 5, 6 and 7. The sample consisted of monolinguals, developing bilinguals and competent bilinguals who attended six different types of school: English‐ and Welsh‐medium schools, mixed language schools unstreamed for language, mixed language schools streamed for language (Welsh and English) and bilingual education schools. A number of different tasks or tests, roughly 40 per year, were used to test each child's level of concept development, notably Piagetian tests of Conservation and Classification, tests of addition, subtraction and seriation, the Goodenough‐Harris Draw‐a‐Man/Woman test, the Wechsler I.Q. sub‐tests Animal House and Block Design, and the Wechsler Coding‐A test. The results relating to language groups and school types are analysed, and interpretations are put forward to explain the findings of the study.
