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http://dx.doi.org/10.5762/KAIS.2016.17.11.552

A prospective study on early English education and Korean children's English proficiency: When cognitive, personality and parental factors are controlled  

Kim, Geunyoung (Department of Psychology, Sogang University)
Kim, Yoo Ree (Department of Psychology, Sogang University)
Park, Hyekyung (Department of Psychology, Sogang University)
Kim, Gahee (Department of Psychology, Sogang University)
Publication Information
Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society / v.17, no.11, 2016 , pp. 552-562 More about this Journal
Abstract
Although a number of studies have been conducted in Korea since 2000 on the impact of early English education, their interpretation is still not conclusive, due to their lack of control groups and failure to control for third factors and use valid measurements. The present study was designed to examine the effect of an English education program on young children's English proficiency after 8 months using the most well-known official English proficiency measure, the WIDA for kindergarteners. In addition, the children's Korean language proficiency, cognitive abilities, personality, parents' SES, and parents' attitudinal variables before the education were measured and controlled. The results indicated that the intervention group performed better than the control group in both listening and speaking skills, even when all relevant factors were considered. This effect, however, was only found in the item-level analyses.
Keywords
early English education; second language acquisition; second language development;
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