Graduate Student Research Symposium 2025

This study examines if bilingual students who were dominant in a one language at Kindergarten entry had more difficulty acclimating socially compared to bilingual students who spoke English and another language equally. Through the National Center for Education Statistics’ Early Childhood Longitudinal Studies (ECLS-K:2011) data collection, the cognitive and social progress of a large cohort of students was followed from kindergarten entry through fifth grade. Parents of the participants were interviewed at entry and indicated the frequency of the students’ second language usage at home with two adults in their lives. Dominant bilingual individuals include those bilingual individuals who speak one language primarily over the other. Balanced bilingual individuals include those bilingual individuals who speak two languages about equally. For this study, balanced and dominant bilinguals are identified during the kindergarten wave. Measures of cognitive and social progress observed during the 5th grade year represent the key outcomes of interest.