Effect of the number of hours devoted to teaching in English on the results in scientific competence

Abstract

The knowledge of different languages allows the access to new cultures. To do this, from an early age it is intended that students learn a foreign language in addition to their native idiom, for this purpose many educational centers have introduced a foreign language (normally english) in a vehicular form of the teaching-learning processes. This research aims to study the effect of the number of teaching hours in English, in a context of trilingual teaching, in the science performance. To achieve this, we carried out a secondary analysis (longitudinal, predictive and non-experimental design) with nested data (time, student and classroom) obtained in the assessment of a trilingual program (English, Spanish and Basque) applied in different educational centers of the Basque Country. The sample is made up of 2441 (47% women y 53% mens) Primary Education students (PE) belonging to 71 schools. We performed a longitudinal and multilevel regression analysis (time, student and classroom) using the linear mixed models’ technique. We used as a dependent variable three measures of achievement in science at the end of the academic years 2010-2011 (4th grade of primary school), 2011-2012 (5th grade of primary school) and 2012-2013 (6th grade of primary school). We used as a predictive variable percentage of hours taught in English. The difference in the percentage of hours taught in Spanish and Basque was introduced as a covariate to control the effect of the teaching time in the other two languages. The results show that the increase in teaching time in English has a positive effect on science achievement. Therefore, it is recommended that educational institutions use English not only as a subject but as a learning tool