Heritage Language at Home and Reading Performance: Insights From PISA 2018 Across 12 Countries (Poster 42)

• In Event: AERA Poster Session Wednesday 2:30 p.m.
  In Poster Session: Measurement, Psychometrics, and Assessment: Poster Session II

Abstract

Children’s exposure to a language is crucial for developing reading skills. For bilingual children who speak a Heritage Language (HL) at home, this can present unique challenges. Building on past studies that explored correlations, this study employs propensity score matching with the PISA 2018 dataset across 12 English-speaking countries to examine the potential causal impact of speaking HL at home on reading performance.
Results reveal that in countries where English is the primary language or as a lingua franca, speaking HL at home does not have a statistically significant effect on reading scores. However, in countries where English is not the primary language, speaking HL at home is associated with a significant decrease in reading scores.

Authors

• Qing Cai, University of California - Berkeley

• Himilcon Inciarte, University of California - Berkeley