11, no. 2 (November 1979): 10-11 To the Editor Search

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DECLINING scores on college entrance examinations, especially in the English language category, have been a matter of universal concern for the past several years. Concurrently, there has been a nationwide trend away from the teaching of foreign languages at the high school level. Because the cutback in high school foreign language study appears to have preceded the drop in college entrance examination scores, one question that arises is, Does the study of a foreign language in high school affect scores on college entrance examinations?

To find the answer to this question, a study of the relationship between the two factors was conducted in 1979 at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. With the cooperation and assistance of the Office of Institutional Research and Studies, this study was carried out by computer analysis of the records of students currently enrolled at the university who had American College Test (ACT) scores on file and who had answered the questions about previous foreign language study in the “Student Profile Section” of the test. (Questions 88–91 of the “Profile” requested information regarding the number of half years of foreign language study in Spanish, French, German, and “other.”) Of the 23,476 students attending the university, 7,460 fell into this category.

Using this group, the computer processed a number of comparison questions, and the results in all cases showed a positive correlation between foreign language study and college entrance exam scores. The clearest illustration of this finding appears in table 1, in which students who had no foreign language study are compared with those who had had four years of study.

A simple comparison of the two groups of students, however, left a very important question unanswered. Since those who elected foreign language study might simply have been brighter students, their higher scores could reflect superior native intelligence rather than language study. If the brighter students from the total group could be separated from the others and if that subgroup could be further divided and compared on the basis of years of foreign language study, then the factor of intelligence could perhaps be canceled out. Unfortunately, fully reliable information regarding intelligence cannot be extracted from ACT tests, but the answers to questions 81, 82, and 83 do provide some basis for separating students according to abilities and intelligence. Question 81 asks for class standing (top, second, third, or fourth quarter within the high school); question 82 asks for overall grade average; and question 83 asks the student to describe his or her high school program of studies (business-commercial, vocational-occupational, college preparatory, general, or other). It was assumed that college preparatory students in the top quarter of their class with a grade point average (GPA) of A or B (between 3.0 and 4.0) could reasonably be expected to constitute the brightest group. While this criterion may have excluded some able and intelligent students from the top category, it would almost certainly have excluded students of relatively low intelligence. Obviously, a group limited to those who answered all three of these questions in just one way would be much smaller than the basic subset of 7,460. The select group, in fact, numbered just 1,726. The findings for this group are summarized in Table 2.

A similar study was made of 1,538 students who were not in the top quarter of their class, whose GPA was 2.9 or lower, and who did not consider themselves to be in a college preparatory program. The results are summarized in Table 3.

The considerable difference in ACT scores for these two subgroups suggests that there was a fair degree of validity to the basis on which they were separated. While the groups did not differ greatly in size (1,726 and 1,538), the differences in their patterns of enrollment seem to support the assumption that the more gifted students are more likely to take foreign languages. Of those students in the top category, only 16.7% took no foreign language; of those not in the top group, 37.6% took no foreign language.

The validity of these studies is limited by at least several factors. The possibility that the subset identified as a top group was itself stratified and that the same confounding factor of intelligence remained operative, if to a lesser degree, cannot be discounted. In view of crude measurements available it seems logical to assume that this variable was only partly canceled. Another limitation is the size of the sample groups.

To be sure, definitive results will have to await a far more extensive study. But this preliminary study yields certain tentative conclusions about the Southern Illinois students whose ACT scores were analyzed: (1) although the study of a foreign language appeared to help both subgroups, it was the lower group that received the most benefit; (2) the presumed effect of such study is roughly proportional to the number of years of study; and (3) the study of a foreign language has the greatest effect on ACT scores in English.

The author is Chairman of the Department of Foreign Languages at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, and was President of ADFL in 1977.

© 1979 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.

ADFL Bulletin 11, no. 2 (November 1979): 10-11

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