Table 2. Perception of Benefits of Foreign Language Instruction in Other Classes
_______________________________________________________________________
Subject Area
Strongly
Agree
n
%
Agree
Disagree
n
%
n
%
Strongly
Disagree
n
%
English
n =396
83
21%
184
46.5%
90
22.7%
39
9.8%
Science
n =393
9
2.3%
72
18.3%
216
55.0%
96
24.4%
Social Studies
n =395
31
7.8%
167
42.3%
138
34.9%
59
14.9%
Math
n =393
5
1.3%
30
7.6%
217
55.2%
141
35.9%
History
31 7.8% 188 47.6% 124 31.4%
52
13.2%
n =395
________________________________________________________________________
Post hoc, we wanted to know if there was a
correlation between the amount of time
students spent in foreign language learning in
high school and their achievement in college.
Pearson correlation coefficients were calculated
to determine if there was a significant
relationship between the number of semesters
students engaged in foreign language learning
in high school and their GPA, ACT composite,
and ACT English scores. The correlations
revealed significance at .01 (number of
semesters to overall GPA), .01 (number of
semesters to ACT composite score), and .01
(number of semesters to English composite
score). The effect size for the study was
calculated at .875.
Overall, we found a significant positive
relationship between the number of semesters
of foreign language learning in high school for
college freshmen and sophomores and their
composite ACT score and in the English section.
Additionally, there appears to be a positive
correlation between the number of semesters
overall GPA in college during the freshmen and
sophomore years.
Conclusion
The results of our study are in line with
previous research comparing ACT achievement
and foreign language study (Cooper, 1987;
Olsen & Brown, 1992; Timpe, 1979). The
importance of learning more than one language
has been shown both historically and currently
to have positive impacts on student
achievement (Armstrong & Rogers, 1997; Cade,
1997; Carr, 1994; Curtain & Dahlberg, 2004;
D'Angiulli et al., 2001; Garfinkel & Tabor, 1991;
Rafferty, 1986; Thomas et al., 1993; Turnbull et
al., 2003).
During the 90s, the trend at many
universities was to reduce the requirements for
foreign language study with a move to more
content learning (AACU, 2011). For example,
many Bachelor of Science degrees dropped the
foreign language requirement altogether.
Recently, however, there has been renewed
interest in once again requiring students to