Late Immersion and Language of Instruction in Hong Kong High Schools: Achievement Growth in Language and Nonlanguage Subjects

In this article, Herbert Marsh, Kit-Tai Hau, and Chit-Kwong Kong evaluate the effects of instruction in the first language (Chinese) and the second language (English) on achievement using multilevel growth models for a large representative sample of Hong Kong students during their first three years of high school. For nonlanguage subjects, late immersion in English as the language of instruction had large negative effects. Immersion in English did have positive effects on English and, to a smaller extent, Chinese language achievement, but these effects were small relative to the large negative effects in nonlanguage subjects. Whereas previous research has shown positive effects for early-immersion programs that start in kindergarten where language demands are not so great, negative effects for this late-immersion program challenge the generality of these findings to high schools and, perhaps, theoretical models of second-language acquisition.