Degree of bilinguality and achievement of students in high school chemistry

• Main Author: Tayag, Rhoda Santillan
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 1999
• Subjects: Bilingualism; Academic achievement; Achievement tests > High school; High school students; Chemistry
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_masteral/2011
• Institution: De La Salle University

This study investigates whether the level of competencies in English and in Filipino, socio-economic status, and language of the examination influenced the achievement in chemistry of third year students at Pampanga High School.The policy on bilingual education in the Philippines provides that the medium of instruction in science education is English in all school levels. However, science teachers resort to the use of Filipino in teaching science concepts to come across clearly to the students who have less command in English.This problem inspired the researcher to conduct the study which adopted a 3 x 3 factorial design and where degree of bilinguality, and socio-economic status were treated as independent variables while achievement of students in the test written in English and Filipino were considered dependent variables.The sample was purposively selected based on their average grade in the communication arts. Those who were not included were dropped from the list. Two covariance analyses were employed for the test written in English and in Filipino. Further analysis such as the Tukey Method was utilized. High School grade point average was used as a covariate.The results showed that it was not the language of the test which influenced the achievement of students in chemistry but their degree of bilinguality and in a particular case, their socio-economic status. No interaction effect was observed between the independent variable. These findings provided evidence to support the threshold hypothesis formulated by Cummins (1984). According to his hypothesis, there may be two threshold levels of linguistic proficiency, the lower and the upper threshold which can influence the achievement of bilinguals.