Building instruments to understand minds and cognition in european schools - Helping Portuguese immigrant students succeed.

Abstract

This study will examine the validity and prevalence of specific language tasks to differentiate 108 second language (L2) learners, considering two main factors: the socioeconomic background and the instruction in first language (L1). All the tasks were developed for the first levels of proficiency (A2-B1, according to European benchmarks), and applied to a large sample of diverse Portuguese students (immigrants with origin in several continents). Four tasks administered are incorporated in a 15-test diagnostic. The tasks were administered between 2013 and 2014, in Lisbon schools, and were disposed on paper and on a computer screen one at a time. Data will be presented regarding the following items: verbal analogies, recall task, and cognates. Hypothesis 1: home environment has impact for tasks performance in L2, attending to employment situation and families’ economic stability identified through the professional situation of two-parent families and attending to their job skills (graduate and nongraduate). Hypothesis 2: depending on the L1 continued instruction, immigrant students have different cognitive and linguistic output. The results confirmed the hypothesis that students from low-income immigrant families experienced worst performance in general tasks, and individuals with L1 support were good performers compared to other with no home language continued instruction. Implications will be discussed considering that students from limited socioeconomic families, and the additional factor of no L1 continued instruction, have more failure at school and they experience more difficulty to adjust to daily social activities.