KPCC – Deepa Fernandes
“A new Stanford University study reports some surprising results: fourth and fifth graders at a Palo Alto school performed on par with high school students in Mandarin. The elementary students attend Palo Alto’s Ohlone Elementary dual-language immersion program…researchers found the elementary and high school students had the same level of linguistic competency in Mandarin, with some fifth graders even outperforming the high schoolers in reading…researchers also found no difference in linguistic ability between native Mandarin speakers and non-Chinese students in dual-language immersion school by the time they reached 4th and 5th grade. Researchers said they believe this to be the first study to compare immersion language learners with high school AP language learners, and it is new fuel in the growing movement to introduce language learning in the younger grades.”(more)