the relationship between bilingual proficiency and self-esteem

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN BILINGUAL PROFICIENCY AND SELF-ESTEEM

JONA THAN W. PESNER and FRANK A ULD

University of Windsor

ABSTRACT. Proposing that bilingual proficiency should produce a more favorable attitude toward bilingualism and should enhance onei self-esteem, the authors compared 57 bilingual and 67 unilingual students from grades 9, IO, and 11, measuring their opinions about bilingualism and their self-esteem. The bilingual students are substantially more favorably disposed toward bilingualism than the unilingual students are. On the Janis-Field scale of self- esteem, the bilingual students show greater self-esteem than the unilingual students. The largest differences between the groups are on questions that measure self-confidence and social ease; differences are less pronounced on questions about self-worth and about shyness. We speculate that bilingual proficiency offers some psychological advantages to students who achieve it.

In the hope of discovering some of the consequences of young people’s learning a second language, we studied the attitudes toward bilingualism and the self-esteem of some high school students who speak only English and of other students who speak both English and French fluently.

The extensive research on second-language learning in Canada has focused on the characteristics of learners and of their environment that enhance learning of a second language. This research shows that the student will learn more readily if he or she has an aptitude for learning languages (Carroll, 1974; Gardner & Lambert, 1959) and if he or she is strongly motivated to learn the second language (Gardner & Lambert, 1959, 1972). Researchers on second-language learning, in particular Gardner (1966), have distinguished two aspects of this motivation, the “instrumental”

The authors wish to express our thanks to Mr. G. Bemire, principal of the school that provided the subjects for this study, and to Drs. Henry Minton, John La Gaipa, Marie- Therese Caron, and Jean-Pierre DeVillers at the University of Windsor, who gave helpful advice. Requests for reprints should be sent to Dr. Frank Auld, University of Windsor, Windsor, Ontario, Canada N9B 3P4.

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340 Jonathan W. Pesner and Frank Auld

and the “integrative.” As Taylor, Meynard, and Rheault (1977) write, “Instrumentally motivated persons learn a second language mainly for its practical value, such as to qualify for a better job; an integrative motivation relfects a personal interest in the people and their culture and involves learning a second language in order to learn more about the group, meet more and varied people and to be able to think and behave like members of the other group” (p. 102).

As to the learner’s environment, researchers have called atten- tion to social psychological processes such as the sensing of a threat to ethnic identity when one learns a second language (Tay- lor, Meynard, & Rheault, 1977), the lessening of identification with one’s own group when one participates in a total-immersion program for learning the other group’s language (Genesee, Tucker, & Lambert, 1978), and-for a French-speaking student who has little opportunity to practice English outside the classroom-the evoking of anxiety that one will not speak the second language correctly (Clement, 1977).

The rich fund of knowledge about what makes for effective learning of a second language-a body of knowledge that has been well summarized by Gardner, Smythe, Clement, and Gliksman (1976) and by Gardner, Gliksman, and Smythe (1978)-is not, so far as we are aware, matched by knowledge of the effects on the learner’s personality of his or her learning a second language. In the present study we try to contribute to the knowledge of such effects.

THE SETTING OF THE STUDY

The subjects of our study live in the Windsor metropolitan area, which stretches across the northern part of Essex County in south- western Ontario. In this area, according to the 1971 census (Canada, 1976) slightly more than 10% of the people report French as their mother tongue and about 13% list French as their official language or as one of their official languages, which is to say that they can understand and speak French. The number of people who report French as the language most often spoken in the home is much smaller, coming to about 4%.

In the millieu of Essex County, where French is the minority language, knowledge of English is necessary for employment and for most daily, public interactions. The students of this study who

chose to participate in the French-immersion program had, for the most part, little instruction in the French language before grade 9. In calling their program in grades 9, 10, and 11 a “French- immersion program,” we mean that all subjects are taught in French and that students are encouraged to use only French throughout the school day. Because these students’ intensive ex- posure to French came late, they would be described by the standards used by Genessee (1978) as participating in a lade French-imme~ion program. One might suppose, therefore, that their decision to participate in the program was an expression of preexisting attitudes toward bilingualism and of an already- developed identification with the French ethnic group (cf. Giles, Bourhis, & Taylor, 1977, p. 326).

STATEMENT OF HYPOTHESES

Whether because of selective factors or because of the impact of the program, we do expect the bilingual students to be more favorable to bilingualism and to be aware that their knowledge of French is a practical advantage (the “inst~mental o~entation”). The students should be aware that some jobs in the Canadian federal government, and most jobs in Quebec, require fluency in French. If the program has an impact over and above the selection factor we will find that the differences between unilingual and bilingual students increase, the longer the students have been in the French-imme~ion program.

What effects on the personality of a person already fluent in English should we expect from his or her becoming proficient in French? We would, of course expect that success in this task will increase the learner’s expectation of success in closely similar tasks-an empirical law that Frank (1935) and others established through their research on level of aspiration. If we accept the postulates that Coopersmith (1967) has set forth we would expect success in learning French also to have a broader result. Cooper- smith posits that self-esteem is dependent on one’s ability to deal effectively with en~ronmental demands. According to Cooper- smith, when one achieves something that one believes to be valuable and worth aspiring to, one’s self-esteem is enhanced.

Because Canadians believe that learning a second language is valuable (cf., Canada, 1977), students who learn the second language are likely to consider themselves to be better educated, to


think of themselves as more cultured, and to judge themselves to have a skill that will broaden their occupational choices and enhance their professional development. We therefore expected that their achievement would enhance self-esteem, and we predicted that bilingual students would be found to have higher scores on a measure of self-esteem. We believed, too, that the difference in self-esteem between the bilingual and the unilingual groups would increase from year to year, as the bilingual students’ proficiency in French developed.

Finally, we believe that a young person from a French back- ground, i.e., a person whose parents or grandparents spoke French and belonged to the French cultural group (as is true for at least 63% of the bilingual students in our sample), will develop greater self-esteem as he or she learns about the contributions that the French have made to the development of Canada and to literature, the arts, and science.

For all of these reasons, we predicted that the bilingual students would score higher than unilingual students on a scale of self- esteem.

METHOD

Subjects

Students from grades 9, 10, and 11 of a high school near Windsor supplied both a bilingual group of 28 boys and 29 girls and a unilingual group of 32 boys and 35 girls. For the bilingual group the principal selected from the French-immersion section of the school all students who had a functional command of both languages. We excluded two students who knew a third language, so that our focus would be on bilingualism rather than on multi- culturalism.

Of the bilingual students 23% came from lower middle-class families and the rest from lower-class families, according to our index of social position, Hollingshead’s Two-Factor Index (cf., Myers & Bean, 1968). (This index combines a rating of occupational level-for which we used Blishen’s, 1958, rankings of occupational status in Canada-with a rating of educational attain- ment.) Of the unilingual students 9.5% were from the upper class, 9.5% from the upper-middle class, 33.3% from the lower-middle class, and the rest from lower class, according to the scores on the

343

Two-Factor Index. In the bilingual group 36 reported French and 21 reported English to be the language of the home. In the unilingual group only 1 student gave French as the language of the home, the rest reporting English as the language of the home.

Procedure

~~te~ffl~. In order to test the hypothesis that the bionic students would be more favorable to bilin~alism, we used a questionnaire soliciting opinions about bilingualism, about English- French relations in Canada, and about the young people’s beliefs concerning job opportunities in Ontario and elsewhere in Canada. We drew 11 of the 12 items in this questionnaire from a study done by Johnstone (1969) for the Royal Commission on Bilin- gualism and Biculturalism. One question as Johnstone had used it asked, “How important do you think each of the following things is in helping a young person to get ahead in Canadian life today?” There followed a list of 10 personal qualities including, “Be able to speak both French and English.” We revised this question to read, “How important do you think being able to speak both English and French is in helping a person to get ahead in Canadian life today?” (We ignored the other nine qualities.) To these 11 opinion questions we added a twelfth of our own, “DO you think the issue of b~n~~isrn has been emphasized too much in current Canadian affairs?”

Because seven of these 12 items deal with attitudes toward bilingualism, we combined these 7 into a scale on bilingualism. These items were in multiple-choice format, each having 3 alternatives. We combined the items into a scale by splitting each item at its median and scoring it dichotomously. The resulting scale has a K-R 20 reliability of .77.

Three of the 12 questions dealt with judgments about how good English-French relations are and will be in the future. These were in multiple-choice format, each question having 4 alternatives.

Two questions dealt with jud~ents about the respondent’s job prospects, in Ontario and in other provinces of Canada. These questions were in multiple-choice format, with 5 alternatives. We may consider these items as relevant to the “instrumental orienta- tion” that researchers such as Gardner (1966) have defined.

In order to test the hypotheses that bilingual students have


higher self-esteem than unilingual students, and that the difference between groups increases from grade 9 through grade 11, we used Eagly’s (1967) version of the Janis-Field Feelings of Inadequacy Scale (cf., Hovland & Janis, 1959). Obviously, self-esteem and feelings of inadequacy are opposites; in deriving a self-esteem score from the Janis-Field Scale, we reversed the direction of scoring. Each of the 20 items was presented in the format of a Likert scale; we gave scoring weights of 0 through 4 to the five alternatives. The highest possible score on the scale, therefore is 80. According to Crandall (1973), who described this scale as the best measure of self-esteem, split-half reliabilities have ranged between .72 and 88. In our sample the alpha reliability is .84.

Dutu CoZZection. The first author administered the questionnaires to all 124 students in the course of a single day, in order to avoid so far as possible having the responses of the students who took the questionnaire later, influenced by their discussing the questions with those who had taken it earlier.

Besides asking for opinions about bilingualism, for judgments about English-French relations, for estimates of job prospects, and for responses from which we hoped to measure self-esteem, we inquired about the occupation and the education of the student’s father, and we asked the student which language was spoken more often in the home. In order to guarantee confidentiality, we did not ask for the student’s name. This decision made it impossible to use such other data as intelligence-test scores from the school files and grade-point averages as covariates or matching variables. We accepted this limitation because we believed that the stress on anonymity and confidentiality was essential to obtaining honest responses.

RESULTS

Having observed that half of the unilingual group was from middle-class families, whereas only a quarter of the bilingual group was from middle-class families, we decided to control for social class of the respondent in any of our analyses when there was a substantial or a statistically significant correlation between the Two-Factor Index and the dependent variable.

Bilingual Proficiency 345

Attitudes about Bilingualism

The bilingual students are, as predicted, more favorably disposed toward bilingualism. Taking the seven items that elicit opinions about bilingualism as our measure, we found that the bilingual students have a mean score of 5.93, the unilingual students a mean of 3.73. In the analysis of covariance (with the Two- Factor Index the covariate), F (1, 108) = 26.2 1, p < .OOl. Lower social status and more favorable opinions about bilingualism go together; r(l13) = .36, p < .OOl. (Because higher social status gets a lower score on the Two-Factor Index, a negative relationship between status and favorable attitude yields a positive r.) Howev- er, this overall relationship is the result, in part, of the fact that the bilingual group is of lower social status on the average. Within the bilingual group alone, the correlation between social status and the 7-point scale is negligible, ~(50) = .03, not significant. Within the unilingual group there is a small correlation between social class and bilingualism score; r(6 1) = .2 1, p < .05.

When we looked at the two items that probe beliefs about job opportunities, we found no difference between the bilingual and the unilingual students on the question asking about opportunities within the province, but a significant difference on the question asking about opportunities elsewhere in Canada; x2 (1) = 4.17, p

< .0.5.

Bilingual and unilingual students do not differ on any of the three questions asking for judgments about English-French relations .

Self-Esteem Scale

Because the Janis-Field scale has a negligible correlation, r( 115) =- .03, p = .49 with the TwoFactor Index, this index did not have to be used as a covariate in our analysis of self-esteem scores. We found that the bilingual students scored higher on self-esteem than the unilingual students, t( 122) = 3.95 p < .05.

Inspection of data for the individual items of the self-esteem scale revealed that the between-group differences are great for some items but negligible for others.* The largest differences are

*A complete tabulation of the answers to the separate questions is available from the

authors on request.


on the items having to do with self-confidence and social ease, such as “How often do you worry about whether people like to be with you?” To this question, for example, the bilingual students on the average choose alternatives indicating that they worry less frequently.

Other examples of items expressive of self-confidence are: “How often do you feel that you have handled yourself well at a social gathering?” and “When you speak in a class discussion, how sure of yourself do you feel?”

Although we have no data on the I.Q. and the academic success of the unilingual and bilingual students, which would allow us to examine the alternative hypothesis that these factors-which would be expected to enhance self-esteem-are more favorable in the bilingual group, we do find that the bilingual group is not significantly different from the unilingual group in responding to the Janis-Field items that seem related to achievement, for example, “How often do you have the feeling that there is nothing you can do well?” “ How often do you feel inferior to most of the people you know?” and “How often do you feel you are a success- ful person?” These items do not discriminate the bilingual and unilingual students.

Comparison of Grades 9, 10, and 1 I

On the 7-point scale of attitudes toward bilingualism we found no trends across grades, nor any interaction between language group (bilingual vs. unilingual) and grade. However, the items deal- ing with beliefs about job prospects show a substantial fall-off in score from grade to grade for the unilingual group. The mean scores on these two items combined for grades 9, 10, and 11 are, respectively 1.55, 1.24, and .95. A one-way analysis of variance on the data from the unilingual group for the total of these two items shows a significant trend for grade, F (2, 64) = 3.06, p = .05. Most of this decline is attributable to the substantial drop-off for scores on the question about job prospects elsewhere in Canada.

As Table 1 shows, self-confidence increases between grade 9 and grades 10 and 11 among the bilingual students, but it declines among the unilingual students. When students are grouped according to whether they are in grade 9 on the one hand, or in grade 10 or 11 on the other, an analysis of variance shows a significant interaction between grade and language group; F (1, 120) = 3.66,


TABLE 1 Mean Self-Esteem and Attitude Scores of Bilingual and Unilingual Students

Scale

Student Group N Bilingualism Self-Esteem

Bilingual

Grade 9 15 5.80 46.1

Grade 10 24 5.96 49.4

Grade 11 18 6.00 49.9

Unilingual

Grade 9 22 3.82 49.0

Grade 10 25 3.76 44.6

Grade 11 20 3.60 44.6

p < .05. We defend ourselves against the criticism that our grouping capitalizes, in a post hoc manner, on the differences that were found by pointing out that we predicted-before the data were ever gathered-that there would be a grade-to-grade trend in self-esteem. An analysis of variance that compares means for grades 9, 10, and 11 casts too broad a net; as the statisticians say, it loses power because the alternative hypotheses (to randomness) are too numerous. Unfortunately, we cannot use Jonckheere’s test (1954) against ordered alternatives, because our distributions have too many tied rankings. We argue, therefore, that an analysis of variance with only two levels of “grade in school” best tests our hypothesis. Here, and in analyses to follow, when we have predicted the direction of a difference we report one-tailed probability figures.

Exclusion of Alternative Hypotheses

It might be suggested that the greater favorableness toward bilingualism in the bilingual group is simply the result of the greater proportion of students from French families in that group; in other words, that ethnic identification, rather than participation in the language program, accounts for the difference. To check whether ethnic identification could explain the results we compared the students from Englishspeaking and from French- speaking families within the bilingual group; we also compared the bilingual students from English-speaking families with unilingual students from English-speaking families.


TABLE 2

Mean Attitude and Self-Esteem Scores of Bilingual and Unilingual Students

by Language of the Home

Scale

Student Group N Bilingualism Self-Esteem

Bilingual

French Home 36 6.17 49.1

Bilingual English Home 20 5.45 48.2

Unilingual English Home 66 3.70 46.0

As Table 2 shows, among the bilingual students those from families in which French is the language of the home have higher scores on the bilingualism attitude scale; t(26.47) = 2.23,~ = .035. However, we also found that the English-speaking bilingual students have higher scores than the English-speaking unilingual students; t (52.69) = 4.41, p < .OOl.

A similar line of argument, that ethnic differences account for the higher self-esteem of the bilingual group, might be advanced to explain the differences on the self-esteem scale. Among the bilingual students, the mean score for the students from French- speaking homes is about the same as the mean for students from English-speaking homes (49.1 and 48.2, respectively); t (54) = .34 p = .37. Although bilingual students from English-speaking families have a higher mean self-esteem score (M = 48.2) than do unilingual students from Englishspeaking families (M = 46.0), the difference falls short of significance, t(84) = .88, p = .19.

When we considered separately those items on the self-esteem scale that have to do with self-confidence and social ease-a cluster of eight items that we defined by using the Alberta cluster-analysis program (Burnett, 1969)-again we found no difference between bilingual students from French-speaking and English-speaking homes. Among students from English-speaking homes we found a difference-falling just short of statistical significance-between bilingual and unilingual students; t (84) = 1.41, p = .08.

DISCUSSION

Our first hypothesis, that bilingually proficient students would


have more favorable attitudes toward bilingualism and a greater optimism about getting a good job elsewhere in Canada, is abundantly confirmed. The attitude toward bilingualism, however, does not show an increasing difference between bilingual and unilingual students from grade 9 to grade 11; therefore, we have no evidence that participation in the French-immersion program created a more favorable attitude toward bilingualism. It would be as plausible to attribute the difference in attitude to a selection into the program of those who were already more favorable. Be- cause optimism about job prospects elsewhere in Canada does grow stronger among the bilingual group and weaker among the unilingual group from grade 9 to grade 11, it seems reasonable to attribute this shift to the impact of the language program.

Considering now our second hypothesis, the higher self-esteem scores of the bilingual group could be interpreted as arising either from selection of the more self-confident students into the French-immersion program or from an impact of the program on self-confidence. But here again, as with the question about job prospects in Canada, the trends from grade 9 to grade 11 fit better with the assumption that the language program produced a change in self-esteem. The bilingual students in grade 9 have slightly lower scores (not statistically significant, of course) than the unilingual students. In grades 10 and 11 the direction of the difference is reversed. We interpret the data as being consistent with the hypothesis that the language program caused the change; but we are well aware that it is risky to attribute causation where only association can be conclusively demonstrated.

One can speculate that the support of a cohesive group of students who were involved in a French-immersion program and the gratification of acquiring a language competence that is expected to be an advantage in the job market protects the students of the bilingual group from some of the buffeting of self-esteem that adolescence ordinarily brings.

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CANADA, GOVERNMENT OF. A national understanding. Ottawa: Supply and Services Canada, 1977.


CANADA. STATISTICS CANADA. Census of Canada, 1971. Ottawa: In- formation Canada, 1976.

CARROLL, J.B. Aptitude in second language learning. Proceedings of the Fifth Symposium of the Canadian Association of Applied Linguistics, 1?74, pp. 8-23.

CLEMENT, R. Motivational characteristics of francophones learning English. Quebec: Centre International de Recherche sur le Bilinguisme, Universite LavaI, 1977.

COOPERSMITH, S. The antecedents of self-esteem. San Francisco: Freeman, 1967.

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EAGLY, A.H. Involvement as a determinant of response to favorable and unfavorable information. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1967, 7, l-15.

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GARDNER, R.C., & LAMBERT, W.E. Motivational variables in second- language acquisition. Canadian Journal of Psychology, 1959, 13, 266-272.

GARDNER, R.C., & LAMBERT, W.E. Attitudes and motivation in second language learning. Rowley, Mass. : Newbury House, 1972.

GARDNER, R.C., SMYTHE, P.C., CLEMENT, R., & GLIKSMAN, L. Second- language learning: A social psychological perspective. Canadian Modern Language Review, 1976, 32, 198-213.

GENESSEE, F. Second language learning and language attitudes. Working Papers on Bilingualism, 1978, No. 16, 19-41.

GENESSEE, F., TUCKER, G.R., & LAMBERT, W.E. The development of ethnic identity and ethnic role taking skills in children from different school settings. International Journal of Psychology, 1978 13(l), 39-57.

GILES, H., BOURHIS, R.Y., & TAYLOR, D.M. Towards a theory of language in ethnic group relations. In H. GiIes (Ed.), Language, ethnic& and intergroup relations. London: Academic Press, 1977.

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ABSTRACT TRANSLATIONS

La relaci6n entre la Habilidad Bilingue y el Auto-estima

LOS autores compararon a 57 estudiantes de grades 9, 10 y 11 bilingues con 67 de 10s mismos grades monolingues midicndo sus opinionas sobre el bilingualism0 y la autoestima. Se hizo basado en la propuesta qua una mayor habilidad bilingue crearfa una actitud mas favorable hacia el bilingualism0 asl some reforzarfa la autoestima. Los estudiantes bilingues fueron considerablemente mejor dispuestos hacia el bilingualismo que 10s unilingue. En la escala Janis-Field de auto-estima, 10s bilingues demostraron estar mas altos en auto estima que 10s unilingues. Las diferencias mayores entre 10s dos grupos se hallaron en las medidas de auto-condianza y soltura social. Las

diferencias menores se hallaron entre las preguntas que se referfan a auto-valoraci6n y timidez. Parecerla que la habilidad bilingue ofrece algunas ventajas psicol6gicas a 10s estudiantes que la logran.

Rapport Entre Le Bilinguisme et Le Respect de Soi

A quels rgsultats pourrait-on s'attendre de la part des QlPves de neuvi8me, dixiPme, et onzizme annges vivant dans un milieu anglophone lorsqu'ils apprennent 3 parler fransais aussi bien qu'ils parlent anglais: Nous crayons que, dans cette situation, les elbves (1) sent mieux dispose's a la notion du bilinguisme et (2) acquisrent plus de respect de soi.

Pour mesurer les attitudes envers le bilinguisme, nous avons utilisg 11 questions tiraes d'une e'tude faite par la Commission royale d'enquste sur le bilinguisme et le biculturalisme, auxquelles nous avons ajoute' une question. Toutes ces questions ont QtB pri%ent&s a no* sujets en anglais. Pour mesurer le respect de soi, nous avons utilisQ une echelle dont l'usage est repandu, celle de Janis et Field

Pour mettre nos hypothkes 2 l'~preuve, nous avons c~~mparb 57 ZlOves bilingues avec 67 e'l3ves unilingues, tous d'une Qcole secondaire prPs de Windsor.

Les r&ultats dgmontrent, comme nous l'avions anticlpb, que les Cl&es bilingues sent plus favorables au bilinguisme et plus confiants d'obtenir un emploi au Canada que s'ils Ctaient unilingues. Er.fin, les Qlaves bilingues manifestent un plus grand respect de soi d'aprZs l'dchelle Janis-Field.

On peut dire, en re'alite, pour les Bl&es de neuvisme,

yue le bilinguisme est un avantage dixibme et onzi2me anne'es dans la

banlieue de Windsor. Nous crayons que la connaissance suffisante du fran&s a augmente' le respect de soi des dlPves bilingues.

the relationship between bilingual proficiency and self-esteem

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