Performance on ESL examinations: Is there a language distance effect?

Abstract

This paper considers the effect of language distance on the attainment of English language literacy, as measured by performance on an Australian ESL end-of-school examination for non-English-speaking background students, who also sat for a further examination in their own L1. Learners were grouped into ‘language families’, Arabic, Slavic, Chinese, Romance, Indonesian/Malay, Japanese/Korean, Vietnamese/Khmer, according to the language spoken at home. These language families were ranked according to their distance from English using a number of classification criteria. Correlational analyses and t tests were then undertaken to test the following hypotheses: (1) that the relationship between LO..