This study examined why preschool, kindergarten, and 4th grade students had poor comprehension of a second language. The reasons for this were threefold: learning a second language is not essential to a child's life at these ages; they are not motivated to learn a second language on their own; and it was widely thought that learning a second…

In an effort to determine why students with similar academic abilities have differing rates of success in learning English as a second language (ESL), a study of 225 native speakers of Spanish enrolled in the ESL program at Manhattan Community College was conducted during the 1975 Fall semester to test the hypothesis that success in ESL is…