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provides insight into the relationship of first language proficiency
to second language acquisition.
In discussing the data collected on the entire group, those who
participated in the individual testing will be referred to as "partici
pants," and those who did not as "nonparticipants." An analysis of
these data (Table 4-8) reveals that seven nonparticipants ranked at
the same level as the high Spanish and English achievers, the top third
of the research group. Four of these seven students were the females
who had volunteered to participate in the study but returned their
permission papers after the deadline. Ten of the remaining students
ranked at the same level or below the bottom third of the research
group. Some of these students did not have complete test information.
The incompleteness of their scores is a reflection of their achievement.
Class participation and written work indicate their Spanish to be more
limited than that of any of the students who participated in the study.
According to the teachers, two of the students stated they had not
attended school at all in Cuba. On several occasions, the teachers
remarked that although the quality of these students' work was still
very poor, the students were showing remarkable improvement.
Two nonparticipating students ranked in the middle of both
Spanish and English. Two were ranked in the high-achieving group in
English although they ranked in the low-achieving group in Spanish.
These two were the only ones to have such extreme differences in ranking,
as high in the language they were learning and low in their first
language. Only three other students, two male participants and one
female nonparticipant, ranked as high in English and medium in Spanish.