The Effect of Foreign Language Education on Preschoolers’ Native Language Development

Abstract

The present study is conducted to examine how foreign language education may affect preschool children's native language development. The study was carried out with 70 children who were 48-60 months-old and attending a public preschool in Alanya, a district of Antalya, in Turkey. The Solomon Four-Group Design was used. Children’s native language skills were assessed via the Turkish Early Language Development Test (Tedil-3) and the experimental process took 8 weeks. Mann Whitney U and Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Tests were used in the analysis of the data as the data did not show normal distribution. After determining the effect of the experimental procedure, the children included in the control groups were subjected to the same experimental procedure for 8 weeks under the “right to benefit from the experiment process” which has never been applied before in any studies in Turkey. The findings were discussed within the framework of the literature and various suggestions were presented.