Home factors Snow was interested in the relationship of individual home conditions and the ability to become proficient in two languages. In order to determine the role of vocabulary in the bilingual population a series of experiments were conducted analyzing the consequences of the
socio economic status (SES) of individuals as well as language predictors in both of the languages in question—Spanish and English. The sample was a group of 96 fifth-grade Latino English language learners of varying SES. Spanish did become less dominant in the home compared to English because home factors. One home factor that decreased the child's vocabulary in Spanish is that many of the books that are resourced are in English rather than Spanish causing book sharing time at home with the child to be mainly in English than in Spanish. English is introduced to minority children through factors inside and outside of the home, resulting in a child's increase in English vocabulary which demonstrates how English holds a higher status in society. Snow began with the first basic bilingual approach, The Foreign Language which is a simplistic approach because it focuses on the idea that the best way to learn a second language is to be in the native and social environment of that language. This can affect older and younger learners in different ways. She states that under this approach, young learners such as children will learn a second language better in a social environment of that foreign language. For older learners, being taught by a tutor who is proficient in that foreign language will allow older learners to learn and develop their second language better. This approach does not support the idea that there is a certain critical age where someone needs to learn a second or third language. It also does not support the idea that innate cognitive ability has any emphasis on learning a second language. As a result of this, the Foreign Based approach was later challenged by a L1 Based Approach. Snow states that this approach researches and supports what the Foreign-based model didn't. It explains that many of the characteristics of a first language are part of learning a second language. Which supports their claim that how quickly and adequately a learner learns his/her first language affects how fast and efficiently they can learn a second language. How learners master their language is explained by different methods of learning—what strategies they use, how they're taught by their parents—carry onto their second language acquisition which could be an advantage or disadvantage. However some children or people are not given good learning strategies or are raised by parents that don't particularly speak their own language well which could hinder a children's second language development, let alone first language. Following the development of two of the four basic bilingual approaches, two more arose—a psycho-linguistic and social linguistic. Snow explains that a
psycho-linguistic approach perceives second language development as a special kind of information process. It is understood that the concept of learning and understanding a language is no different from one another. Analytic and auditory skills were utilized allowing learners to develop their second language to the best of their ability. The focus was on the raw cognition and development skills of learners and how these aspects give advantages to them in learning other languages. This approach supports the claim that learners that already know more than one language will be more successful in learning other languages than learners who have only ever understood one language. This approach focuses a lot on the cognitive factors such as the L1 based approach but does not look into other factors that affect learning like the social aspect. This is why Snow brings up the
social linguistic research. This approach emphasizes the idea of social context on second language development. This method also supports that learning a second language is tied to personal identity, culture, nation, ethnic pride and many other factors like those given. This also ties into the L1 based approach—learning a second language has the same characteristics of a first language learner—however more strategies and social habits are exploited within their second language environment to get a better understanding of it. This approach has findings which show that more children grow up learning two languages rather than just one which results in a higher probability of developing another language. However this approach could imply that within a social environment where only one language is spoken, it can be very difficult to learn another language—especially when a language learner is in an environment where there is more than one common language. Snow finishes her section of the article in Educational Researcher with stating that each perspective of bilingualism researchers answers each common question differently. She implies that there is no one research more correct than the other because language development has many different factors and they all can't be expressed in one research approach. This explains why there are multiple bilingual approaches. Each one has their own studies and findings which support their claim, so it's a matter of what kind of parameters are required by researchers who are looking into specific language development experiments. ==Literacy development in elementary school second-language learners==