Cross-age peer tutoring by either bilingual or English-only tutors shows no statistically significant effect on oral language proficiency (Serrano, 1987)¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · causal r? · q3 · i0 negligible
Currency · newest study 2007 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

Reading the evidence codes

q is the design tier, i the impact, n the sample, and the kind with its r the rigour judged within that kind: what each code means.

This claim: no standardized effect is recorded in observations/ for it yet, so no benchmark reading is possible.

q3 i0 Neither bilingual tutoring (effect size -0.16) nor English-only tutoring (effect size 0.05) produced a statistically significant effect on the IDEA Oral Language Proficiency Test. → What Works Clearinghouse 2007

Evidence¶

What Works Clearinghouse 2007¶

What Works Clearinghouse, U.S. Department of Education. (2007). WWC Intervention Report: Peer Tutoring and Response Groups. https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc

q3 · i0 · causal · r?

Randomized controlled trial of 42 Spanish-speaking migrant students in grades 3–5 in Florida, randomly assigned to bilingual tutoring, English-only tutoring, or teacher-led whole-group comparison, with daily 20-minute sessions over three months (37 sessions, 12.3 hours). The report prints effect sizes of -0.16 (bilingual tutoring) and 0.05 (English-only tutoring); the average across the two versions was neither statistically significant nor substantively important. Equivalence was not tested.

"Serrano (1987) examined effects of the tutoring by a bilingual tutor and the tutoring by an English-only speaking peer on the IDEA Oral Language Proficiency Test (IPT I) and found no statistically significant effects for either strategy."

Discussion¶

Learner Variables¶

Oral Language — outcome: instruction changes it

Peer Tutoring Improves Achievement — a broader claim this one bears on
Peer pairing increases English learners' peer-directed language behavior but shows no significant effect on listening comprehension or teacher-directed language (Jun-Aust, 1985) — related

Page metadata

Field	Value
`type`	`claim`
`id`	`cross-level-peer-tutoring-null-oral-proficiency`
`title`	`Cross-age peer tutoring by either bilingual or English-only tutors shows no statistically significant effect on oral language proficiency (Serrano, 1987)`
`description`	`Cross-age peer tutoring by either bilingual or English-only tutors shows no statistically significant effect on oral language proficiency (Serrano, 1987)`
`status`	`review`
`evidence_strength`	`weak`
`newest_evidence`	`2007`
`generated`	by `process:wiki-ingest` on `2026-10-07`
`trust`	unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content
`sources`	1 — `what-works-clearinghouse-2007`

Frontmatter is the page's machine-readable record — see the Schema & Guide.