Peer linguistic diversity does not harm native students but enhances non-native speaking students’ performance
This study uses administrative records of economics students at a university in the London metropolitan area to show that, contrary to commonly held beliefs about negative spill-overs from foreign students, the performance of English-speaking students is unaffected by the share of non-English-speaking students and the linguistic diversity of a classroom. Furthermore, increased linguistic diversity improves the academic performance of non-English-speaking students, especially for low-achieving students. This result appears to be driven by changed patterns of classroom interactions across ethnicities. Asked about their experiences, non-English-speaking students revealed they were much more likely to interact with English-speaking students when they were assigned to a more diverse classroom.
