There are some valid cultural characteristics favoring Asian students, including a homogeneous population, a longer school year, public value and support of education, and a philosophy of learning that hard work and good instruction, not talent, determine a student s success. Language A difference is that of naming numbers.
All European languages have some irregularities in naming numbers.
When data from the 1979-80 year is grouped by language spoken, greater variations were seen. This contrasts with bilingual Spanish-speaking third graders who scored in the 16th percentile. An interesting case is that of the Korean children. A natural experiment in number naming occurs there, because two number systems are spoken. For everyday, or informal, speech the number words have irregularities, but the formal number system used in school is value-named and completely regular.