Today's Chronicle of Higher Education Online reports at:
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v48/i05/05a03001.htm
.....
Want to give your children an extra edge on the SAT? Teach them to write
Chinese. An analysis of 150 undergraduates has revealed that those who can
write Chinese characters scored higher on the mathematics section of the
standardized test.
Chieh Li, of Northeastern University, and Ronald L. Nuttall, of Boston
College, propose that some brain mechanism may underlie both writing Chinese
and performing math problems. They speculate that the linearity of writing
English does not allow children to develop the same spatial-reasoning skills
as writing Chinese, which involves both left-right and up-down thinking.
Because the math portion of the SAT emphasizes geometry, the researchers
thought that this experience in spatial reasoning could be giving writers of
Chinese a leg up. To test the idea, the two researchers recruited 150
Chinese-American students in Boston, 42 of whom could write Chinese
characters and all but 11 of whom could speak at least some Chinese. Male
students who wrote Chinese had an average score of 645 out of a possible 800
on the math section, while those who could not write the characters scored
613. The researchers report in Mathematics Education Research Journal that
female students did even better: The Chinese writers scored 703, and the
nonwriters 629.
....
[Excerpted from a long article covering diverse news.]