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==History of the method==
The idea that Esperanto might prove helpful in acquiring foreign languages was posited in a 1922 report to the League of Nations. It was given as a potential reason for children to study Esperanto, but the only study that had been conducted at the time, an experiment in the Girls' Secondary School at Bishop Auckland, was inconclusive.<ref>{{cite book |title=Esperanto as an international auxiliary language |date=1922 |publisher=General secretariat of the League of Nations |pages=51–53 |url=https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Esperanto_as_an_international_auxiliary_language._Report_of_the_general_Secretariat_of_the_League_of_nations_adopted_by_the_third_Assembly,_1922_(IA_esperantoasinter00leagrich).pdf |access-date=2022-05-12}}</ref>
The educational benefits of Esperanto for children were subsequently studied by researchers at Columbia University,<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Eaton |first1=Helen |title=Experiments in language learning |journal=The Modern Language Journal |date=Oct 1934 |volume=19 |issue=1 |pages=1–4 |doi=10.2307/315418}}</ref> the University of Sheffield,<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Halloran |first1=J. H. |title=A four year experiment in Esperanto as an introduction to French |journal=The British Journal of Educational Psychology |date=Sep 1952 |volume=22 |issue=3 |pages=200–204 |doi=10.1111/j.2044-8279.1952.tb02826.x}}</ref> and the Egerton Park Country Secondary School.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Williams |first1=Norman |title=A language teaching experiment |journal=The Canadian Modern Language Review |date=Dec 1965 |volume=22 |issue=1 |pages=26–28 |doi=10.3138/cmlr.22.1.26 |url=https://archive.org/details/sim_canadian-modern-language-review_1965-10_22_1/page/n5/mode/2up |access-date=2022-05-12}}</ref> Many of these experiments' findings were compromised by unclear objectives, brief or anecdotal reporting, and a lack of methodological rigor. However, they consistently suggested that the study of Esperanto provides advantages to primary-age children that the study of natural languages does not.<ref name="springboardtolanguages>{{cite book |last1=Tellier |first1=Angela |title=Esperanto as a starter language for child second-language learners in the primary school |date=2013 |publisher=Esperanto UK |___location=Great Britain |isbn=978-0-902756-35-9 |edition=second}}</ref>{{rp|11–12}}
===Experiment
Under the supervision of [[Helmar Frank]], a professor at the Institute of Cybernetics of Paderborn, two groups of pupils (A and B), both with German as mother tongue, were created in a primary school.<ref name = paderbornFrank>Prof. Dr. Helmar Frank, ''Das Paderborner Experiment zum Sprachenorientierungsunterricht'' in the publication of the Hanns-Seidel Stiftung eV, Verbindungsstelle Brussel/Bruxelles</ref><ref name = paderbornLobin>Günter LOBIN, ''Der propedeutische Wert von Plansprachen für den Fremdsprachenunterricht'', Universität Paderborn, Institut für Kybernetik.</ref> The aim was to prove the propaedeutical value of Esperanto for learning English (and in general, any other foreign language).
Group A started to learn English from the third year of study, while group B in the same year started to learn Esperanto (160 hours); group B also started to learn English after two years (i.e., in the fifth year of study). Although group B studied English two years less than group A did, by the seventh year the two groups reached the same level in English, while in the eighth year of school the English level of group B was more advanced than that of group A.
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The study demonstrated not only that group B gained linguistic skills with English, but also that group members could use two languages instead of only one. Because all the pupils had a Germanic language (German) as their mother tongue, the help they got from Esperanto was not a result of its greater similarity to English than to German. In addition to cultural gains, the saving of time and resources resulted in an educational saving as well.
===Experiments at the University of Essex===
Between 2006 and 2011, the Paderborn method was employed in the Springboard to Languages program, which operated at various primary schools in England. Through the program, primary school students studied Esperanto and French. The goal of the program was to boost the students' metalinguistic awareness and improve their attitudes toward language learning.<ref name="springboardtolanguages></ref>{{rp|23}}
Angela Tellier and Karen Roehr-Brackin used the Springboard to Languages program to evaluate the effectiveness of the Paderborn method. They also performed three similar studies between 2013 and 2017, investigating whether learning Esperanto facilitates the development of children's metalinguistic awareness and language learning aptitude. The results showed that Esperanto was easier to learn than French for the studied children, but did not show a significant difference in the metalinguistic awareness or proficiency in subsequent language learning between students who had studied Esperanto and students who had studied other languages. However, the experiments did consistently show that the students in the Esperanto group had more uniform scores on tests of metalinguistic awareness, suggesting that studying Esperanto has a levelling effect.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Tellier |first1=Angela |last2=Roehr-Brackin |first2=Karen |title=Esperanto as a tool in classroom foreign language learning in England |journal=Language Problems and Language Planning |date=2018 |volume=42 |issue=1 |pages=89–111 |doi=10.1075/lplp.00013.roe |url=http://repository.essex.ac.uk/24243/ |access-date=2022-05-12}}</ref>
==Mechanism==
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