The authors determined whether the cognitive processes that underlie second-language acquisition difficulties are the same as those that underlie reading difficulties. First-grade (N ϭ 101) bilingual and nonbilingual children were administered a battery of measures in Spanish and English. English word identification and vocabulary were predicted by a language-general working-memory (WM) factor, whereas English pseudoword reading was predicted by Spanish pseudoword reading and WM. The results also showed that (a) children proficient in language were better able to access resources from WM and (b) children with reading disabilities (RD) performed poorly on Spanish measures of short-term memory. In general, second-language difficulties are related to accessing a language-independent WM system, whereas language-specific phonological memory deficits underlie RD.
In this article we report small, but statistically significant, effects of brief supplemental instruction on English reading by Spanish-speaking kindergartners (N = 37) who performed poorly on a bilingual battery of phonological-processing tasks. Intervention design was compatible with the Reading First initiative and with research on use of multitiered intervention strategies for preventing reading failure among young monolingual students (e.g., L. S. Fuchs & Vaughn, 2003). We describe a Core Intervention Model (CIM) comprised of specific instructional behaviors that teachers might easily learn and employ regardless of curriculum, and discuss implications of our findings for building multitiered preventative instruction for young English learners.
This article examines the effects of intensive phonological-awareness (PA) instruction for kindergarten English learners. One intact kindergarten class was provided 300 minutes of intensive instruction in PA. Results indicate that students who received intervention made significant growth in word reading when compared to a cohort of kindergarten students who received general kindergarten instruction. The article also discusses ability-group differences in performance among high-, middle-, and low-performing students and the implications of these findings for instructional practice.
This study investigates the relation between Spanish and English early literacy skills in kindergarten and first grade, and English oral reading fluency at the end of first and second grade in a sample of 150 Spanish‐speaking English language learners. Students were assessed in kindergarten, first, and second grades on a broad bilingual academic battery that included phonological awareness, letter knowledge, vocabulary, word reading, and oral reading fluency. These measures were analyzed using hierarchal multiple regression to determine which early reading skills predicted English oral reading fluency scores at the end of first and second grade. Predictive relationships were different between English and Spanish measures of early literacy and end of year first grade and second grade English oral reading fluency. This study has important implications for early identification of risk for Spanish‐speaking English language learners as it addresses the input of both Spanish and English early reading skills and the relation between those skills and English oral reading fluency.
This study investigated three questions: Do phonological processes show cross-linguistic transfer? How does the language of instruction influence the relationship between phonological processes and decoding? Does performance on Spanish and English phonological processing tasks similarly predict English decoding for the same English learners (ELs)? We studied first-grade ELs who had been enrolled for 2 years in two programs that differed by language of instruction (English only and bilingual). Phonological processing skills were examined following a theory of core phonological processing deficits that postulates that three related constructs—phonological awareness, phonological coding, and phonological recoding—are the major components of phonological processing. The results indicate that (a) phonological processes do exhibit cross-linguistic transfer in young ELs; (b) phonological awareness might best be conceptualized as comprising two developmentally overlapping components; (c) language of instruction influences English and Spanish word reading and Spanish pseudoword decoding, but not English pseudoword decoding; and (d) phonological awareness is the only theoretical phonological processing construct significantly related to all English and Spanish reading tasks.
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