Background To date, there is limited information documenting growth patterns in the narratives of bilingual children with and without primary language impairment (PLI). Aims This study was designed to determine whether bilingual children with and without PLI present similar gains from kindergarten to first grade in the macro- and microstructure of stories told in Spanish and English. Methods and Procedures In this longitudinal study, 21 bilingual children identified with PLI were each matched to a bilingual typically-developing (TD) peer on age, sex, nonverbal IQ and language exposure. During their kindergarten and first grade years, children retold stories from wordless picture books in Spanish (L1) and English (L2). Outcomes and Results Overall, TD children outperformed those with PLI on measures of macrostructure and microstructure at both time points. For the macrostructure measure, the TD group made significantly larger improvements in both languages from kindergarten to first grade than the PLI group. For microstructure, the TD children made more gains on their Spanish retells than their English retells. However, the PLI children’s microstructure scores did not differ from kindergarten to first grade in either language. We found that macrostructure scores in Spanish at kindergarten predicted macrostructure scores in English at first grade when English experience was held constant. However, this same relationship across languages was not evident in microstructure. Conclusions and Implications TD and PLI children differed in the development of narrative macrostructure and microstructure between kindergarten and first grade. The TD bilinguals transferred conceptually-dependent narrative skills easily, but then had to independently learn the nuances of each language to be successful using literate language. Because most children with PLI need more exposure to establish strong connections between their L1 and L2, they had more difficulty transferring their knowledge of literate language forms from one language to another.

This study provides evidence for the feasibility of the Supporting Knowledge in Language and Literacy narrative instruction program for improving self-generated narratives by children with language disorders. Future research is needed to determine how gains in oral narration transfer to written narrative skills.

Although the orthographic processing skill of recognizing and producing letters and letter patterns has been established as an important skill for developing spelling, a majority of the research focus has been on early orthographic intervention that did not progress beyond the unit of the letter. The purpose of this article is to provide a best evidence synthesis of current high-quality, peer-reviewed, experimental or control studies on spelling interventions with a focus on orthographic patterns (N = 5). This small synthesis revealed that spelling interventions with an orthographic pattern focus appear to contribute to the significant improvement of spelling skills in kindergarten through ninth-grade students with and at risk for reading disabilities. Several intervention approaches with varying methods to improve orthographic pattern knowledge were considered and were related to moderate to large effect sizes on standardized measures of spelling. Thus, the reviewed interventions appear to reflect educationally significant changes in orthographic pattern knowledge that transferred beyond that of taught spelling words.

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