For the monolingual population, research has shown that vocabulary knowledge is closely related to reading achievement. However, the role of vocabulary has not been studied as extensively in the bilingual population. It is important to look at vocabulary to better understand reading achievement in the bilingual population in the United States. This study investigated the predictors of Spanish and English vocabulary for 96 fifth-grade Latino English language learners. Our results suggest that becoming or staying proficient in English did not require parental use of English in the home. However, proficiency in Spanish required both instructional support at school and social support at home; it is likely that the low social status of Spanish is related to its greater dependence on home support.

The fastest-growing student population in U.S. schools today is children of immigrants, half of whom do not speak English fluently and are thus labeled English learners. Although the federal government requires school districts to provide services to English learners, it offers states no policies to follow in identifying, assessing, placing, or instructing them. Margarita Calderón, Robert Slavin, and Marta Sánchez identify the elements of effective instruction and review a variety of successful program models.During 2007-08, more than 5.3 million English learners made up 10.6 percent of the nation's K-12 public school enrollment. Wide and persistent achievement disparities between these English learners and English-proficient students show clearly, say the authors, that schools must address the language, literacy, and academic needs of English learners more effectively.Researchers have fiercely debated the merits of bilingual and English-only reading instruction. In elementary schools, English learners commonly receive thirty minutes of English as a Second Language (ESL) instruction but attend general education classes for the rest of the day, usually with teachers who are unprepared to teach them. Though English learners have strikingly diverse levels of skills, in high school they are typically lumped together, with one teacher to address their widely varying needs. These in-school factors contribute to the achievement disparities.Based on the studies presented here, Calderón, Slavin, and Sánchez assert that the quality of instruction is what matters most in educating English learners. They highlight comprehensive reform models, as well as individual components of these models: school structures and leadership; language and literacy instruction; integration of language, literacy, and content instruction in secondary schools; cooperative learning; professional development; parent and family support teams; tutoring; and monitoring implementation and outcomes.As larger numbers of English learners reach America's schools, K-12 general education teachers are discovering the need to learn how to teach these students. Schools must improve the skills of all educators through comprehensive professional development-an ambitious but necessary undertaking that requires appropriate funding.

This article reports the outcomes of a multiyear study comparing the English and Spanish language and reading performance of Spanish-dominant children randomly assigned, beginning in kindergarten, to transitional bilingual education (TBE) or structured English immersion (SEI) for periods of up to 5 years. On the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test and its Spanish equivalent (Test de Vocabulario en Imagenes Peabody) and on the English and Spanish versions of three WoodcockReading Scales, first graders in TBE performed significantly better in Spanish and worse in English than did their SEI counterparts. Differences diminished in second and third grades, and by fourth grade, when all students in TBE had transitioned to English-only instruction, there were no significant differences on English reading measures. These findings suggest that Spanish-dominant students learn to read in English equally well in TBE and SEI and that policy should therefore focus on the quality of instruction rather than on the language of instruction for English-language learners.

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The current study unites multiple theories (i.e., the orthographic depth hypothesis and linguistic grain size theory, the simple view of reading, and the common underlying proficiency model) to explore differences in how 113 fourth-grade Spanish-speaking English learners (ELs) approached reading in their native language of Spanish, which is transparent, compared to their second language of English, which is more opaque. Contributions of different linguistic grain sizes (i.e., small grains assessed via phonological decoding and large grains assessed via morphological awareness), mediators (i.e., word reading, listening comprehension, and oral vocabulary), and transfer were explored. The results suggest that morphological awareness and phonological decoding contributed to reading comprehension in Spanish whereas only morphological awareness contributed to reading comprehension in English. For mediators, listening comprehension played a larger role than word reading in supporting reading comprehension in Spanish and English, but oral vocabulary only contributed in Spanish. No significant role of crosslanguage transfer was found. Theoretical and educational implications are discussed.

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