Purpose-Research has identified English oral language proficiency as being critical for bilingual students' literacy development. This study examines developmental patterns and associations among oral vocabulary and narrative skills in a longitudinal sample of 24 Spanish/English bilingual children from low socioeconomic backgrounds so as to further our understanding of the development of oral proficiency.Method-English and Spanish data were gathered using standardized vocabulary tests and narrative elicitation tasks provided to kindergartners and first graders. Narratives were coded for length using two measures of productivity and for quality at two levels: story score and language score. Descriptive, correlation, multivariate, and regression analyses were conducted.Results-Significant gains from kindergarten to first grade were found for all English oral language measures. Despite showing improvements in English vocabulary, the majority of children continued to score below the monolingual mean in first grade. For English narrative productivity, total number of different words (TDW) proved to be a sensitive developmental measure in contrast to total number of words (TNW). In Spanish, significant gains were noted only for narrative story score. Kindergarten Spanish story scores predicted first-grade English narrative quality even when controlling for the effects of English vocabulary and English narrative productivity. First-grade Spanish narrative quality was best predicted by Spanish vocabulary.Implications-The need for early assessment and monitoring of expressive vocabulary and oral narrative skills, and the potential contributions of Spanish story organization skills to English narrative performance in bilingual children from low socioeconomic families, are highlighted. Keywordsnarrative; vocabulary; bilingual children; Spanish; cross-language associationsThe study of oral language skills is at the forefront of the current research agenda on improving literacy achievement in U.S. schools. Based on a comprehensive review of the literature, the National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority Children and Youth identified English oral proficiency as a crucial area of concern for students who speak a language other than English at home (August & Shanahan, 2006). The panel found that when learning to read, languageminority children attain levels of performance that are similar to those of English monolinguals NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript in word-level skills (decoding, word identification, and spelling), but they lag considerably behind in text-level skills (reading comprehension and writing). Whereas English oral proficiency is not associated to word-level skills, it does predict English reading comprehension and writing, hence playing a critical role in explaining the disparity in literacy levels (August & Shanahan, 2006).Among the various English oral proficiency skills, vocabulary knowledge and narrative ability have been found to be important precursors to ...

This article describes oral language and early literacy skills in Spanish and English for a sample of 319 bilingual children in Massachusetts and Maryland (ECS) and a comparison group of 144 monolingual Spanish-speaking children in Puerto Rico (PRC). Children were assessed as they entered and exited pre-kindergarten programs. Data collection included four subtests of the Woodcock Language Proficiency Battery and a researcher-developed phonological awareness task. Results show that, on average, children in the ECS sample performed below average in both English and Spanish when compared to monolingual norms and, despite some early literacy and oral language gains during their pre-kindergarten year, continue to lag behind monolingual children of the same age. Children in the ECS sample performed better in the early literacy tasks than in the oral language tasks in both English and Spanish. On average, the PRC sample scored significantly better than the ECS sample in Spanish oral language skills, but lower in phonological awareness skills. Educational implications and directions for future research are discussed.

This study aims to increase understanding of factors that account for academic English language proficiency in a sample of 274 adolescent firstgeneration immigrant students from China, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Central America, and Mexico. Previous research has shown the importance of English language proficiency in predicting academic achievement measured by GPA and achievement tests. The present study describes the academic English language proficiency of immigrant youth after, on average, 7 years in the United States and models factors that contribute to variation. Findings show that although differences in individual student characteristics partially explain variation in English language proficiency, the schools that immigrant youth attended are also important. The amount of time that students spent speaking English in informal social situations is predictive of English language proficiency. These findings demonstrate that social context factors directly affect language learning among adolescent immigrant youth and suggest a crucial role for school and peer interventions.

Abstract— Research evidence supports the importance of a high‐quality early education to foster young children’s school readiness and success. In particular, programs that focus on eliminating the readiness gap for young minority children, including dual language learners (DLLs), have increased in importance given the current demographic shifts in the United States and the need to promote learning in the early years. This article discusses current knowledge about effective instructional strategies for promoting language and literacy development among young DLLs. It presents a brief summary of research on the relationship between oral language and literacy development, reviews instructional practices and language of instruction approaches, and concludes with recommendations for policy and future research.

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