Bilingual SpanishEnglish Reading and Writing Development in Kindergarteners

1
Bilingual (Spanish/English) Reading and Writing
Development in Kindergarteners
USDOE Personal Preparation Grant 84.325H
Rios, U, Carrillo, J, King, J, Lindstedt, E
Department of Communication Sciences and
Disorders, Northern Arizona University,
Flagstaff, AZ 86011
Abstract
Results

Increasing numbers of children are entering
American kindergartens as English language
learners (ELL). Simultaneously, educators are
seeking instructional approaches that will
provide these children with the background needed
to learn and succeed along with their native
English-speaking peers. For many young ELL
children, kindergarten provides the inaugural
experience with pre-literacy materials,
activities, and instruction. Little is known
about the developmental progression of reading
and writing skills of ELL kindergarten children
coming from Spanish-speaking homes. This study,
which included 41 kindergarten children, provides
a preliminary examination of the reading and
writing acquisition of kindergarteners enrolled
in a bilingual magnet school.
Overall, even though the Spanish-speaking
kindergarteners had lower mid-year pre-test
scores than the English-speaking children, they
had markedly greater performance gains at the end
of year post-test. In fact, the Spanish-speaking
students had greater gains in all subtests with
the exception of the subtest Reading Development
in Spanish. (Fig. 1, Fig 2) For the
Spanish-speaking kindergarteners, the greatest
gains were realized in the Upper Case Letter
Recognition subtests in Spanish (54 ) and
English (47 ) respectively. The next two
subtests of greatest gain were in the Verbalizing
Sounds subtests in Spanish (46) and English (43
) respectively. For the English Speaking
kindergarteners, the greatest gains were in the
following four subtests respectively Upper Case
Letter Recognition in Spanish (28), Verbalizing
Sounds in Spanish (28 ), Reading Development
in English (16) and Verbalizing Sounds in
English (14 ). The subtest with the greatest
gains for both groups was in Upper Case Letter
Recognition in Spanish. These gains for the
Spanish speaking kindergarteners and English
speaking English-Speaking kindergarteners were
54 and 28 respectively.

Summary/Conclusion
This study suggests that high quality
classroom-based instruction is especially
important for the educational progress of
Spanish-speaking ELL kindergarten children. Given
the expertise of speech-language pathologists in
the area of literacy, elementary school
administrators should view the involvement of
speech-language pathologists in literacy rich
classroom instruction as a good investment for
the quality education Spanish-speaking children.
For children entering kindergarten with minimal
early learning instruction and experience, high
quality instruction provided in the classroom
from multiple professionals (e.g. teacher and
SLP) may be the only opportunity to catch up,
reach state standards and be prepared for
concentrated reading instruction that occurs in
first grade.
Discussion
The most striking result of this study is that
although the Spanish-speaking students had lower
pre-test scores than the English speaking
students in all subtests, the Spanish-Speaking
students made markedly greater gains for all
subtests except Reading Development in Spanish.
These results suggest that even though
Spanish-speaking children may come into
kindergarten classrooms with less literacy
background knowledge, they are able to take
advantage of classroom-based literacy rich
instruction. Lower pre-test scores for the
Spanish speaking students may be explained by
cultural views held by the parents regarding the
role of parents and the role of teachers in a
childs early education. Parents from
Spanish-speaking homes may not regard parents as
playing an instructional role in their childrens
lives. Rather, they may view this as the
exclusive role of the teacher. Differential
expectations between Spanish-speaking and
English-speaking parents regarding their
responsibilities for teaching their children may
result in differences between these groups of
parents in the efforts they expend to provide
educational experiences and instruction in the
home. Although knowing letter names is regarded
as a predictor of reading acquisition, knowing
the sounds associated with letters is regarded as
central to the task of reading. Yet, the letter
naming subtest results were among the greatest
gains for both groups. The instructional strategy
in this classroom emphasizes the co-instruction
of letter naming and sound recognition.
Therefore, it is not surprising that the children
showed greatest gains in these two reading
sub-skills. It suggests that the children in both
groups were responsive to the instructional
approach that presents sound and letter
recognition in tandem. The least gain for both
language groups were subtests in Spanish. For the
Spanish-speaking group the least gains were in
Reading Development in Spanish and for the
English-speaking group, the least gain was in the
Writing Development in Spanish.

Introduction

A study conducted at the University of
Louisville, Kentucky found that children scoring
high on letter naming skills also had high scores
on letter writing (Molfese, 2006). While numerous
studies have documented the predictive value of
letter naming and phonemic awareness for
English-speaking children learning English
literacy skills, almost no studies have examined
the same skills in primary English- and primary
Spanish-speaking kindergarteners learning to read
bilingually. In this study, pre-literacy skills
(letter naming, letter sound skills and reading
and writing words) were examined using letters of
Spanish and English and the phonemes of these two
languages for L1Spanish/L2 English and L1
English/L2 Spanish kindergarteners.
References
Umbel, V., Ki Oller, D. (1994). Developmental
Changes in Receptive Vocabulary in Hispanic
Bilingual School Children. Language Learning,
44, 221-242. Molfese, V., Beswick, J., Molnar,
A., Jacobi, Vessels, J. (2006). Alphabetic
Skills in Preschool A preliminary Study of
Letter Naming and Letter Writing. Special Issue
Developmental Neuropsychology, 29, 5-19. August,
D., Calderon, M., Carlo, M., Snow, C. (2002).
Transfer of Reading Skills in Bilingual
Children. Center for Applied Linguistics.
Retrieved September 15, 2007 from
http//www.cal.org/acqlit/
Figure 1
Methods
Over the course of one year, English and Spanish
reading and writing performance data were
gathered from kindergarteners who attend a
Flagstaff Unified School District (FUSD)
bilingual (English/Spanish) elementary school.
Subjects were typically developing 5- and
6-year-olds who attended all day kindergarten
where they received half day instruction in
English-only, and the other half in Spanish-only.
There were 41 subjects in all, 21 female and 20
male. Parent reports indicated 30 children spoke
native English and 11 children spoke native
Spanish. Data were analyzed from five subtests of
the Kindergarten Developmental Assessment (KDA)
letter naming Upper Case Letter Recognition
(UCLR), letter sounds Verbalizes Sounds (VS),
reading development Reading Development (RD) and
writing development Writing Development (WD) in
both Spanish and English. The KDA was
administered in both English and Spanish to all
students in November and May.
Figure 2
Acknowledgements
The authors appreciate the support of FUSD Puente
De Hozho kindergarten teachers J.
Littlefield and R. VanderWey and that of the
Office of the Provost, Northern Arizona
University.