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Federally Funded Research on Spanish-English Biliteracy
Three Broad Research Questions
The three broad questions that NICHD and IES want to have answered are these:
How do children whose first language is Spanish learn to read and write in English? That is, what skills and abilities are required, and what types of home, preschool, childcare, school and cultural experiences and environments are most supportive of English-language reading and writing at different points in a child's development?
What might be causing some Spanish-speaking children not to learn to read and write in English? That is, why do some Spanish-speaking children have difficulties acquiring English-language reading and writing skills? Specifically, what cognitive, linguistic, environmental, sociocultural, neurobiological and instructional factors slow down or hinder the development of accurate and fluent English reading and writing skills? In addition, what are the most significant risk factors that can help us predict which children will have difficulties?
What can we do about it? That is, which teaching methods work best for which children? Under what conditions do Spanish-speaking children best learn to read and write in English? Which methods are most beneficial at what ages or stages of development? And what type of training should teachers have to ensure that children learn as well and as efficiently as possible?
In order to address these major questions, the research projects are adapting and developing tests for use in their research. These include tests to find out how well children have mastered the sound systems of both Spanish and English, how much early reading ability they have developed at given points in time and then how much progress they are making, how much knowing a certain amount of one language helps them learn similar things in the other language, and what specific characteristics the children have. Student characteristics include when children entered English-speaking schools, what language or languages are spoken in the home and neighborhood, and how many brothers or sisters the children have. These and other characteristics that the researchers will study can affect how well a child learns a language, whether a child is able to maintain fluency in both languages, and how the child feels about speaking these languages. The tests are being developed specifically to be comparable across both Spanish and English. The researchers have already made presentations for other researchers and for teachers about how the research studies are designed and how the tests are being developed. When the tests are ready, they will be shared with other researchers who might want to use them. The NICHD and IES hope that this sharing will increase the number of high-quality research projects and therefore speed up our learning about the best ways to teach Spanish-speaking children to read and write in English.
As the researchers learn about instructional methods and what factors affect learning for Spanish-speaking children learning English, these results will be shared with other researchers, teachers, school administrators and families. The special challenge of reading disability in English-language-learning children is an area that still needs a lot of study. The NICHD and IES hope that studies of this important topic will grow out of the current studies.
Federally Funded Research on Spanish-English Biliteracy
» Three Broad Research Questions
Research Grants
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