Spanish-Speaking Language Minority Learners’ Reading Development: Early Childhood Through Adolescence

• In Event: The Development of Vocabulary and Comprehension in Spanish-Speaking English-Language Learners

Abstract

Objectives
The objective of the study was to investigate Spanish-speaking language minority learners’ reading and language development, from preschool through adolescence

Framework
Latino students from Spanish-speaking homes comprise the largest and fastest growing segment of the school-aged population (e.g., Planty et al., 2009), and are at-risk for academic difficulties. Yet minimal longitudinal research has investigated this population’s language and reading development, limiting the field’s ability to develop targeted interventions for this population.

Method
387 Spanish-speaking families were recruited for participation from Head Start and public preschool programs in the Northeastern U.S in 2001. Participating children were initially followed from age 4.5 to 8. Almost 200 of these families were then re-recruited into the study when the target child was 11 years old; this sample has been followed through to age 14 (end of 8th grade, spring 2011). At follow-up, students attended 75 schools; 95% of participating students had been educated in English-only classrooms.

The great majority of children (89%) were born in the U.S.; in contrast, the great majority of mothers (89%) were born outside of the U.S. mainland. Thirty-six percent of mothers had less than a high school education; 8% had completed a four-year college program. Eighty-two percent of families were low-income, with 52% living in poverty or deep poverty.

Children’s skills were assessed at 9 waves: fall of preschool, spring of preschool, kindergarten, 1st grade, 2nd grade, 5th grade, 6th grade, 7th grade, and 8th grade. Individual assessments were conducted by bilingual research assistants.

Data Sources
Measures were both English and Spanish. Word reading was assessed with the Letter-Word Identification subtest of the WLPB-R (Woodcock, 1991; Woodcock & Muñoz-Sandoval, 1995); vocabulary was assessed using the WLPB-R Productive Vocabulary test; Reading Comprehension was assessed using two measures: WLPB-R Passage Comprehension and the Gates MacGinitie Reading test (MacGinitie, MacGinitie, Dreyer, & Hughes, 2000).

Results
Analyses to date (age 4 to age 11) have led us to hypothesize that students’ rates of growth (age 4.5 to 11) and ability in word reading will be on par with national norms. In contrast, while rates of growth in oral language skills have been surpassing the national rates, they are likely not to have reached age-appropriate levels; at age 11, for example, English vocabulary was at the 16th percentile. At the AERA meeting, we will present trajectories of vocabulary and reading (using individual growth modeling); in addition, we will present a model of reading comprehension (using longitudinal Structural Equation Modeling) for using all waves of data and examining home- and child-level predictors.

Significance
If we are to better serve the growing population of Spanish-speaking language minority learners, particularly those who are U.S.-born and educated-in today’s classroom, there a pressing need to generate nuanced, empirical descriptions of their reading and language development. It is especially important that such empirical work extends well past the primary grades, capturing the complexity of reading comprehension and its role in academic success.

Authors

• Nonie K. Lesaux, Harvard University

• Jeannette Mancilla-Martinez, University of California - Irvine