Poster #76 - The Relationships between Oral Language, Literacy, and Math Achievement for Emerging Spanish-English Speaking Bilingual Children

• In Event: Poster Session 01

Abstract

Oral language has been identified as one of the crucial precursors linked to literacy and math achievement (Petscher et al., 2020; Cirino et al., 2018). The early identification of children’s literacy and math precursor skillsets is critical for preventative and intervention programs (Hollands et al., 2013; Reynolds & Temple, 2008). Oral language skills have been identified through empirical evidence to predict children’s literacy achievement (Catts, 2018; Petscher et al., 2020). Furthermore, empirical evidence has demonstrated the relationships between oral language skills and early literacy achievement for emerging bilinguals are spread across languages (Florit & Cain, 2011). In addition, children’s oral language skills have been identified as contributors to variability within children’s math achievement (Cirino, 2018). It should be noted that there have been few studies that have analyzed children’s oral language skills as a precursor for both early literacy and math achievement, with even fewer that explored variability across languages for emerging bilinguals (Cirino, 2018). The current study’s objective is to explore the within and cross-language relationships between children’s oral language skills and literacy and math achievement for emerging Spanish-English speaking bilingual Pre-k 4 children at the 0.25, 0.50, and 0.75 quantiles.
The current study is theoretically grounded in Cummins’ (1979) linguistic interdependence hypothesis, which posits an underlying language proficiency that facilitates cross-language integration between children’s first and second languages. As emerging bilingual children gain access to both languages, these languages merge together into a single linguistic system of common underlying proficiency (Cummins, 2017). The linguistic interdependence hypothesis provides a rich lens to examine relationships between emerging bilingual children’s L1 and L2 and academic domains, such as early literacy and math (Cummins, 2017).
Within and cross-language relationships between emerging bilingual children’s oral language skills and literacy and math achievement within pre-k 4 Head Start programs (n = 330) were explored through analyses of ordinary least squares (OLS) and quantile regression models (Koenker & Hallock, 2001). Composite scores for oral language, literacy, and math were obtained from the children’s norm-referenced standardized W scores of the Woodcock-Johnson III/Batería III (Woodcock et al. 2001, Muñoz et al., 2009). Through our regression models, we found that children’s oral language skills significantly contributed to the variability found within most measures for literacy and math in Spanish and English at p ≤ .01, with greater variability found for the within-language measures. English oral language contributed to 27.5% of the variability of English literacy and 54.2% of the variability of English math achievement. Spanish oral language was found to contribute for 28.3% of variability in Spanish literacy and 41.5% of math achievement. Significance was found in cross-language variabilities, although less than within-language variabilities. The quantile regression analyses confirmed oral language contributed to the variabilities of all within-language measures for reading and math with differences in variability across quantiles. Our analyses revealed the critical nature of educators supporting emerging bilingual children’s language development in both their first and second languages as they develop their academic skills.

Authors

• Shaunacy Sutter, University of South Florida
  Presenting Author

• Matthew E Foster, University of South Florida

• Lisa Maria López, University of South Florida