Research Project
6388239
DESCRIPTION: (Adapted from applicant's description) The literacy education of Spanish-speaking children in the United States is a topic of much debate. Although extensive research has led to knowledge of longitudinal predictors of monolingual reading performance, research as to longitudinal predictors of English reading performance in bilingual children with Spanish as their first language (L1) is in the initial stages. This study proposes to examine longitudinal predictors of English reading skill in children who speak Spanish (L1). An extensive battery of standardized and experimental tasks will be administered to the children in Spanish and in English. Standardized tests include Spanish and English measures of word and pseudoword reading, measures of oral vocabulary knowledge, measures of oral language comprehension and later a measure of word spelling. This battery will include parallel experimental measures of phonological awareness including rhyme detection and initial phoneme detection in English and Spanish as well as a measure of pseudoword phoneme deletion. Other linguistic and preliteracy tasks administered in both Spanish and English will include pseudoword repetition, syntactic processing, rapid naming of objects and numbers and a later administered measure of orthographic processing. A measure of untimed, discrete letter naming and an English measure of environmental print knowledge will also be administered. Two cohorts of children will be selected. The children will be tested as prereaders and then followed through the process of initial reading acquisition. One cohort will be tested at the beginning of grade 1, the end of grade 1 and the end of grade 2. The second cohort will be tested during the middle of their kindergarten year and then at the beginning of grade 1 and end of grade 1. The longitudinal-sequential design of the study will reduce the risk of a small sample size due to attrition by limiting the length of time to complete the data collection and the number of sessions for each participant. This design will also allow the study to be completed within a two year period.
