Effect of the development of precursor skills for literacy in Spanish on learning to read in English

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to analyze the effects of Spanish literacy precursor skills on reading learning to read in the mother tongue and their degree of transfer to English. A quasi-experimental design was used, which allowed for a repeated measures comparison between two groups of students, who underwent a follow-up assessment one year after the end of the intervention. A total of 386 schoolchildren, aged 6–7 years at the time of the intervention, who were beginning to learn to read, participated in the study. The results show that the implementation of teaching models that favor the development of precursor reading skills in a first language, such as Spanish, contribute to the literacy process in a second language such as English, and that the benefits acquired are maintained over time.