Abstract
The growing diversity in schools in the United States resulting from the rising number of English learners (ELs) has put more pressure on both children and teachers. Teachers are faced with the challenge of meeting the educational needs of culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) learners, including the unique needs of CLD children with academic delays or disabilities. As early as preschool, many ELs are performing academically lower than their monolingual peers in literacy, and the gap can be even greater for ELs identified as having a delay or disability. However, providing explicit phonological awareness interventions in the child’s native language may help improve English reading outcomes and mediate the negative effects on reading achievement attributed to limited English proficiency. This intervention study looked at how a phonologically based emergent literacy intervention provided in Spanish to four EL preschoolers affected their emergent literacy and phonological awareness outcomes in English and Spanish. All of the children increased their overall emergent literacy and phonological awareness skills in both English and Spanish. The findings indicated that all four children showed some increase in English phonological awareness skills in both syllable segmentation and letter sound knowledge, while sound isolation and sound segmentation demonstrated mixed results across participants.
Highlights
About 12 million children in the schools in the United States (US) are considered as having a limited English proficiency, designating them as English learners (ELs) [1]
The findings indicated that all four children showed some increase in English phonological awareness skills in both syllable segmentation and letter sound knowledge, while sound isolation and sound segmentation demonstrated mixed results across participants
This study addresses the following research question: Do Spanish speaking preschool ELs who have difficulties with emergent literacy improve their phonological awareness (PA) and emergent literacy skills in Spanish and English when provided with small-group, phonologically based emergent literacy instruction in Spanish?
Summary
About 12 million children in the schools in the United States (US) are considered as having a limited English proficiency, designating them as English learners (ELs) [1]. Due to this growing diversity, teachers are faced with the additional challenge of meeting the educational needs of culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) learners, including those with academic delays and disabilities. As early as kindergarten, compared to monolingual students, only 17% of ELs’ scores are in the average range on measures of language arts, math, and general knowledge This gap continues to widen throughout the elementary school years [3]. There is widespread agreement in the field that effective early literacy instruction can minimize the long-term difficulties
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