Spanish-speaking English Learners Research Articles

Cross-linguistic effects of form overlap in aural recognition of Spanish–English cognates

Abstract This study investigated the effect of cross-linguistic overlap in L1 and L2 auditory recognition of Spanish–English cognates. The study examined the correlation between objective and subjective measures of overlap and analyzed how these measures predict patterns in auditory recognition. 62 Spanish-speaking learners of English and 63 English-speaking learners of Spanish completed two auditory lexical decision tasks in Spanish and English and a rating task, where they rated the perceived phonological similarity of cognates. The results revealed moderate correlations between subjective and objective measures of overlap. While orthographic overlap had no effect, increased phonological overlap facilitated recognition in L1 and L2 Spanish and English and had larger effects in L2 recognition. Perceived similarity was the best predictor among the measures of overlap. The findings support models suggesting that cross-linguistic co-activation is facilitated by increased form similarity and studies reporting modality dependent effects of cross-linguistic form overlap in lexical recognition.

Enriching Spanish-Speaking English Learners’ Experiences in the English Music Classroom

According to the National Education Association, one out of every four children in the U.S. public education system will be an English Learner (EL) by 2025, with at least half of these students likely being Spanish-speaking EL students. As school populations become more ethnically, racially, and linguistically diverse, current and future music teachers must increase awareness of the barriers that the growing population of Spanish-speaking EL students may encounter. In this article, the author describes the language acquisition stages that Spanish-speaking EL students typically go through, providing insights into possible strategies for addressing their language barriers and socio-emotional needs, as well as fostering a culturally responsive and sustainable environment in the music classroom. In doing so, the author describes several concrete methods that music educators could use to engage with and learn more about the rich Spanish-speaking communities. Thus, becoming more responsive to the current demographic changes and challenges.

Sonority across Languages:

His paper presents a contrastive perspective on the front monophthongs in Spanish and English. Applying the quantitative contrastive method designed and used in the researchers’ earlier works of 2015 and 2019, we highlight the contrast between Spanish and English front monophthongs from a zonal frame of reference in the oral tact, and proceed to offer insight about the comparative levels of learner stress and difficulty that English speaking learners of Spanish and Spanish speaking learners of English as a foreign language will probably experience while attaining accuracy in the acquisition of their target vowel systems. The facts that English and Spanish front monophthongs are more different than similar (71.43: 28.57) and the acquisition workload is greater (80:50) for Spanish speaking learners of English have been established in this study. In addition, English speaking learners of Spanish will need to generate a greater degree (80:50) of substratum counter influence than Spanish speaking learners of English for the accurate acquisition of their target vowels. Although both types of learners can transfer an equal number of vowel sounds from their L1 inventories, the ratio is not the same (20:50) and the study indicates that English speaking learners of Spanish in general will probably experience a slightly greater degree of articulatory stress in attaining perfection in the pronunciation of the target system.

Cross-linguistic influences of L1 on L2 morphosyntactic processing: An fNIRS study

This study examined how the morphological typology of second language (L2) learners' first language (L1) affected neural processing of L2 morphosyntactic knowledge. We used functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to examine adult L2 learners’ processing of English Subject-Verb number agreement (e.g., duck swims, ducks swim) during a picture-sentence matching task. Two English learner groups with contrasting L1s, Spanish (with rich inflectional morphology, n = 16) and Mandarin (with a lexical morphology, n = 18), were compared to native English speakers (n = 19). Both L2-learner groups demonstrated comparable accuracy on the picture-sentence matching task. However, neural results revealed L1 influence on L2 morphosyntactic processing. Mandarin-speaking English L2 learners showed greater neural activity in the left middle temporal gyrus (L-MTG) for singular (e.g., the duck swims) versus plural sentences (e.g., the ducks swim). Mandarin relies on semantic, rather than inflectional, information to infer number and L-MTG is involved in lexical-semantic processing, suggesting L1 influence on L2 inflectional processing. Spanish-speaking English L2 learners showed greater neural activity in areas including the right MTG and prefrontal cortex for the plural versus singular sentences whereas native English speakers showed greater activity for singular versus plural sentences. The plural form is morphologically marked in Spanish and greater neural activation for the plural rather than singular form suggests L1 influence. Importantly, cross-linguistic influences were only observed at the neural level, revealing that different neural activation patterns underpin similar behavioral results. Both L2-learner groups showed different patterns of neural activation corresponding to the specific linguistic features of their L1, indicating that L2 processing is affected by L1 characteristics in linguistically principled ways. This study advances our understanding of how morphosyntactically-distinct languages are organized and processed in adult L2 learners.

Dual Language Profiles in Spanish-Speaking English Learners.

The purpose of this study was to identify and describe latent dual language profiles in a large sample of school-age Spanish-English bilingual children designated as English learners (ELs) by their school district. Data for this study include 847 Spanish-speaking ELs from kindergarten to third grade. Spanish and English narrative retell language samples were collected from all participants. Four oral language measures were calculated in Spanish and English, including the subordination index, moving average type-token ratio, narrative structure scheme (NSS), and words per minute using Systematic Analysis of Language Transcript. These indicator measures were used in a latent profile analysis to identify dual language profiles. The optimal model represents a four-profile solution, including a Spanish-dominant group (average Spanish, low English), an English-dominant group (low Spanish, average English), and two balanced groups (a balanced-average group and a balanced-high group). Additionally, participants displayed uneven performance across language domains and distinct patterns of unique strength or weakness in a specific domain in one of their two languages. Findings from this study highlight the large variability in English and Spanish oral language abilities in school-age Spanish-speaking ELs and suggest that a dichotomous classification of ELs versus English-proficient students may not be sufficient to determine the type of educational program that best fits a specific bilingual child's need. These findings highlight the need to assess both languages across multiple language domains to paint a representative picture of a bilingual child's language abilities. The dual language profiles identified may be used to guide the educational program selection process to improve the congruence among the linguistic needs of an individual child, teachers' use of instructional language, and the goals of the educational program (i.e., improving English proficiency vs. supporting dual language development). https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.20151836.

EFL Learners’ Formulaic Language Use in Writing: an Action Research Account

The present study exemplifies an action research-based approach for addressing the extent to which a process of explicit instruction of formulaic language supports the use of this type of vocabulary in middle school students’ short narrative written texts. The study was conducted at a private school in Chile, as a plan to help learners use different forms of expression in a written format. Data were obtained from a group of 23 Spanish-speaking learners of English before and after the intervention period. The action research methodology was implemented in order to collect and analyse written compositions as well as a survey for evaluating the treatment from the students’ perspective. The observation and reflection process led to positive outcomes in relation to the use of formulaic expressions in writing, and students’ opinion about the process also proved favourable. The pedagogical innovation is reflected upon theoretical and pedagogical perspectives. Implications applicable to teachers working in this and other contexts are also considered.

Vocabulary Size Is a Key Factor in Predicting Second Language Lexical Encoding Accuracy.

This study investigates the relationship between the accuracy of second language lexical representations and perception, phonological short-term memory, inhibitory control, attention control, and second language vocabulary size. English-speaking learners of Spanish were tested on their lexical encoding of the Spanish /ɾ-r/, /ɾ-d/, /r-d/, and /f-p/ contrasts through a lexical decision task. Perception ability was measured with an oddity task, phonological short-term memory with a serial non-word recognition task, attention control with a flanker task, inhibitory control with a retrieval-induced inhibition task, and vocabulary size with the X_Lex vocabulary test. Results revealed that differences in perception performance, inhibitory control, and attention control were not related to differences in lexical encoding accuracy. Phonological short-term memory was a significant factor, but only for the /r-ɾ/ contrast. This suggests that when representations contain sounds that are differentiated along a dimension not used in the native language, learners with higher phonological short-term memory have an advantage because they are better able to hold the relevant phonetic details in memory long enough to be transferred to long-term representations. Second language vocabulary size predicted lexical encoding across three of the four contrasts, such that a larger vocabulary predicted greater accuracy. This is likely because the acquisition of more phonologically similar words forces learners’ phonological systems to create more detailed representations in order for such words to be differentiated. Overall, this study suggests that vocabulary size in the second language is the most important factor in the accuracy of lexical representations.

A study of how English-speaking learners of Spanish in the beyond-basic stage express temporality in personal narratives

Esta investigación cualitativa de corpus de enfoque conceptual analizó funciones y formas estructurales de palabras, frases y cláusulas temporales en 34 narrativas personales escritas por universitarios angloparlantes en un curso de español de tercer año, recopiladas durante varios semestres consecutivos. Según los resultados, los estudiantes en la etapa más allá de la básica utilizaron abundantemente expresiones temporales para complementar un sistema verbal desarrollado, pero todavía en proceso de evolución. Utilizaron expresiones temporales mayormente para estructurar sucesos y acciones cronológicamente y, en segundo lugar, para organizar el discurso. Los indicadores de frecuencia y manera se usaron rara vez. Los estudiantes utilizaron frecuentemente el principio de orden natural presentando sucesos y acciones en el orden en que ocurrieron sin utilizar palabras o frases léxicamente asociadas con el tiempo. En orden decreciente de uso, emplearon frases adverbiales sin verbo, segmentos con múltiples frases temporales y cláusulas temporales. El género, la competencia lingüística y las instrucciones para la tarea, parecen haber influido en la manera en que los alumnos comunicaron la temporalidad.

Expressing uncontrolledness in narratives of accidental events: A comparison between native and non-native speakers of Spanish

This paper compares the range of alternating constructions to convey the notion of uncontrolledness in narratives of accidental events told by native and non-native speakers of Spanish. The paper addresses the question of whether or not these speaker groups convey an accidental event differently. Using a meaning-focused production task, natural-like oral narratives of accidental events were elicited from a group of 45 English-speaking learners of Spanish at advanced instructional levels and 45 Colombian monolingual Spanish speakers. Constructions conveying uncontrolled events in finite clauses across the whole stories were contrasted. Special attention was paid to constructions with se conveying accidentality in which syntactic features such as agreement, word order, and null subjects were analyzed. The results of the study show that native Spanish speakers use significantly more constructions with se conveying accidentality than non-native speakers, especially in the story climax. A form-focused acceptability judgment task was carried out to address metalinguistic knowledge and compare its results with those from the production task, which arguably reflects a greater use of procedural-communicative knowledge. The paper gives evidence of a different performance of native and non-native speakers of Spanish in production and acceptability tasks.

Variational Learning in Child L2 Acquisition? Comprehension of Verbal Agreement in Spanish and English

ABSTRACT The Spanish verbal system offers more evidence for agreement and tense than English, where morphological evidence is less robust. With a focus on the comprehension of verbal agreement morphology by child second (L2) learners of Spanish and English, we extend the Variational Learning account to L2 acquisition to investigate whether the abundance of morphological evidence for subject agreement in the target language contributes to the rate of acquisition. Participants were 32 Spanish-speaking L2 learners of English and 32 English-speaking L2 learners of Spanish ages 7;5–10;11. The children’s comprehension of verb agreement morphology in Spanish and in English was assessed with an off-line picture-sentence matching task in each language. The results show higher accuracy comprehending agreement for the children learning L2 Spanish compared to the children learning L2 English. This finding is consistent with a probabilistic approach to morphological learning and the role of morphological typology in the rate of acquisition.

A comparison of phonological and articulation-based approaches to accent modification using small groups

ABSTRACT Objectives: The purpose of the current study was to compare the effectiveness of a phonologically based accent modification treatment to an articulation/motor based treatment with Spanish-speaking adult learners of English using a small group model. In addition, the study examined which approach was more effective at treating specific phonological transfers and specific segments and what other factors modulated improvement in production accuracy. Method: Ten participants were randomly assigned to two groups. One group received accent modification treatment using an articulation/segment based approach, while the other used a phonological/contrast based approach. Treatment lasted seven weeks. Participants were recorded producing a 140-word list pre- and post-treatment to assess for improvement after treatment in both accuracy of word production and use of target phonological transfers. Results: Results indicated significant differences between the pre- and post-treatment accuracy scores; however, there was not a significant difference in overall improvement between the two groups. Improvement in transfer patterns that required a new phonological structure (e.g., the insertion of a vowel before /s/ clusters) were more likely to improve than those that required the formation of a new phoneme category (e.g., accurate production of interdental fricatives). Conclusions: It appears that an articulation-based approach may be more effective for treating vowels, at least with Spanish-speaking learners of English in the early stages of English fluency. Caution should be taken with results as it may not be generalizable to populations with different language backgrounds.

Dynamic Assessment for Identifying Spanish-Speaking English Learners’ Risk for Mathematics Disabilities: Does Language of Administration Matter?

We examined dynamic assessment’s (DA’s) added value over traditional assessments for identifying Spanish-speaking English learners’ (ELs) risk for developing mathematics disabilities, as a function of the language of test administration (English vs. Spanish), type of math outcome, and EL’s language dominance. At the start of first grade, ELs (N = 368) were randomly assigned to English-DA or Spanish-DA conditions, were assessed on static mathematics measures and domain-general (language, reasoning) measures in English, and completed DA in their assigned language condition. At year’s end, they were assessed on calculation and word-problem solving outcomes in English. Results from multigroup path models indicated that Spanish-DA mitigates the impact of ELs’ language dominance on DA performance. Moreover, ELs’ language dominance moderated DA’s predictive validity differentially depending on DA language and type of outcome. Spanish-DA showed higher predictive validity in Spanish-dominant ELs than English-dominant ELs when predicting calculations but not word-problem solving. English-DA was predictive for both outcomes, regardless of ELs’ language dominance.

How Harmful Is Segregation? English Learners’ Conditions For Learning In Segregated Classrooms

ABSTRACTThis ethnographic study compares the educational experiences of Bangla-speaking and Spanish-speaking English Learners (ELs) served by officially identical bilingual instructional models within one public middle school. Building on theories of policy implementation and a case within a case analysis, I ask: How do EL’s conditions for learning in segregated settings vary within schools? What varies the degree of harm or benefit entailed by linguistic segregation within schools? I argue that administrative choices related to program design and staffing, as well as the characteristics of the US-born population and the staff’s beliefs about culture, impacted Bangla- and Spanish-speaking ELs’ conditions for learning.

Spanish-speaking English learners' English language and literacy skills: The predictive role of conceptually-scored vocabulary.

Vocabulary represents a key barrier to language and literacy development for many English learners. This study examined the relationship between Spanish-speaking English learners' conceptually-scored Spanish-English vocabulary, academic English proficiency, and English reading comprehension. Second- and fourth-grade English learners (N = 62) completed standardized conceptually-scored vocabulary measures in the fall and state-administered standardized measures of academic English proficiency and English reading comprehension in the spring. Conceptually-scored vocabulary measures are designed to tap knowledge of the number of known concepts, regardless of the specific language (Spanish or English) used to label the concept. Regression analyses revealed that academic English proficiency and English reading comprehension were not predicted by the conceptually-scored measure of receptive vocabulary. However, both academic English proficiency and English reading comprehension were predicted by the conceptually-scored measure of expressive vocabulary. Importantly, the relationship between conceptually-scored expressive vocabulary and English reading comprehension remained after controlling for academic English proficiency. Results underscore the utility of measures that incorporate English learners' first and second language skills in understanding the vocabulary knowledge English learners bring to English language and literacy learning tasks.

Exploring the Use of a Dual Language Assessment Task to Assess Young English Learners

ABSTRACTThe purpose of this study was to create and prototype a dual language assessment task that allows young English learners to use their entire cadre of linguistic resources (language and non-verbal resources) to obtain information about their emergent language abilities. We developed a dual language assessment task in which students described a picture, predicted a story, and retold a story. This task allows students to translanguage, that is, to use all their linguistic resources in ways that fit their communicative needs, and the students’ responses are scored regardless of the language(s) or communicative strategies that are used. In this paper, we report our findings concerning how 17 kindergarten Spanish-speaking English learners in the United States interacted with the dual language assessment task, whether and how they used their language (e.g., English and Spanish) and non-verbal (e.g., body movements, gestures, gazes, visual cues, posture, drawings, signs) resources, and what we learned about their cross-linguistic emergent language abilities.

Using Eye-Movements to Track Bilingual Activation

Recent research found that the languages of bilingual listeners are active and interact, such that both lexical representations are activated by the spoken input with which they are compatible. However, the time course of bilingual activation and whether suprasegmental information further modulates this cross-language competition are still not well understood. This study investigates the effect of stress placement on the processing of English–Spanish cognates by beginner-to-intermediate Spanish-speaking second-language (L2) learners of English and intermediate-to-advanced English-speaking L2 learners of Spanish using the visual-world eye-tracking paradigm. In each trial, participants saw a target (asado, ‘roast’), one of two competitors (stress match: asados, ‘roast (pl)’; stress mismatch: asador, ‘rotisserie’), and two unrelated distracters, while hearing the target word. The experiment included a non-cognate condition (asado-asados-asador) and a cognate condition, where the stress pattern of the English word corresponding to the Spanish competitor in the stress-mismatch condition (inventor) instead matched that of the Spanish target (invento, ‘invent’). Growth-curve analyses revealed cognate-status and stress-mismatch effects for Spanish-speaking L2 learners of English, and cognate-status and stress-mismatch effects, and an interaction for English-speaking L2 learners of Spanish. This suggests that both groups use stress for word recognition, but the English stress pattern only affects the processing of Spanish words in the English-speaking L2 learners of Spanish.

Speaking and Reading in Two Languages: On the Identification of Reading and Language Disabilities in Spanish-Speaking English Learners.

Articles in this issue examine (1) the primary sources of variability in reading and language achievement among Spanish-speaking English learners (ELs) in the United States, (2) the extent to which poor performance at the end of grade 2 is identifiable in developmental trajectories beginning in kindergarten, (3) the relations among core reading constructs of phonological awareness and decoding in both English and Spanish and the factors that affect their relationship, (4) the performance of different approaches to identification and the factors that influence how well they work, as well as (5) the growing literature focused on intervention for reading problems in this population. This article examines the literature on language minority students and disability identification and analyzes a large-scale longitudinal dataset (>4,000 ELs; >15,000 observations) to systematically characterize and describe the oral language and reading development of Spanish-speaking children designated as ELs from kindergarten to second grade, considering a range of factors that may potentially contribute to that characterization and its relation to academic performance. This systematic characterization should facilitate the development of an empirical basis for a theoretically grounded framework of typical development in ELs in order to more precisely identify those children with language and learning disabilities.

Identification, Classification, and Treatment of Reading and Language Disabilities in Spanish-Speaking EL Students: Introduction to the Special Issue.

This article serves as an introduction to the special issue on Identification, Classification, and Treatment of Reading and Language Disabilities in Spanish-speaking English Learners. The article explains the driving forces behind the need for the special issue, the global nature of linguistic diversity, and provides an overview of the five papers that comprise the special issue.

Moving Forward by Looking Back: Understanding Why Some Spanish-Speaking English Learners Fall Behind.

This study investigated early indicators of Spanish-speaking English learners (ELs) at risk for reading difficulties at the end of Grade 2 by examining their early bilingual oral language development, taking into account language of academic instruction. Standardized measures of reading and narrative samples were collected in English and Spanish from kindergarten to Grade 2 from 1,243 ELs primarily instructed in English or Spanish. Conditional growth curve models yielded four primary findings of reading and oral language development. First, ELs with low reading achievement at the end of Grade 2 demonstrated early reading difficulties during kindergarten. Second, although ELs demonstrated overall higher reading achievement in their instructed language, this difference decreased over time. Third, ELs with low reading achievement at the end of Grade 2 demonstrated lower oral language skills in each language over time. Fourth, ELs demonstrated overall higher oral language skills in their instructed language, yet these differences varied over time. The study provided a detailed description of the longitudinal relations among the bilingual reading and oral language skills of Spanish-speaking ELs during the early school years. These findings help to inform the processes of early identification and intervention for Spanish-speaking ELs who are likely to demonstrate reading achievement difficulties.

Bilingual Phonological Awareness: Construct Validation in Grade 1 Spanish-Speaking English Learners.

This study investigated the dimensionality of bilingual phonological awareness (PA) in English and Spanish by replicating a kindergarten model in Grade 1, and presents alternatives to modeling clustered data. English and Spanish tasks were analyzed from previously collected samples totaling 1,586 first grade Spanish-speaking English learners. Four distinct approaches to confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) models were examined: (a) uncentered student-level data, (b) student-level data centered at the classroom means, (c) classroom-level data, and (d) multilevel CFA. Results indicated that while the multilevel CFA provided the most comprehensive view of the data, the multi-level student-level estimates were not appreciably different from estimates based on student-level data centered at the classroom means, and multi-level classroom-level estimates were comparable to estimates based on the analysis of classroom means. Importantly, English and Spanish PA were statistically separable at the student-level, but minimally distinct (r=.86) and slightly less correlated than what has been reported for kindergarten (r=.93). At the classroom level, the correlation was moderate (r=.51), and substantially reduced compared to kindergarten (r=.83). The distinction at the classroom-level between kindergarten and Grade 1 implies that instruction differentiates the abilities across languages at the classroom-level, but less so at the student-level.