English intervention improves Spanish-speakers’ early literacy outcomes

In Child Development Jo Ann Farver and colleagues reported that young children who speak Spanish can learn English early literacy skills better when they receive instruction in English. That finding’s not particularly surprising, but there’s more: There’s a comparison of English-only and “transitional” methods. Children who received instruction in English-only or Spanish with transition to English (both using the Literacy Express Preschool Curriculum) had higher pre-literacy outcomes than peers who had been randomly assigned to receive the High/Scope Curriculum.

Children who received the program initially in Spanish and then later in English had higher scores on all the outcome measures when they were tested in Spanish, but only on two (vocabulary and print knowledge) when they were tested in English. When tested in English, both the children who received the transitional program and those who received the English-only program had higher scores than the children who got the standard practices. I’ve summarized the effect sizes in the accompanying box.

Because English Language Learners have substantial difficulties picking up the language of school and (perhaps as a consequence) the fundamentals of reading, it is important for educators to learn about ways to promote their success with English. This study provide guidance about how to help them. Too often educators seem to operate on the assumption that simply putting ELL learners into a rich environment will allow them to learn English well enough to master school subjects. That’s simply not like to work. They need instruction in using English. This study shows the benefits on the emergent literacy skills of providing instruction in English with reading activities for children who enter preschool speaking Spanish; their pre-literacy skills can be significantly improved, in comparison to common early childhood education practices, by teaching them those skills in small-groups emphasizing dyadic reading of story books in English.

The study does not provide a definitive answer to the question of whether it is more beneficial to encourage the transition by starting instruction in Spanish or simply to jump in with English. But it is clear that using English for at least half the instruction is important.

Farver, J. A. M., Lonigan, C. J., & Eppe, S. (2009). Effective early literacy skill development for young spanish-speaking English language learners: En experimental study of two methods. Child Development, 80, 703–719.

Ninety-four Spanish-speaking preschoolers (M age = 54.51 months, SD = 4.72; 43 girls) were randomly assigned to receive the High ⁄ Scope Curriculum (control n = 32) or the Literacy Express Preschool Curriculum in English-only (n = 31) or initially in Spanish transitioning to English (n = 31). Children’s emergent literacy skills were assessed before and after the intervention in Spanish and English. Children in the English-only and transitional groups made significant gains in their emergent literacy skills in both Spanish and English compared to the control group, The English-only and transitional models were equally effective for English language outcomes, but for Spanish-language outcomes, only the transitional model was effective. The results suggest that a targeted early literacy intervention can improve Spanish-speaking preschoolers’ preliteracy skills.

Link to the Web page for the study.