This study examined whether, and if so how, L1 and L2 segmental and suprasegmental phonological awareness is longitudinally related to L1 and L2 reading comprehension difficulties among Hong Kong Chinese-English bilingual children. Using a regression approach, we identified five types of comprehenders, i.e., 11 poor-Chinese/average-English…

The population of emergent bilingual students (EBs, or English Language Learners, ELLs) is growing steadily in the United States. One common approach to language instruction for EBs is to expose students to a lesson's content vocabulary before teaching the lesson to build students' word banks and background knowledge. An example of this is the…

Multitiered systems of support hold promise for dual language learners when culturally and linguistically responsive practices guide instruction. We modeled growth on Spanish and English early literacy skills and examined the role of language exposure and use at the individual and classroom instruction level in a group of 313…

Spanish-English cognates (words from ancestrally related languages similar in appearance and meaning) are plentiful in students' reading materials, but few researchers have documented elementary-age bilingual (Spanish-English) students' actual use of cognates. The authors drew from two qualitative research studies to show how bilingual students…

English learners (ELs) are one of America's fastest-growing student groups, and their numbers are most concentrated in the country's Great Cities. In addition, the academic needs of these school children are complex and varied, especially as they are developing knowledge of multiple language systems. This document is continued evidence of how…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was twofold: (a) to describe how the language diversity (i.e., the within-group variability in dual-language skills) of Latino dual-language learner (DLL) preschoolers was related to their science readiness skills and (b) to describe the importance of language of science instruction for Spanish-dominant children.…

This paper investigates the degree of bilingualism and its corresponding effects on the metalinguistic skill of phonological awareness among Grade I ESL learners. It compares full and partial bilinguals' performance in the three tests: initial phoneme detection, final phoneme detection, and deletion tasks. Forty students aged 6-7 carried out…

This study explores Mikhail Bakhtin's notion of ideological becoming (IB) in a bilingual (Korean and English) kindergarten classroom. For Bakhtin, IB is the process of appropriating authoritative discourse as one's own dialogic interactions. In our study, we view the literacy and language discourses of schooling as one type of authoritative…

Purpose: The value of shared reading as an opportunity for learning word meanings, or semantics, is well established; it is less clear whether children learn about the orthography, or word spellings, in this context. We tested whether children can learn the spellings and meanings of new words at the same time during a tightly controlled shared…

This qualitative case study explores how integrating multimodal writing opportunities in a second-grade dual language classroom opens up spaces for translanguaging practices in order to promote a more equitable and socially just access to biliteracy development for emergent bilinguals. A multimodal writing project that integrated writing and…

Composing is an essential part of literacy development in early childhood classrooms, and writing experiences are continually changing through advances in technology. Writing in a new language can be particularly challenging for emergent bilinguals as they navigate learning how to spell in English as part of the writing process. New pedagogical…

Disparities exist in the availability of high-quality early childhood education and care settings (ECEC) across communities within the United States. Teachers have an imperative role in fostering children's socioemotional development; however, when the classroom climate deteriorates due to disruptive behavior, meeting these emotional and learning…

Purpose: Systematic reviews of bilingual children's reading development are very limited, and none of which solely focus on predictors of reading difficulties among those with developmental language disorder (DLD). The present scoping review fills an important need by analyzing the recent research literature on the reading outcomes of bilingual…

Purpose: Despite the unprecedented growth of Spanish-English dual language learners (DLLs) in new destination states--where DLLs have not been historically served--empirical understanding of their language and literacy skills is scant. Drawing on scientific understandings of bilingual language acquisition, we compare monolingually scored and…

Purpose: This study describes the language diversity (the within-group variability in dual-language skills) of a sample of Latino dual-language learners (preschoolers, 3-5 years of age) and how language diversity is related to home and classroom factors. Method: A sample of 161 caregivers and their preschoolers participated in this study.…