Aims: We investigate the relationship between narrative macrostructure, current language exposure, and microstructure in second-grade Spanish-English bilingual children in the United States. Macrostructure knowledge has been claimed to be shared across languages in multilingual individuals. We examine the role of current language exposure and…

Emergent bi/multilingual children have historically been afforded few opportunities to engage dialogically with peers and teachers in posing authentic questions and co-constructing interpretations of texts as their reading instruction has traditionally been skills driven. Additionally, more recent scholarship has identified increased opportunities…

This paper focuses on vocabulary development in oral language productions of three elementary school-age sibling pairs growing up in a trilingual setting. This longitudinal study describes the development of the children's narrative competence over three years. The corpus analysed consists of retellings of animated films. The contribution deals…

An understanding of cross-cultural differences in narratives, particularly in children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, can help clinicians and other professionals distinguish narrative differences from impaired narratives. This study describes similarities and differences in micro-and-macrostructural components in the…

Vocabulary plays a critical role in later reading achievement of emergent bilingual children (EBC) who are learning two languages. Given emerging vocabulary intervention research for EBC, we synthesize studies on vocabulary interventions designed for preschool and kindergarten EBC to provide the cumulative knowledge on the following dimensions:…

The study examined 37 language samples of 37 Spanish-English kindergartners and first graders from a larger sample of the Multitudes Project in California. The focus was on investigating how these young English language learners produced narratives in English, what language elements they included, and whether these elements correlated or related…

Language proficiency exams have been used since the development of bilingual education. The purpose of the following case study is to demonstrate how the English and Spanish proficiency exams given to a child for admission into a dual language (Spanish-English) program framed a child in a deficit view and missed the proficiency the child had…

Most bilingual children often display greater proficiency and preference for one of their two languages. Researchers refer to this asymmetry as language dominance. However, despite being possible to determine the overall language dominance in bilinguals, there may be substantial flexibility in their language use. In particular, the relative ease…

This secondary analysis study examined patterns, predictors, and outcomes of dual language learners' (DLLs') development in Spanish and English. Research Findings: Latent profile analysis identified three groups of DLLs: Balanced Bilinguals (54%), English-Dominant Bilinguals (25%), and Spanish-Dominant Bilinguals (21%). These groups had fairly…

In recent years, there has been a massive expansion of dual language education (DLE) programs across the United States. Many of these programs are located in relatively affluent areas with large numbers of white professional families. Yet, most Latinx students attend high-poverty schools. In this article, we use the School District of Philadelphia…

Purpose: Elementary-age dual language learners (DLLs) from Spanish-speaking homes in the United States are often characterized as at risk for low vocabulary in both Spanish and English. This longitudinal study examined conceptually scored receptive and expressive vocabulary development among DLLs from Spanish-speaking, low-income homes and…

The purpose of this qualitative research study is to portray the complex language practices of multilingual children when learning mathematics. To do so, I draw on data collected as part of a three-year research study that was designed to understand the relationship between young children's language use and mathematics learning, focusing on…

This article investigates how young multilingual children's mathematics learning is connected to their language use, lived experiences, contexts, and emotions. To this end, we consider the experiences of children who used both Spanish and English to learn mathematics. We center on two instances of kindergarten children counting and use Systemic…

The present study examined Latinx school readiness and 3rd grade student achievement, considering differences based on social categories of gender, race, ethnicity, and home language. The sample included 683 racially diverse children (M[subscript age] = 4.94; SD = 0.57) of Dominican- or Mexican-origin from Spanish-English or Spanish-only…

The amount of language input bilingual children receive influences their language acquisition. This three-year quasi-longitudinal study determined the extent home language input influences measures of expressive and receptive English vocabulary among Spanish-English school-age bilingual children. The study also determined whether a relationship…