The purpose of this research was to ascertain if the reading comprehension skills of English-speaking fifth grade students improve when they study a second language. The research was done in an inner-city elementary school in Rochester, New York. The researcher provided a weekly after-school workshop in foreign languages for a group of children…

Assessing the language development of bilingual children can be a challenge--too often, children in the complex process of learning both Spanish and English are under- or over-diagnosed with language disorders. SLPs can change that with "SALT 2010 Bilingual S/E Version" for grades K-3, the first tool to comprehensively assess children's language…

Six experiments explored how native and non-native Spanish speakers process article-noun sequences in real time, using eye movements as a response measure. Can listeners use gender-marked articles ("la" and "el", the feminine and masculine forms of "the") to rapidly identify familiar and novel nouns? In Experiment 1, adults who learned Spanish as…

Evidence suggests that dual language (DL) programs have the potential to foster both significant academic achievement and increased cultural awareness in the students they serve. As such, DL programs offer both language majority and language minority learners the opportunity to reach advanced levels of academic achievement. Nonetheless, the…

The purpose of this study was to assess the roles of oral language and phonological awareness on reading performance in grade 3 bilingual students. Several hierarchical models assessed the best predictors of third grade English and Spanish word attack, word identification and reading comprehension. Predictor variables were measures of phonological…

We examined the components of first (L1) and second language (L2) phonological processing that are related to L2 word reading and vocabulary. Spanish-speaking English learners (EL) were classified as average or low readers in grades 1 and 2. A large number of children who started out as poor readers in first grade became average readers in second…

This report summarizes survey results from 112 newly hired AISD bilingual education elementary-level teachers who attended the August 2009 New Bilingual Teacher Institute.

This article examines nonmathematical linguistic complexity as a source of differential item functioning (DIF) in math word problems for English language learners (ELLs). Specifically, this study investigates the relationship between item measures of linguistic complexity, nonlinguistic forms of representation and DIF measures based on item…

The authors report 1-year follow-up data from 215 English language learners with reading difficulties who received a supplemental first grade reading intervention in the language of their core reading instruction. The researchers provided no intervention or boosters in second grade. The Spanish study revealed significant differences favoring…

The Leiter International Performance Scale-Revised (Leiter-R) and Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Third Edition (WISC-III) scores of 47 English- and 47 Spanish-speaking students were analyzed, and the effects of English language ability on these scores were examined. Leiter-R validity was supported for both language groups. WISC-III…

Brief experimental analyses of reading fluency are useful for identifying effective interventions for improving reading fluency. The current study extends previous research by conducting an exploratory evaluation of brief experimental analyses of reading fluency for Spanish reading. A 10-year old Hispanic male presented with reading fluency…

The purpose of this study was to determine if educators were capitalizing on bilingual learners. use of their biliterate abilities to acquire scientific meaning and discourse that would formulate a scientific biliterate identity. Mixed methods were used to explore teachers. use of biliteracy and Funds of Knowledge (Moll, L., Amanti, C., Neff, D.,…

Guided by symbolic interactionism and cultural historical activity theory this study investigated how four bilingual Latina/o pre-service teachers use language (Spanish and English) and culture, defined as social practices, as instructional resources in mathematics. The setting of the study was an after-school bilingual mathematics program, namely…

Welcome to the classroom of Jill Sontag and her 19 young bilingual collaborators. Join them as they simultaneously explore the world of insects and the world of language. These curious and energetic second graders are easily drawn into the realm of bugs. Encouraging them to speak in Spanish, however, is a bit more complicated. Jill uses her…

This paper examines the use of impoliteness by Spanish-English bilingual pre-adolescents as a resource for accomplishing identities in spontaneous conversational interactions in an elementary school setting. The theoretical approach employed integrates the concept of relational work (Locher 2004; Locher and Watts 2005), which is based on Goffman's…