Background or Context: Dual language education aims to foster the development of bilingualism, biliteracy, sociocultural competence, and academic skills in all school subjects. Early correlational research suggests that participation in dual language education is associated with higher achievement. Recent studies leveraged more comprehensive sets…

English language learners (ELLs) tend to be the fastest growing subgroup within the United States, and many teachers can expect to have them in their classrooms. The problem addressed in this study is the lack of literacy skills in Spanish-speaking ELLs which puts them at risk for future reading difficulties and being unprepared for the next grade…

This study investigated the relationship between task-based teacher training and novice English language teachers' cognitions and implementations of tasks in Honduran bilingual schools. After participating in a four-week training program on task-based language teaching, teachers with little or no prior teaching experience designed task-based…

This study investigates whether orthographic consistency and transparency of languages have an impact on the development of reading strategies and reading sub-skills (i.e. phonemic awareness and visual attention span) in bilingual children. We evaluated 21 French (opaque)-Basque (transparent) bilingual children and 21 Spanish (transparent)-Basque…

This study reports on a small-scale, longitudinal investigation on L2 Spanish oral development by English-home language (EHL) learners in an English/Spanish Two-Way Immersion (TWI) program in rural, eastern United States. It examined EHL learners' oral ability in L2 Spanish based on longitudinal assessment data from Kindergarten, Grade 2, and…

In order to read fluently, children have to form orthographic representations. Despite numerous investigations, there is no clear answer to the question of the number of times they need to read a word to form an orthographic representation. We used length effect on reading times as a measure, because there are large differences between long and…

This study investigated how performance on reading curriculum-based measurement (R-CBM) in Spanish is related to performance on R-CBM in English. Parallel process growth models and quantile regression analyses were used to examine the relations between initial benchmark scores and growth and the consistency of the relations across student reading…

Previous studies about ELs have reported data on active English Learners--defined as those students who have not yet reached proficiency on a state English test--at a specific moment in time. This study, for the first time, analyzed the long-term trajectories of 18,000 CPS students who began kindergarten as ELs and followed their progress all the…

The present study investigated language skills and reading comprehension with English monolingual and Spanish-English bilingual children in grades 2-5. Of the 377 children in the sample, 207 were English monolingual and 170 were Spanish-English bilingual. Data were collected within a cohort-sequential design for two academic years in the fall and…

Latino families highly value education and are committed to their children's educational success; however, Latino students often experience educational challenges. Well-designed family involvement programs can encourage Latino families, especially new immigrants or monolingual Spanish-speakers, to increase their involvement resulting in positive…

Current assessment practices in the United States are not able to accurately capture the total linguistic, cognitive, and achievement abilities of bilingual learners. There are psychometric complexities involved when assessing and interpreting test results of bilingual students, which impact the validity of this practice. Further, the compromise…

"Peer Tutoring and Response Groups" aims to improve the language and achievement of English language learners by pairing or grouping students to work on a task. The students may be grouped by age or ability (English-only, bilingual, or limited English proficient) or the groups may be mixed. Both peer tutoring pairs and peer response…

Fifty-four students were tested at specific time intervals over 10 years to determine best native language (NL) predictors of oral and written foreign language (FL) proficiency and FL aptitude. All participants completed two years of Spanish, French, or German. Each was administered measures of NL literacy, oral language, and cognitive ability in…

This study examined whether oral reading fluency in a child's first language (Spanish) as assessed by Curriculum-Based Measurement (CBM) was related to oral reading fluency in a second language (English) and whether Spanish oral reading fluency probes administered in the fall were predictive of English oral reading fluency outcomes for spring of…

This study examined the effectiveness of a transitional Spanish-English bilingual program, Academic Language Acquisition (ALA), in enhancing K-5 students' English-language proficiency, as well as their English performance in academic subject areas, in comparison with the Structured English Immersion (SEI) process. An existing reading program,…