Spanish speakers in the United States are a steadily increasing population, up by 233% since 1980. Given the growing population of dual language learners (DLLs) and the large numbers of Spanish-speaking children enrolled in pre-kindergarten programs, addressing the educational needs of preschool-aged DLLs has become a national imperative.…

The population of Spanish-speaking preschoolers in the United States continues to increase and there is a significant need to develop psychometrically sound early language and literacy screening measures to accurately capture children's ability in Spanish. In this paper, we describe the innovative design and calibration process of the new…

The population of Spanish-speaking preschoolers in the United States continues to increase and there is a significant need to develop psychometrically sound early language and literacy screening measures to accurately capture children's ability in Spanish. In this paper, we describe the innovative design and calibration process of the new…

Children learning two languages (Dual Language Learners; DLLs) represent a rapidly growing population in the United States. DLLs are disproportionately more likely to live in families of low socioeconomic status (SES), which places many of them at risk for poor dual-language outcomes. To date, most studies on SES and dual language development have…

Purpose: Preschoolers' phonological awareness (PA) and alphabet knowledge (AK) skills are two of the strongest predictors of future reading. Despite evidence that providing at-risk preschoolers with timely emergent literacy interventions can prevent academic difficulties, there is a scarcity of research focusing on Latinx preschoolers who are Dual…

Purpose: This study aimed to examine the effect of an intensive vocabulary intervention embedded in e-books on the vocabulary skills of young Spanish-English speaking English Learners (ELs) from low SES backgrounds. Methods: Children (288) in kindergarten and first grade were randomly assigned to treatment and read-only conditions. All children…

In this study, we elicited grammatical forms (oral production) from a group of child heritage speakers of Spanish (N = 45) in English and Spanish, using the morphosyntax subtest of the Bilingual English-Spanish Assessment (BESA), (Peña et al. 2014). A cross-sectional design was used with 25 participants in kindergarten and 20 in first grade. All…

Purpose: This study aimed to describe change in dual language learners' (DLLs) morphosyntactic skills from kindergarten to first grade based on a sentence repetition task in English and Spanish. Methods: The sample included Spanish-English speaking children (n = 25). Investigators employed a repeated measures analysis of variance with one…

Background: Reading attitudes are recognised as an influencing factor on the language and literacy achievement of school age monolingual English-speaking children. The relationship between reading attitudes and achievement in young Spanish-speaking English Learners (ELs) remains understudied. Purpose: The aim of the current study was to describe…