Spelling is an important, but often overlooked, component of literacy instruction and development. Although it is related to other aspects of literacy, there are independent theories of spelling development as well as assessment and instructional strategies that align with these theories. This article summarizes the rationale for linking…

Forty Spanish-speaking children with reading disability (RD) were matched for age and reading level with normal readers. Since RD children performed more poorly than younger normal readers on a word/nonword naming task in orthographically transparent Spanish, results suggest their poor phonological skills were due to a deficit in phonological…

This booklet consists of five articles. The first, "Bilingual Education: Reading through Two Languages," by Arturo Luis Gutierrez, stresses the importance of teaching Spanish-speaking children to read first in their native tongue. The second article, "Teaching All Children to Read," by Donald E. Critchlow, discusses methodology and the problems…

This study examines how a French- and Spanish-speaking child acquired English as a third language. It describes the linguistic experience of the 10-year old boy whose French and Spanish home, school, and playmate environments were changed to English school and playmate environments with French being maintained exclusively at home with the child's…

Investigates whether spelling models proposed to account for performance in languages with a deep orthography are applicable to a shallow orthography such as Spanish. Finds significant effects for the variables of grapheme frequency and lexical priming, coinciding with results found in the English language. (RS)

A sample of 133 Spanish children (ages 8 to 13) was classified by IQ and reading level and given a lexical processing task. The study found that IQ did not explain differences between learning-disabled (LD) or nondisabled (NLD) children in lexical processing. Lexical and sublexical parameters had a greater influence on LD students than NLD…

Examination of the speech of 33 monolingual Spanish-speaking children found that syllable type affected the correct pronunciation of novel words. The different syllable types comprising the novel words could be hierarchized. Performance on syllable type appeared to be an interaction between the structure of the syllable and phonological processes…

Compares the performance of Spanish children with and without reading disabilities on a single word naming task which required extensive phonological computation. Supports the hypothesis that poor phonological skills are a characteristic of reading disabled children. (RS)

The purpose of this study was to develop a reliable instrument that could be used by teachers and staff in Colorado to assist in the assessment of oral English language, particularly the syntax and the phonology of first-grade children in bilingual bicultural education (BBE). The study also related the scores of the instrument to seven variables:…

How Spanish-speaking children spell English words was studied with 38 Spanish-speaking and 34 English-speaking second and third graders. Spanish-speaking students produced more errors that were consistent with the correct application of Spanish phonological and orthographical rules (predicted errors). Implications for bilingual education are…

A study involving 149 Hispanic students aged 5-11 in bilingual programs in Texas developed preliminary data on a measure of phonological processing in Spanish and investigated the extent of cross-linguistic transfer for phonological awareness skills from Spanish to English. Phonological processing in Spanish, as measured by the instrument,…

A study of 93 Spanish-speaking Latin American children of low socioeconomic background with reading difficulties found that, 4 years later, 17% had average reading ability, but 11% remained with severe reading difficulties. Characteristics examined include IQ, phonological processing, decoding ability, reading comprehension, and other verbal…

Investigation of native English-speaking adults' and native Spanish-speaking children's acquisition of noun gender and its function in Spanish revealed significant differences in first- and second-language acquisition, suggesting a developmental progression in acquisition of noun gender for both groups. (Author/CB)

This workbook is intended to be used in connection with the reader of the same title, for bilingual Spanish-English reading instruction in the second grade. It is further supplemented by a teacher's manual. As a follow-up to the stories contained in the reader, the workbook provides drawing games, word games, punctuation exercises, and other…

This study examines whether Spanish-English bilingual children's phonological awareness (PA) performance reflects specific contrasts between English and Spanish by focusing on children's segmentation of vowels treated as single units in English but as two units in Spanish (/eI/ and /aI/). The role of oral language proficiency, specifically…