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…

As gentrifying dual language (DL) schools in the United States increasingly attract students with linguistic, racial, and socioeconomic privilege, a key consideration is whether these schools are intentionally supporting the specific needs and assets of emergent bilingual (EB) students from Latinx families. This dissertation of practice examined…

Although a "semantic receptive-expressive gap" appears to be a universal feature of early bilingualism, little is known about its development. We sought to determine if the magnitude of the discrepancy between receptive and expressive standard scores changed over time in bilingual children's two languages. In this longitudinal study,…

The United States is home to a culturally and linguistically diverse population of young children. In 2017, 10% of U.S. learners came from homes where languages other than English are spoken. Students who are learning English in addition to their native language(s) have the opportunity to become bilingual or multilingual in school. Thus, rather…

Improving reading performance among Hispanic students continues to be a national and state priority. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of literacy centers in first grade bilingual classrooms and its relation to students' Tejas LEE scores. This quasi-experimental study took place in two elementary schools in a South…

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: The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of the home literacy environment (HLE) on the English narrative development of Spanish-English bilingual children from low-income backgrounds. Method: Longitudinal data were collected on 81 bilingual children from preschool through 1st grade. English narrative skills were assessed in the…

Dual-language learner (DLL) children typically learn to write while still learning English, with vocabulary appearing to be a particularly vulnerable domain. This study investigates how a reduced English lexicon impacts English writing in DLL children. Participants were 100 Spanish-speaking DLLs and 100 of their monolingual classmates in first…

This quasi-experimental study tested the efficacy of a research based biliterate reading strategy, Lotta Lara, that is part of a larger paired literacy instructional program. Its purpose was to investigate whether the biliterate reading strategy, which focuses on reading fluency, comprehension, and oracy through whole group instruction, impacted…

Young monolingual children typically demonstrate frequent tense shifting during narrative development, whereas older children maintain a consistent narration tense. Therefore, inconsistent tense usage in older children could be an indication of overall limited language skills. However, information regarding tense use in bilinguals has been…

Drawing from a qualitative case study that examined the language practices and learning in a first grade bilingual classroom, the author discusses one teacher's daily process for the literacy event of the morning message. Primary findings indicate that the ways the teacher listened and responded to students during the morning message provided…

The present study investigated whether young Latino dual-language learners' 2-year English reading growth varied over time according to their initial overall oral English ability. We followed 41 Latino children for 2 years. We tested overall oral English at the beginning of the study and administered multiple curriculum-based reading assessments…

Sixty-three bilingual Latino children who were at risk for language impairment were administered reading-related measures in English and Spanish (letter identification, phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, and sentence repetition) and descriptive measures including English language proficiency (ELP), language ability (LA),…

This study investigated the prevalence and stability of latent classes at risk for reading disabilities (RD) in elementary-aged children whose first language is Spanish. To this end, children (N = 489) in Grades 1, 2, and 3 at Wave 1 were administered a battery of reading, vocabulary, and cognitive measures (short-term memory [STM], working memory…