This is St. Patrick's Day Weekend and I'm sure that you'll be celebrating somehow with friends and the color green. A great color, it is my favorite. I'll be in Houston this weekend to attend a grant-writing workshop sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of attending a presentation by Dr. Peggy McCardle who is Associate Chief for the Child Development and Behavior Branch of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). She presented research funded by NICHD concerning Latino children. What is wonderful about the strategy that is used by this Institute is that the researchers who are from different universities are brought together periodically to share and collaborate on their results so these researchers can begin to see converging evidence concerning the language and literacy development of bilingual children. In April, the Institute will be presenting the initial results of these funded projects at the TESOL conference in Utah, so that other researchers and practitioners can benefit from the results.
There have been a number of measures developed already from these projects. These include measures for the following: adapted English phonology measure for Spanish speakers; Spanish phonology; classroom observation form; cognate awareness and morphological knowledge; contrastive spelling awareness; and demographic survey instrument to be used across projects. If you're interested in learning more, look at their website at http://www.nichd.nih.gov/about/org/crmc/cdb/.
I did raise the question concerning researchers' bilingualism and whether they were Hispanic. The researchers are not and they use consultants to help with the Spanish linguistics. We really need more Latino researchers involved in projects like these. The perspectives, interpretation of results, and the different Latino cultures involved in these studies make it ever so more important that clinicians understand research and recognize those important variables that will influence the results and the future of Latino children who are being studied by non-Latinos.
The Institute has funded projects that address 3 overarching questions:
- How do children whose first language is Spanish learn to read and write in English? That is, what skills and abilities are required, and what types of home, preschool, childcare, school, and cultural experiences and environments are most supportive of English-language literacy development at different phrases of development?
- Why do some Spanish-speaking children have difficulties acquiring English-language reading and writing skills? That is, what specific cognitive, linguistic, environmental, sociocultural, neurobiological, and instructional factors impede the development of accurate and fluent English reading and writing skills, and what are the most significant risk factors that predict difficulties in the development of literacy skills?
- What do we do about it? -For which children are which instructional approaches and strategies most beneficial, at which stages of reading and writing development, and under what conditions?
The following are some of the projects.
Oracy & Literacy Development in Spanish-Speaking Children: Dr. David Francis, University of Houston. The five purposes: 1. To develop and evaluate instruments to assess the oral language proficiency, literacy skills, and literacy-related skills in Spanish and in English, and to investigate the inter-relationship of these domains across the two languages in English language learning children. 2. To study the development of language and literacy longitudinally in children from K through grade 3. 3. To build on the existing knowledge base about reading instruction for native English speakers in order to develop a comparable base of knowledge for English language learners. 4. To study the contexts in which English language learners develop oral language and literacy skills the school, family, and community. 5. To evaluate early intervention programs for English language learners who are behind or struggling with their development of oral language and literacy skills in Spanish and English in grade 1.
Bilingual Preschoolers: Precursors to Literacy: Dr. Carol Hammer, Pennsylvania State University. The is a prospective longitudinal study of 100 Head Start children of Puerto Rican descent from the ages of 3 to 6 years. The researchers will be looking at language acquisition, literacy development, and home environment as the children acquire Spanish and English sequentially or simultaneously. There will also be an in-depth study of 24 children.
Bilingual Early language and Literacy Support: Dr. Mark Innocenti, Utah State University. This is a multi-site, longitudinal study through kindergarten of 192 Spanish-speaking mother-child dyads. They are looking at language and emergent literacy outcomes and the programs of early English immersion and home language and literacy support. They also will be looking at the effects of early immersion in English, home environment.
Predicting English Literacy in Spanish-speaking Children: Dr. Franklin Manis, University of Southern California. This is a longitudinal study of 330 children from kindergarten to 3rd grade. They have developed a battery of tests in Spanish. They will be looking at whether predictors of reading and writing in English differ for bilingual vs. monolingual children and compare the predictors.
Latino children as Family Translators: Links to literacy: Dr. Marjorie Orellana, Northwestern University. This study will be looking at 4tht and 6th grade Latino children who serve as English translators for family members. They will be looking at how this activity affects their literacy development and identify strategies for use with other English language learners.
** Hope you'll look these up and start asking questions.
