Effects of a Paired Literacy Program on Emerging Bilingual Children’s Biliteracy Outcomes in Third Grade

Abstract

This longitudinal study examined whether the implementation of a SpanishEnglish paired literacy approach provides an academic advantage to emerging bilingual students over a sequential literacy approach. The study employed a quasiexperimental design. It compared the biliteracy outcomes of third-grade emerging bilingual learners participating in paired literacy instruction from Grades K-3 (n = 167) to those of students from the same schools who received sequential literacy instruction in K-2 and started to participate in the paired literacy model in third grade (n = 191). Students' writing and reading were assessed in both languages using informal measures; third-grade reading scores on a high-stakes state assessment were also examined. Independent-samples t tests were conducted to compare means on the four measures (Spanish and English writing and reading), and Cohen's d was calculated to generate effect sizes for each assessment in each language. Frequencies were run to determine the percentage of students who met or exceeded the state test performance standards. Findings indicate that the paired literacy group scored considerably higher than students in the comparison group on all measures. Furthermore, differences between groups were statistically significant for each outcome measure in each language with moderate to large effect sizes (0.42 to 0.90). Also, a larger percentage of students in the paired literacy group met or exceeded the state test performance standards. These findings suggest that paired literacy instruction leads to stronger literacy outcomes in both languages than sequential literacy. Implications for practice and future research are provided.

Elementary Translanguaging Writing Pedagogy: A Literature Review

“…Finally, in 8% of the studies, students were exposed to simultaneous literacy instruction. Simultaneous literacy instruction is grounded in the idea that children can acquire literacy in two languages simultaneously (Escamilla, 2006) and that dual-language instruction should start when students enter school (Soltero-González et al, 2016). It is important to note that the articles in this group all highlighted Literacy Squared ® , “a comprehensive biliteracy framework made up of four main components: paired literacy instruction, professional development, assessment of biliteracy skills, and research” (Soltero-González et al, 2016, p. 85).…”

Teaching (Bi)Multilingual Learners: Connecting Languages

“…This framework is both research-based and research tested. Our research indicates that adherence to these guidelines in Spanish-English bilingual education settings results in significant language and literacy achievement for Spanish-English bilingual learners (Hopewell & Escamilla, 2013;Soltero-González et al, 2012, 2016Sparrow et al, 2014). And, while we have not analyzed data from monolingual educational settings, we have worked with teachers and administrators in such settings and have sufficient anecdotal evidence to convince us that there is value in using these principles in those settings as well.…”

Rater severity differences in English language as a second language speaking assessment based on rating experience, training experience, and teaching experience through many-faceted Rasch measurement analysis

“…Literature has widely reported that one's background can either positively or negatively impact how one rates candidates. Raters' backgrounds include rating experience (Huang et al, 2018;Ahmadi Shirazi, 2019;Şahan and Razı, 2020), training experience (Duijm et al, 2017;Bijani, 2018Bijani, , 2019, teaching experience (Kang and Veitch, 2017;Eckstein and Univer, 2018;Kang et al, 2019), raters' first language (Hijikata-Someya et al, 2015;Marefat and Heydari, 2016;Ahmadi Shirazi, 2019;Kang et al, 2019), familiarity about candidates (Huang et al, 2016;Tanriverdi-Koksal and Ortactepe, 2017;Wikse Barrow et al, 2019), personal traits, gender (Bijani and Khabiri, 2017;Protivínský and Münich, 2018), academic achievement (He et al, 2013;Soltero-González et al, 2016), age (Soltero-González et al, 2016;Isbell, 2017), and cultural background (Stassenko et al, 2014). In terms of raters' experiences, three types of experience are widely examined, which are rating experience, training experience, and teaching experience.…”