Spanish and English Oral Language Growth Rates of Bilingual Preschoolers: The Effect of Language of Instruction

Abstract

Studying the oral language growth of Spanish-speaking preschoolers in the United States is increasingly important given the critical role early language development plays in reading outcomes. In this article, we report on the Spanish and English growth trajectories observed in 124 bilingual preschoolers collected over 2 years in 36 classrooms across 5 states and the associations of growth in each language to language of instruction and home language exposure. Patterns indicate the need for Spanish instruction to maintain robust rates of Spanish growth and English growth rates in Spanish, bilingual, and English-only instruction. Significant differences in English and Spanish oral language abilities were also noted at the intercept between children who were Spanish dominant versus balanced bilinguals. Implications for research and practice are provided.

Bilingual oral language development among dual language immersion students: Use of a Bayesian approach with language learning progressions

“…Heritage language status has also been found to influence partner language trajectories, especially in partner language instruction (e.g., Lindholm-Leary & Hernández, 2011;Xu et al, 2015). For instance, at the preschool level, Spanish-dominant children had higher scores than bilinguals who had relatively comparable proficiencies in their languages at the beginning of the school year, and both groups displayed higher rates of growth in Spanish when receiving Spanish-only instruction as opposed to bilingual or English-only instruction (Durán et al, 2022). In a separate study with fourth-grade students in an English-Spanish DLI program, coming from a household where Spanish is spoken was associated with higher listening and writing performance, but similar reading and speaking performance compared to peers from non-Spanish-speaking households (Burkhauser et al, 2016).…”