SRCLD Presentation Details
  Title  
       
    Narrative Language Skills and Reading Achievement in Bilingual Children  
Author(s)
David Francis - University of Houston
Aquiles Iglesias - Temple University
Jon F. Miller - University of Wisconsin - Madison

SRCLD Info
SRCLD Year: 2004
Presentation Type: Invited Speaker
Presentation Time: (na)
Abstract
     This paper will present the early results from the Oral Narrative Language Project which is part of a PO1 grant entitled Oracy/Literacy Development of Spanish-Speaking Children funded by the NICHD and IES under the joint NICHD/IES biliteracy research initiative titled Development of English Literacy in Spanish-speaking Children. The central goal of this program of research is identify the causes of the wide variability in reading and school achievement among English-language learners. Multiple factors and conditions at all levels involving the child, teacher, and the contexts in which the child develops (school, family, and community) may account for this variability. The goal of the Oral Language Narrative Project is to document the role English and Spanish oral language skills may play in explaining the variability of literacy attainment among English-Language Learners.
     The contribution of oral language skill in Spanish and English to reading was investigated in Spanish-English bilingual children, K – 3rd grade. English and Spanish language performance on two narrative elicitation tasks was analyzed for lexical, syntactic, and narrative structure. Analysis revealed that children produced richer narratives following an oral model of the story. Significant correlations with grade were found for narrative structure, vocabulary and syntax. Narrative skills are significantly correlated with reading measures in the higher grades.
Author Biosketch(es)

David J. Francis, Ph.D.
     Dr. David J. Francis is a Professor of Quantitative Methods and Chairman of the Department of Psychology at the University of Houston, where he also serves as Director of the Texas Institute for Measurement, Evaluation, and Statistics. He has authored or co-authored over 90 peer reviewed articles, and book chapters and is a Fellow of Division 5 (Measurement, Evaluation, and Statistics) of the American Psychological Association. He currently serves on the Independent Review Panel for the National Assessment of Title I, the National Technical Advisory Group of the What Works Clearing House, and the National Literacy Panel for Language Minority Youth and Children. His research in early literacy and developmental disabilities is currently funded by NICHD and the Institute for Education Sciences of the USDOE. He is a co-developer of the Texas Primary Reading Inventory and Tejas Lee early reading assessments, and is a recipient of the University of Houston Teaching Excellence Award.

 

Aquiles Iglesias, Ph.D.
     Aquiles Iglesias is a Professor in the Department of Communication Sciences (Speech-Language Pathology Program), College of Health Professions and Dean of the Graduate School at Temple University. For the last 17 years, Dr. Iglesias has been the principal investigator of 7 federal training grants designed to increase the number of disadvantaged students at Temple. Dr. Iglesias has served as the Associate Director of the National Center on Inner Cities and the Mid-Atlantic Regional Education Laboratory, both housed at Temple University and funded by the OERI, U.S. Department of Education. Dr. Iglesias area of research is language acquisition in bilingual (Spanish/English) children and he has published extensively in this area. He presently is the Principal Investigator of a 6-year NIDCD (NIH) funded contract to develop an assessment protocol for bilingual (Spanish/English) children and Co-PI of an IES, U.S. Department of Education funded project to examine the relationship between oral narrative skills and literacy in Latino children.

 

Jon F. Miller, Ph.D.
     Jon Miller has conducted research on language development and disorders for more than 30 years as a faculty member in the Department of Communicative Disorders and as an investigator in the Waisman Mental Retardation Research Center. A decade of research on Down syndrome resulted in the book: Improving the Communication Skills of People with Down Syndrome, a research to practice volume. A career long focus on developing improved measurement systems has evolved computer software for the Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts: SALT, widely used in research and clinical settings for language sample analysis. His current research involves documenting the development of English language narrative skills in bilingual children, K - 3rd grade, as part of a national program of research whose aim is to account for the variability in literacy development in English Language Learners whose first language is Spanish. He initiated the Symposium on Research in Child Language Disorders in 1980 to promote research, provide a forum for research development among scholars nationally and internationally, and promote research careers for students at all levels of training. The 2004 meeting will mark the 25th anniversary of this NIH supported conference.