Developmental Trajectories of Preschool Early Literacy Skills: A Comparison of Language-Minority and Monolingual-English Children

• Published in: Developmental psychology 2013-10, Vol.49 (10), p.1943-1957
• Main Authors: Lonigan, Christopher J, Farver, JoAnn M, Nakamoto, Jonathan, Eppe, Stefanie
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Biological and medical sciences; California; Child; Child Development; Child Language; Child, Preschool; Childhood Development; Children; Cognitive Ability; Comparative Analysis; Developmental psychology; Early Childhood Development; Early Intervention (Education); Educational psychology; Emergent Literacy; Employment; English; English as Second Language; Evaluation; Family; Family Characteristics; Female; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Hispanic Americans; Human; Humans; Individual Characteristics; Infant; Language; Language Development; Language Minorities; Language proficiency; Language Skills; Linguistic minorities; Literacy; Literacy skills; Literature; Male; Minority Groups - psychology; Monolingualism; Oral Language; Phonological Awareness; Predictor Variables; Preschool Children; Preschool Language Scale; Preschool Students; Preschools; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Pupil and student. Academic achievement and failure; Reading; Reading Ability; Skills; Socioeconomic factors; Socioeconomic status; Spanish Speaking; Stanford Binet Intelligence Scale; Verbal Learning
• ISSN: 0012-1649; 1939-0599
• DOI: 10.1037/a0031408

This study utilized latent growth-curve analyses to determine if the early literacy skills of children who were Spanish-speaking language-minority (LM) followed a similar quantitative growth profile over a preschool year as that of a group of children from a comparable socioeconomic (SES) background but who were not LM. Participants, who ranged in age from 37 to 60 months (M = 50.73; SD = 5.04), included 540 Spanish-speaking LM and 408 non-LM children (47% girls) who were enrolled in 30 Head Start classrooms. Scores on a measure of oral language and measures of code-related skills (i.e., phonological awareness, print knowledge) were lower for LM children than for non-LM children. LM children experienced significantly faster growth in oral language skills than did non-LM children. Growth for print knowledge and blending was similar for LM and non-LM children, whereas LM children experienced slightly less growth than non-LM children on elision. The inclusion of child (i.e., initial language scores, age, nonverbal cognitive ability) and family (i.e., maternal/paternal education, 2-parent household, father employment) variables eliminated initial differences between LM and non-LM children on the code-related variables, and the effect was due primarily to children's initial oral language skills. These results indicate that the early risk for reading-related problems experienced by Spanish-speaking LM children is due both to low SES and to their LM status, and they highlight the critical need for the development, evaluation, and deployment of early instructional programs for LM children with limited English oral language proficiency.