Learning language and literacy in a second language is a
complex process that involves a variety of skills and abilities. Children need
to be able apply their existing knowledge and experiences to communicate and understand
different reading tasks. Literacy is one of the most important academic skill
areas and because of this, it influences language development and all other
areas of academics. Nearly one in 4
children in the United States is Hispanic and more than one in 5 comes from a
home where a language other than English is spoken and for the vast majority it
is Spanish. (Figureas-Daniel & Barnett, 2013).
Introduction: My Child in Context
Edgen is a 9-year-old Hispanic male who was born in the
United States to an illegal Hispanic mother and father. He has been exposed to very little English in
the home since birth. Edgen began school
at the age of 3 and is now in third grade.
He has struggled in all areas of academics due to the language barrier
and parental support in the home. The
focus of this study will be on language and literacy skills and the growing
consensus that early childhood is a critical time for language and literacy
learning because of phonological awareness, letter word recognition, writing
and spelling skills, and oral language abilities- the foundational skills for
monolingual children’s ability to read and write.
(Paez, Tabors, and Lopez, 2007) This study
will be about his life and the development of language and literacy from birth
until currently at age 9.
Home Life and family:
Edgen is a healthy
9-year-old male who lives at home with his biological parents, 2 older sisters,
and a dog in a small rural town in southwest Georgia. Edgen was born at 36 weeks’ gestation
weighing 5lb 3 oz. According to his
mother, she was on bedrest leading up to his birth with high blood pressure and
gestational diabetes. Post-delivery was
successful, whereas he was released from the hospital with his mother 3 days
after birth. The only medical condition
he has had since birth is ear infections and asthma. He sees the doctor a lot during winter months
and he also has seasonal allergies. His
father is the primary caregiver and the closest parent to him. His mother tends to be the closest to his
older sisters. His mother is in the home
the most with him because his father works a lot in the fields and travels for
work in order to provide for the family.
During their spare time and when the father is not working, which is mainly
on Sunday, they enjoy going to the park, shopping, cooking, and watching TV
together. The father likes to take them
shopping to buy ingredients to cook authentic meals and clothes for
school. This helps him feel successful
with parenting since he is not at home most of the time.
Community and
culture, including language spoken:
Edgen is
a loving, shy, and caring, 9-year-old Hispanic male who is very eager to please
his teachers, peers, and family. His
shyness often leads to emotional distress and frustration. The reasons for distress are that he has
limited English in the home and the only time he is fully exposed is when he is
at school. He was born in the United
States to Hispanic parents who do not speak fluent English. His father speaks more English than his
mother, but still very hard to communicate with. Sensitive parenting has been linked with
positive child outcomes, including early language knowledge and literacy
development. (Pungello, Iruka, Dotterer, Mills-Koonce, and Reznick, 2009) In
the small, rural community where they live, there is a compound of Hispanic
families that live, work, and interact together daily. When Edgen is not at school, he is
communicating with Spanish. His family
feels the most comfortable when they are around other Spanish speaking
families. They feel confident and the
most adequate this way. The environment
in which children develop consists of four interrelated systems: immediate
settings such as home and school, relationships among the settings,
neighborhoods and the community that have indirect impact, and the culture of
the environment in which the children are reared. (Hammer, 2002). The mother and father want to learn English
but do not have the courage to receive classes.
Edgen’s mother is very introverted and his father is work driven and
oriented to provide. Socioeconomic
status affects a variety of mental and physical health outcomes, such as
language development, which also connects poverty with parental emotional
distress that affects parenting and the focus on basic needs being met.
(Perkins, Finegood, and Swain, 2013) Edgen’s
father says that it is not his priority to learn English. His priority is to earn money so that he can
provide. Infants born prematurely have
lower birth weights, a measure associated with a range of brain differences
compared to full-term babies, which may help explain language effects.
(Perkins, Finegood, and Swain, 2013). The children are very limited to
language/literacy-rich experiences in the home.
This deficit is primarily because of the parents’ lack of language. The older siblings do, however, read books to
their little brother and practice the alphabet.
It is possible that genetic factors play a role in the acquisition of
language and the linguistic proficiency of language-impaired people because
different genetic factors affect the linguistic abilities of language-impaired
and normal people. (Stromswald, n.d.)
My
Child’s Language and Literacy Development Journey: Developmental
Characteristics
Preschoolers
When Edgen began pre-kindergarten, he was
extremely introverted and had a difficult time transitioning. He was placed in an inclusion classroom with
a 4:21 ratio. In the inclusion setting,
he was placed in small groups that would receive additional support for all
academic areas. He was also pulled out
for interventions for speech and language development. His teachers knew that there were potential
delays due to language barrier and home environment. Just like statistics indicate, Edgen is at a
deficit in all academic areas because of his language barrier. Children from homes in which a language other
than English is the primary language are at risk for poor reading outcomes
(Hammer, Lawrence, & Miccio, p. 237, 2007).
He was below grade level norms in receptive, expressive, and oral
language. He was also at a deficit on
prekindergarten skills on the screener given to all four-year old’s entering
school. Even though he had a year of
school prior to pre-kindergarten, he was evaluated at school using the English
norms and standards for learning. He was
given a score on phonological awareness, expressive vocabulary, letter-word
recognition, and concepts of print. He
also had to orally retell stories and recall what happened in the story. Researchers found that children’s English
letter-word identification abilities and Spanish expressive vocabulary
predicted Spanish letter-word identification abilities. (Hammer, et al, p. 238, 2007)
Learning to read is
a process and it can be a complex task if a child is monolingual much less
bilingual and having learning delays.
The complexity increases when a child’s home language differs from that
of the school and when the child comes from a home with limited academic and
economic resources. Edgen’s home
learning environment was mainly Spanish other than his older sisters. His parents’ English skills were very broken
and hard to understand; therefore, they could not teach him effectively. Typically, children are exposed to language
acquisition opportunities in the home that help reinforce what has been taught
at school. For Edgen Tolentino this was
not the case. The process of learning to
read, however, is more multifaceted when children’s primary language is
different from the oral and written language they encounter at school. (Hammer & Miccio, p. 1, 2015). Spanish speaking children have disadvantages
when their home life is challenged and they do not have access to academic
materials.
Over the summer
between the three- year- old full day program and pre-kindergarten, Edgen
attended a four-week summer session.
During these sessions, his interventions consisted of English letters
and sounds, vocabulary acquisition with simple everyday/common terms- such as,
boy, girl, mom, dad, colors, numbers, labels in the classroom and bathroom, and
the terms of the school environment around him.
He was also encouraged to say his peers’ names. This was to enhance his social skills and the
general learning skills of pre-kindergarten.
The teachers and interventionists developed a Response to Intervention
during the first twelve weeks of school.
These skills and goals consisted of: recognition of letters in his first
name, count to 5, colors, and verbalization of his teachers and peers’
names. Children with limited proficiency
in the language of schooling are certain to experience increased difficulty in
coping both academically and socially, and it is important to identify these
difficulties to understand what intervention or remedial approaches are needed
(Bialystok, 2008). He began these
interventions immediately, 5 days a week for 10 minutes a day. According to the data recorded by the teacher
and interventionist, Edgen could only recognize the letter E in his name, and
he could count to 5. During this
process, he was progressed monitored every 2 weeks for a total of 6 weeks. The team met again and determined that the
interventions should continue for another 6 weeks. This continued for a total of 18 weeks and a
student support team meeting was scheduled to discuss progress and to determine
if Edgen needed psychological testing.
At the end of the 18 weeks, the teachers, parents, interventionist, ESOL
teacher, speech pathologist, and interpreter reviewed progress based on the
data and determined that he scored significantly below the norm. The recommendation was made for psychological
testing and a visit to his pediatrician.
His parents had to have an advocate shadow them so that they would
understand and get his needs met. During
testing, which can be difficult because of the bilingualism, clinicians have to
accurately assess a bilingual child’s problematic and unproblematic abilities
in terms of sounds, words, grammar, and conversation in each language, evaluate
if there is a delay, weigh the child’s linguistic/cognitive capacities in
comparison to typically and atypical, developing monolingual children, and
bilingual children of the same age, and finally develop an effective
intervention that targets subareas of linguistic and cognitive competence in
one or both languages (Heinlein & Williams, 2013). After testing was complete and eligibility
was determined, Edgen was served the remainder of his pre-kindergarten year by
a regular education, special education, 2 support teachers, speech, ESOL, and
an interventionist. He qualified and
received a multitude of services so that he would be able to reach his full
potential. Goals were set,
accommodations, and modifications were made, based on the testing.
Questions for colleagues:
- What are additional interventions for bilingual preschoolers?
- What baseline assessment do you use in your school district for these students?
- What progress monitoring tool do you use in your school district?
- What accommodations and modifications do you put in place?
- What resources do you have for the parents of this child?
References
Bialystok, E.L. (2008). Second-Language Acquisition and
Bilingualism at an Early Age and the Impact on Early Cognitive Development. Encyclopedia
on Early Childhood Development.
Retrieved from: sww.child-encyclopedia.com/sites/default/files/textes-experts/en/614/second-language-acquisition-and-bilingualism-at-an-early-age-and-the-impact-on-early-cognitive-development.pdf
Hammer, C.C., Lawrence, F.R., &
Miccio, A.W. (2007). Bilingual children’s language abilities and early reading
outcomes in head start and kindergarten.
American Speech-Language-Hearning
Association. 38. 237-248. Retrieved from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4590989/
Hammer, C.S., & Miccio, A.W.
(2006). Early language and reading development of bilingual preschoolers from
low-income families. Top Lang Disord.
26(4): 322-337. Retrieved from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4586031/pdf/nihms429984.pdf
Hart, B. & Risley, T.R. (2003). The early catastrophe: The 30 million word gap by age 3. Retrieved from http://www.aft.org/ae/spring2003/hart_risley
Fierro-Cobas, V. & Chan, E. (2001). Language development in bilingual children: a primer
for pediatricians. Contemporary Pediatrics. 18(7), p. 79-98. Retrieved from: http://courses.washington.edu/sop/Bilingualism_PrimerPediatricians.pdf
Figureas-Daniel,
A. & Barnett, W.S. (2013). Preparing young Hispanic dual language learners
for a knowledgeable economy. Preschool
policy brief: 24. Retrieved from: http://nieer.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Dual20Language20Learners.pdf
Hammer, C.S.
(2002). The environment and language impairment in children: implications for
assessment and intervention. Argang 80. Retrieved from: https://www.idunn.no/spesped/2002/02-03/the_environment_and_language_impairment_in_children_implications_for_assess
Michael-Luna, S. (November
2015). What parents have to teache us about their dual language children. Young
Children. National Association of
Educating Young Children. P. 42-43.
Retrieved from: http://www.naeyc.org/yc/files/yc/Dual%20Language%20Children.pdf
Paex, M.M.,
Tabors, P.O., Lopez, L.M. (2007). Dual language and literacy development of
Spanish-speaking preschool children. J
Appl Dev Psychol.28(2): 85-102. Doi: 10.1016/j.appdev.2006.12.007. Retrieved
from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3524578/
Pence Turnbull,
K. L., & Justice, L. M. (2017). Language development from theory to
practice (3rd ed.).
Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson, Inc.
Chapter 5,
“Infancy: Let the Language Achievements Begin” (pp. 122-157)
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