Predictors of Reading Development Among School-Age Bilingual Children With Developmental Language Disorder: A Scoping Review.

PURPOSE: Systematic reviews of bilingual children's reading development are very limited, and none of which solely focus on predictors of reading difficulties among those with developmental language disorder (DLD). The present scoping review fills an important need by analyzing the recent research literature on the reading outcomes of bilingual children with DLD. Specifically, this study aims to identify predictors of reading difficulties among bilingual children with DLD to improve early identification. METHOD: The search parameters used in this scoping review included peer-reviewed journal articles written in English from 2000 to 2022 in order to synthesize the most recent empirical work, a focus on early childhood through early adolescent (pre-K to eighth grade) bilinguals with DLD, and research designs that included case study, descriptive, cross-sectional, quasi-experimental, longitudinal, and qualitative methods. RESULTS: The present review yielded nine articles, which all examined the predictive validity of either a measure or task with the ultimate goal of improving early identification of reading difficulties. Significant predictors of reading difficulties, such as rapid naming and blending in first language (L1), were found to aid in identifying bilingual children who have DLD. CONCLUSIONS: To conclude, this review demonstrates that this is a highly under-researched topic. To have ended up including only nine articles that fit the criteria of our search reveals a large gap in the research and a limitation of this review.

Contributions of Oral Narrative Skills to English Reading in Spanish-English Latino/a Dual Language Learners.

PURPOSE: The study examined the contributions of Spanish and English oral narrative skills to English reading among 95 early elementary dual language learners (DLLs) from Spanish-speaking homes in the United States. This sample of first- and third-grade DLL children attended Spanish-English dual language immersion programs and received language and literacy instruction in both English and Spanish. METHOD: All participants completed a storytelling task in both languages and two English reading tests in decoding and reading comprehension. The story narratives were analyzed for microstructures (number of different new words, lexical diversity [D], mean length of utterance, subordination index [SI]) using the Computerized Language ANalysis program. The narrative samples were also evaluated for macrostructures (i.e., discourse-level features) using the Narrative Scoring Scheme. RESULTS: Grade, English D, and Spanish SI significantly predicted English reading. Grade level was the strongest predictor of the three for both decoding and comprehension. However, Spanish SI was more robust than English D for decoding whereas English D was a stronger predictor than Spanish SI for comprehension. CONCLUSIONS: Young DLL children's oral narrative skills in English as well as in their home language Spanish contributed to their English reading outcomes. The study further specified the contributions of narrative elements to different reading skills. Microstructural elements appeared to play a stronger role in English reading than macrostructural elements for DLLs in dual language programs in early elementary grades. The results provided support for the simple view of reading and the linguistic interdependence hypothesis. The results also implicated that maintaining young DLL children's home language skills may be beneficial, rather than harmful, to their English reading development.

Teachers and Language Outcomes of Young Bilinguals: A Scoping Review.

Purpose The present scoping review seeks to fill an important need in the bilingual research and education community by analyzing the recent research literature on how teacher factors potentially influence young bilingual children's language outcomes. The research aims are twofold: synthesize the research findings on teacher factors that influence bilinguals' language development, and identify gaps in the literature to determine future research directions. Method The search parameters used in this review included peer-reviewed journal articles from 2000 to 2019 in order to synthesize the most recent empirical work on this topic, a focus on typically developing bilinguals from the age of 3 to 8 years, and research designs that included case studies, descriptive, cross-sectional, quasi-experimental, experimental, longitudinal, mixed methods, and qualitative methods. Results A search of major databases for studies on young bilinguals and teachers between 2000 and 2019 combined with multiple levels of screening and review yielded 21 peer-reviewed articles. Four major themes emerged: (a) teacher characteristics, (b) teacher quality, (c) teacher talk, and (d) teacher emotional support. Conclusions Overall, the results of this synthesis suggest that teachers do in fact influence the language development of young bilinguals. Teacher talk and teacher quality were found to be the two themes that were of most interest in the research community, and the results generally supported the positive effect of teacher quality and teacher talk on language outcomes among bilinguals, with some variability. This review has important implications for teacher training and education in an effort to better serve the growing population of bilingual children.