A nuanced understanding of English reading development is needed in order to develop effective instruction and help teachers to meet the reading needs of all students. Native English-speaking children spend several years acquiring oral language skills before formal literacy instruction begins, but Language Minority (LM) learners are charged with the challenging task of acquiring language and literacy skills simultaneously in English. Students from Spanish speaking homes represent about 80% of the LM school-aged population in the U.S. (Fry & Gonzales, 2008)--a population with generally poor reading outcomes (for a review, see August & Shanahan, 2006). Yet, key questions remain, e.g., how their social resources change in the years after immigration, what normative growth in language and reading skills looks like, or how, over time, their word reading or vocabulary skills relate to their English reading comprehension outcomes. The three longitudinal studies reported on in this thesis address these issues, with a sample of nearly 200 children and their families from Spanish-speaking homes, followed from preschool through fifth grade. The results indicate that these immigrant families faced persistent economic hardships after several years of living in the U.S., limiting upward social mobility and in turn raising concerns about their children's (academic) prospects. Though the students developed word reading skills on par with national norms, their oral language skills remained significantly below national expectations after several years of schooling. Of most concern, fifth grade students' reading comprehension performance was at a second grade level. Results from several longitudinal models, using SEM, showed that word reading, and not vocabulary, exerted a greater influence on comprehension outcomes, a finding which may be attributable to these students' very low reading comprehension skills.
The three studies highlight and demonstrate LM learners' at-risk status in several domains and underscore the need for targeted supports and interventions to meet their needs. This work has the potential to directly advance reading research focused on a vulnerable subgroup in the population and represents an important next step towards improving Spanish-speaking LM learners' proximal literacy outcomes, as well as critical distal outcomes, such as high school graduation rates.
