If you are teaching in a two-way immersion Spanish-English school setting, it would be great to hear your input on this piece.

Work by Iliana Reyes and her colleagues at the University of Arizona on Mexican-American children’s development is extremely instructive. Their research looks at how children learn languages, something that anyone who teaches children from Spanish-speaking homes should understand in order to teach these children well. First we must make a distinction between bilingualism (the ability to speak two languages) and bi-literacy (the ability to read and write in two languages). They  note that studies suggest it takes approximately two years to become orally proficient in a second language (bilingual) and about five to seven years to reach an average native speaker’s level of reading and writing performance (bi-literate).

This means that a child from a Spanish-speaking home who enters an English-speaking school might converse in English within two years, but would not be able to read, write, and take tests in English at grade level for five to seven years. This is normal bi-literacy development. Many children, in their first years of learning English, do poorly in English-speaking classes and on tests written in English. The researchers say this is not a sign that they are incapable of being bilingual or bi-literate. The problem, rather, is that schools are rushing them into performing in English before they can reasonably be expected to do so. To then limit these children to learning in English in hopes of speeding their English acquisition will do more harm than good and in fact could rob them of the enormous gift of bilingualism and bi-literacy.

Another common misperception related to Latino/Hispanic children’s literacy development is that these children receive no support outside school for developing literacy skills in any language. On the contrary, Reyes and colleagues, in studying Mexican-American families with preschoolers, have found that many of these parents are constantly teaching their children early literacy skills at home–in both Spanish and English. They do so through such activities as making shopping lists in English and Spanish and role playing in both languages. Here are other findings from Reyes’s research:

• Mothers in the households studied often provide rich literacy events such as story telling, role playing, singing and dancing, playing with puppets, and showing their children how to do handiwork. These are usually related to their home country’s arts, crafts, music, and literary heritage and help their children become bi-literate preschoolers.
• Teachers and educators often do not recognize these as literacy-teaching practices because they may not match those used by Euro-American middle-class families. For example, Euro-American middle class families tend to read books with or to their children, whereas the Mexican-American families might tell a family legend, asking the child to change the ending.
• English plays a predominant role in print material shared with the children at home in the families studied.
• Given that children are instructed primarily in English at school, the use of Spanish during literacy events at home is a way of enabling children to become bi-literate.

We can conclude from Reyes’s and colleagues’ work that if children from Spanish-speaking homes are given enough opportunities to function in Spanish as well as English, they will continue to develop their bilingualism and potentially their bi-literacy. It’s important, therefore, for teachers to learn about how Spanish-speaking parents’ home literacy practices impact the children’s overall bi-literacy learning, value such home efforts, and work to bring home and school teaching in concert with each other and to advocate for more two-way bilingual and immersion programs in Spanish.

(Reyes, I., and L. Moll. 2005 “Latinos and Bilingualism.” In Encylopedia Latina: History, Culture, and Society in the United States. I. Stevens and H. Augenbraum, Eds. New York. Grolier Academic Reference. Also: Reyes, I., D. Alexandra and P. Azura. 2006 “Home Literacy Practices in Mexican Households.” University of Arizona. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association. San Francisco. April 10, 2006).