Comments on: How Reading Skills Transfer Across Languages

By: How Reading Skills Transfer Across Languages « El Puente

How Reading Skills Transfer Across Languages « El Puente — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 13:54:26 +0000

[...] in English even though they have received little instruction in English reading at school. This article from http://www.spanglishbaby.com does a good job of explaining how reading skills that are learned in one [...]

By: How My Bilingual Children Learned to Read and Write in Spanish | SpanglishBaby™

Tue, 17 Jul 2012 22:32:23 +0000

[...] graduate school, I had read numerous times that children who can read in one language can normally transfer their reading (decoding) skills to the second language without much difficulty — as long as the languages use the same alphabet, of course. While some [...]

By: How Reading Skills Transfer Across Languages | SpanglishBaby™ « My Spanish Translator

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 15:32:44 +0000

[...] on spanglishbaby.com Share this:Like this:LikeBe the first to like this [...]

By: Elizabeth

Elizabeth — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 11:08:59 +0000

Dr Ford–Gracias for writing this explanation so eloquently!! Sometimes when I try to explain the transfer concepts to people, I get tongue-tied! Thanks for sharing and affirming what we do every day!

By: Ali

Ali — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 22:40:09 +0000

Great Article! Though I don´t know if I totally agree with – once you can read you can read. It is the general rule, but I have many experiences with young readers in Spanish who struggle much longer when they are learning to read in English. Maybe they are “reading” but its at a very low level – A, B, or C and yes they are probably not strong readers in Spanish either, but at a higher level. And of course reading involves a lot more than just decoding – comprehension is huge and that is definitely not a given especially with bilingual students!!

At my bilingual school in Colombia, the kids start learning to read in Spanish at about age 6 – 7 and then in English at about age 8 – 9. I am always pushing for them to be exposed to English reading earlier because they are expected to do English, Math, and Science curriculum at their age level, but with much less exposure to reading than their American counterparts. The students make huge gains in three years and usually by about 6 years – they are caught up academically.

Usually the students that are not doing well in English – reading comprehension, etc. are also not doing well in Spanish with the same things. When they are doing well in Spanish, then we try to give them special interventions designed specifically to work with the intricacies of reading in English. This usually has a lot to do with sounds, spelling patterns, and word work.