Many Spanish-speaking parents hesitate to teach their children to read in their home language because they worry that this will make it more difficult for their children to learn to read in English. Nothing could be farther from the truth! In fact, the more children know about reading in their first language, the easier it will be for them to learn to read in English.

Thinking first about pre-readers, we know from years of research that there are certain foundational literacy skills that children need in order to be ready to learn to read. These skills include both print-related skills, such as knowing letter names and letter sounds, and sound-related skills, which come under the broad heading of phonological awareness. Early phonological awareness skills include, for example, being able to recognize words that rhyme or words that begin with the same sound. About twenty years ago, researchers began studying the relationship between these early foundational skills, developed in Spanish, and later reading achievement in English, and the results are clear. Strong print and phonological awareness skills in Spanish have consistently been found to be associated with successful later reading achievement, not only in Spanish, but also in English!

Parents can help prepare their children for learning to read in both languages by using Spanish to teach their children rhymes and songs, play word games, and share storybooks. Playing with words and rhymes develops phonological awareness, which prepares children for learning to “sound out” words when they begin to read. Interactive storybook read-alouds in Spanish expose children to the rich vocabulary of texts, vocabulary that they might not encounter in day-to-day spoken language. Read-alouds also help children develop early reading comprehension skills as they talk with parents about the events and concepts in the stories they are sharing. If parents call children’s attention to the print in the stories they are reading, they can also help children learn letter names, letter sounds, and print concepts, such as being able to point to the title of the book or knowing that text is read from top to bottom and from left to right. All of these skills prepare children for learning to read, both in Spanish and in English!

Once children actually begin reading, they can use what they know in one language to support their learning in the other. For example, a child who already knows how to read in Spanish already knows the concept of sounding out words to decode text. S/he has a distinct advantage over a child who is just learning that letters represent sounds, and sounds go together to make up words. In addition, a child who is a reader in Spanish already knows quite a few letter sounds in English because 12 of the letters (b, c, f, k, l, m, n, p, s, t, w, and y) make exactly the same sounds in the two languages! In addition, between 30% and 40% of all English words have Spanish cognates, or words that look similar and have the same meaning in the two languages. Parents can support their children’s English reading by helping them make connections like this between what they know in Spanish and what they are learning in English. They can also help by pointing out trouble spots, such as sounds that children will encounter in English that do not occur in Spanish (for example, sh).

Anyone who has ever taken a foreign language class, either in school or as an adult, has had the experience of applying established reading skills to a new language. Clearly, a child who begins studying French or German for the first time in eighth grade does not have to learn to read all over again. S/he simply has to learn how to apply what s/he already knows about reading to the unique rules of a new language. That is the same experience that children who can read in Spanish have when they begin learning to read in English. If they are beginning readers in both languages, they may not have as strong a reading foundation to call upon as the eighth grader in our example; however, having developed even elementary skills in Spanish reading will give them a boost as they learn to read in English. Not only has this fact been supported by research, it has also been borne out in classrooms across the U.S. For as Stephen Krashen stated so succinctly, “once you can read, you can read; reading ability transfers across languages.”

Karen L. Ford , Ph.D., is a Research Scientist in the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia, where her work focuses on second-language literacy development and literacy development in Spanish. Her research interests include early predictors of reading achievement among English language learners, readability in Spanish text, and the relationship between language development and literacy development in a second language. Currently, Dr. Ford is co-investigator on a large-scale grant, funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences, to develop valid and reliable early literacy assessments in Spanish. She is also research consultant to Colorín Colorado, a Spanish-English website for parents and teachers of Spanish-speaking English language learners.

DON’T FORGET TO ENTER OUR CELEBRATING BILINGUAL READERS CONTEST FOR YOUR CHANCE TO WIN OVER $300 WORTH OF BILINGUAL/SPANISH BOOKS AND A KINDLE FIRE!

This is our fourth year celebrating El Día de los Niños/El Día de los libros which happens on or around April 30 around the entire country. In honor of this very special day — because what could be better than celebrating kids and books, right? — we have put together a full week of reading related posts geared specifically towards bilingual children as well as an AMAZING giveaway that will allow one family to build its own bilingual home library for their kids!

We believe wholeheartedly in the power of reading when raising bilingual children, but we also know how frustrating it can be to find quality bilingual and Spanish books in the United States. From experience, I do have to say the offerings have gotten much better since my daughter was born almost six years ago and if you’ve been with us for a while you know that we’ve shared all those finds with you either through our ReadMe series or, more recently, in our Books & Libros category.

Another one of the worries we’ve all shared in this blog is how to go about teaching our bilingual children how to read in Spanish. Or even whether we should do this or not. As you may remember, I worried about this quite a bit before Vanessa entered Kinder as I was told by many that she should learn to read in her mother tongue, which I consider to be Spanish. I ended up not doing anything about it and once Vanessa learned how to read in English at school, she basically just came home and started transferring those skills into Spanish. But how does that actually happen? We hope to give you the answers this week.

We’ll also have some posts related to libraries and how to put them to good use as well as ideas to keep in mind when creating your own home bilingual library. Oh, and just like I promised, I also plan on sharing that list of suggestions I got from the librarian at the dual language immersion school I went to back in Peru when I was a child.

We’ve worked very hard to put together this week Celebrating Bilingual Readers and we can’t wait to share all of it with you… especially the AMAZING prize we’ll be giving away to one lucky family!

THE GIVEAWAY

Entering this giveaway is super easy! All you have to do is go to our Facebook page and upload a photo of your child’s favorite bilingual or Spanish book by May 6, 2012. Make sure you upload the picture via the contest app and NOT directly on the wall since that violates Facebook promotion guidelines. Go to this link here to land directly on the contest wall.

The winning family will be chosen at random (1 Grand prize winner) and this is what they’ll win to start their own bilingual children’s library at home:

• $50 worth of books from Heritage Language
• $50 worth of books from Bilingual Readers
• $50 worth of books from Lectura Books
• $20 worth of books from Little Pim
• Over $80 worth of books and Audio CDs from Pacific Learning
• Over $30 worth of bilingual educational games from Ingenio
• A BRAND NEW KINDLE FIRE!

 
We’ll also select three more winners to receive a copy of our book, Bilingual is Better, to be published on September 4, but now available for pre-order on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Enter the Celebrating Bilingual Readers Contest HERE and click on the suggested Tweet below to share the news with your friends!

SpanglishBaby giveaway $300 in bilingual books & a Kindle Fire! Upload pic of ur #BilingualKids fave book. Details: http://bit.ly/I3kTRy 

¡Buena suerte!