Previous research documents the importance of maintaining the home language to the acquisition of a second language. This study examined the effects of a shared reading experience in the child’s home language on the emergent literacy and language acquisition in English of preschool-age English Language Learners (ELLs). Parents of Spanish-speaking four-year-old Head Start students read storybooks in Spanish with their children concurrently with the use of the English language version of the books in the classroom. A single subject design with multiple baselines across subjects and settings was applied. The researcher documented changes in the frequency of utterances, the Mean Length of Utterance-word (MLU-w), and the frequency of spontaneous or child-initiated utterances in various settings within the Head Start classroom. The Results indicated that there might be a relation between a shared reading experience in the home language and second language acquisition. Additionally, there appeared to be a relation between the behaviors and the settings.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:vcu.edu/oai:scholarscompass.vcu.edu:etd-2898 |
| Date | 28 July 2009 |
| Creators | Huennekens, Mary Ellen |
| Publisher | VCU Scholars Compass |
| Source Sets | Virginia Commonwealth University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Theses and Dissertations |
| Rights | © The Author |
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