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Prediction of First-Grade Reading in Spanish-Speaking
English-Language Learners
Kim A. Lindsey, Franklin R. Manis, and Caroline E. Bailey
University of Southern California
Longitudinal prediction of English and Spanish reading skills was examined in a sample of 249
Spanish-speaking English-language learners at 3 time points in kindergarten through Grade 1. Phono-
logical awareness transferred from Spanish to English and was predictive of word-identification skills,
as in previous studies. Other variables showing cross-linguistic transfer were letter and word knowledge,
print concepts, and sentence memory. Expressive vocabulary tended to show language-specific relation-
ships to later reading. Oral-language variables predicted reading comprehension more highly than word
identification. Classification of good and poor readers in 1st grade was found to be comparable with
studies that used monolingual readers. Results broadened the range of variables showing cross-linguistic
transfer, at the level of both predictor and outcome variables.
Children in bilingual and immersion programs face the chal-
lenge of learning to read in a language that is different from the
one spoken at home. Cognitive mechanisms and experiential fac-
tors underlying the learning of reading skills in this population
have recently come under intense scrutiny (e.g., August & Hakuta,
1997). The purpose of the present study was to explore relations
between (a) cognitive skills assessed in the first language (L1) at
the outset and at the end of kindergarten and (b) reading compe-
tence in both the first and second language (L2) at the end of first
grade. The study was conducted with a large sample of children
participating in an early transition bilingual Spanish–English pro-
gram. We addressed two main questions. First, what is the extent
of cross-linguistic transfer of certain cognitive skills involved in
early reading acquisition? Second, how accurately can a battery of
cognitive measures in the L1 be used to predict progress in the L2?
The present study, which was part of a multiyear longitudinal
study, focused on the period from kindergarten to the end of first
grade (1998–1999 to 2000).
Cognitive Processes in Early Reading Acquisition
Most studies of early reading acquisition have focused on the
development of word reading and phonological decoding skills,
reflecting a widespread assumption that much of the variability in
reading comprehension in the early phases of learning to read is
due to printed word identification and phonological decoding skill
(Ehri, 1998; Hoover & Gough, 1990; Perfetti, 1985). There is
considerable evidence that phonological processing is one of the
major cognitive determinants of the development of word-level
reading skills in the early phases of learning to read (Goswami &
Bryant, 1990; Share, 1995; Share & Stanovich, 1995; Wagner &
Torgesen, 1987). Wagner and Torgesen (1987) distinguished be-
tween three types of phonological skill. Phonological awareness is
a set of linguistic and metalinguistic skills involving sensitivity to
the sound structure of spoken words. Phonological access in
lexical memory represents the efficiency with which phonological
representations of letters, digits and words are accessed. Phono-
logical processing in verbal working memory is the retention of
verbal information for a short period of time (as in digit, word, or
sentence recall). Wolf and Bowers (1999) have argued that some
measures of phonological access in lexical memory, particularly
those involving speeded naming, measure nonphonological fac-
tors, such as general-processing speed and visual letter-
identification speed, that contribute independently to reading dif-
ficulties (i.e., the double-deficit framework; see chapters in Wolf,
2001, for an extended discussion). In the remainder of the section,
we review predictive studies of reading. The general conclusion is
that although phonological skills are important precursors of read-
ing skill, it is vital that other variables such as letter knowledge and
print exposure are also studied.
Phonological awareness has a robust relationship to word-level
reading skills, particularly in the first few years of reading instruc-
tion. Relationships have been found between phonological aware-
ness and word reading in longitudinal studies (de Jong & van der
Leij, 1999; Manis, Seidenberg, & Doi, 1999; Muter, Hulme,
Snowling, & Taylor, 1998; Wagner, Torgesen, & Rashotte, 1994;
Wagner et al., 1997) as well as in concurrent correlational studies
in a wide variety of alphabetic languages (Alegria, Pignot, &
Morais, 1982; Bruck, Genesee, & Caravolas, 1997; Caravolas &
Bruck, 1993; Comeau, Cormier, Grandmaison, & Lacroix, 1999;
Cossu`, Shankweiler, Liberman, Katz, & Tola, 1988; Elbro,
Borstrom, & Petersen, 1998; Jime´nez Gonzalez & Haro Garcı´a,
1996; Lundberg, Olofsson, & Wall, 1980; Manis & Freedman,
2001; Ognjenovic, Lukatela, Feldman, & Turvey, 1983; Oney,
Peter, & Katz, 1997; Signorini, 1997; Sprenger-Charolles, Siegel,
& Bechennec, 1998; Sprenger-Charolles, Siegel, & Bonnet, 1998;
Wimmer, 1993; Wolf, Pfeil, Lotz, & Biddle, 1994). Studies in
more orthographically regular languages such as German and
Dutch found a weaker contribution of phonological awareness to
later word-reading skill (both accuracy and latency measures), or
Kim A. Lindsey, Franklin R. Manis, and Caroline E. Bailey, Department
of Psychology, University of Southern California.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Franklin
R. Manis, Department of Psychology, University of Southern California,
Los Angeles, California 90089-1061. E-mail: manis@usc.edu
Journal of Educational Psychology Copyright 2003 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.
2003, Vol. 95, No. 3, 482–494 0022-0663/03/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/0022-0663.95.3.482
482
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they find that the contribution of phonological awareness dissi-
pates after 2 years of instruction (de Jong & van der Leij, 1999,
2002; Landerl, Wimmer, & Frith, 1997; Wimmer, 1993; Wolf et
al., 1994), possibly because accurate and fluent phonological de-
coding of printed words is attained so quickly in these languages
(de Jong & van der Leij, 2002).
Lexical access, primarily instantiated as measures of rapid serial
naming, has also been found to be consistently related to word-
reading skill in the elementary school years across several lan-
guages, even when phonological awareness and IQ have been
partialed out (Ackerman & Dykman, 1993; Badian, 1993; Blach-
man, 1984; Bowers, 1995; Bowers & Swanson, 1991; Cornwall,
1992; Felton & Brown, 1990; McBride-Chang & Manis, 1996;
Scanlon & Vellutino, 1996). Relationships between rapid serial
naming skill and word-reading skill appear to vary across orthog-
raphies. Rapid serial naming is correlated more strongly than
phonological awareness with word reading (typically measured in
terms of fluency) in some orthographically regular languages, such
as German and Dutch (de Jong & van der Leij, 1999, 2002; van
den Bos, 1998; Wimmer, 1993). A similar result would be ex-
pected in the prediction of Spanish word reading (particularly
fluency), although to our knowledge no studies in Spanish involv-
ing both rapid serial naming and phonological awareness have
been published.
Phonological working-memory measures are correlated with
word reading, although according to Scarborough’s (1998) review,
more highly when they utilize recall of sentences or passages,
rather than digits, words, or pseudowords (e.g., Badian, 1982;
Scanlon & Vellutino, 1996; Share, Jorm, Maclean, & Matthews,
1984). When it is assessed in conjunction with other measures, the
contribution of working-memory measures to growth in word-
reading skill appears to be accounted for by prior reading skill and
phonological awareness in the longitudinal studies cited previously
(de Jong & van der Leij, 1999, 2002; Torgesen, Wagner, &
Rashotte, 1997; Wagner et al., 1994, 1997). Verbal working mem-
ory may play a more important role in the development of reading
comprehension (Perfetti, 1985; Wagner & Torgesen, 1987).
Factors other than phonological skills have been shown to be
important in the prediction of reading, particularly when reading
outcomes are defined more broadly (e.g., to include fluency and
comprehension as well as word identification). Scarborough
(1998) analyzed 61 prediction studies in English carried out since
1976, in which a minimum of 1 year intervened between the initial
and follow-up measures. A clear finding was that once a child has
begun formal literacy training, the best predictor of future reading
was current level of reading. For preliterate children, a measure of
letter identification alone had a mean correlation of .59 with later
reading scores. Assessment of the child’s functional knowledge of
print, using a task such as Clay’s Concepts About Print (Clay,
1979) fared nearly as well, with a mean correlation of .53 with
later reading. Of the cognitive variables, the next best predictors
were confrontation naming, full scale IQ, verbal IQ, broad lan-
guage skill, verbal memory for sentences or stories, and phono-
logical awareness (mean rs in the range of .40 to .45), followed by
rapid serial naming, digit or word span, and receptive vocabulary
(mean rs in the range of .30 to .40). These studies demonstrate that
phonological awareness is only one of several actively developing
skills that are predictive of reading difficulties in early elementary
school.
Very few studies have used the best predictors of reading in
combination, but Scarborough’s (1998) review showed that pre-
diction batteries composed of more than one of the measures listed
previously would be more effective than those with a single
measure. Although these predictive batteries were very good at
identifying children who were not at risk for reading difficulties
(an average of 96% of these children were typically identified), an
important caveat is that the hit rate for children who later turned
out to have reading difficulties was fairly low (ranging from 31%
to 75%, with a mean of 55%). However, previous multivariate
predictive studies did not include some of the variables listed
previously that are consistently predictive of reading (such as
sentence and story recall, confrontation naming, and broad lan-
guage skill).
A recent study by Scanlon and Vellutino (1996) used many of
the strongest predictors reviewed by Scarborough (1998) with a
very large, district-wide sample of monolingual children from
kindergarten to the end of first grade. The strongest predictor of
word-reading skill was the ability to name letters in kindergarten
(r⫽.59), followed by number identification (r⫽.56) and knowl-
edge of printed words (r⫽.46). Phonological and naming speed
variables were also good predictors (e.g., phoneme segmentation,
r⫽.42; rapid naming time, r⫽⫺.32; short-term memory for
words, r⫽.33), as were measures of oral-language skill (e.g.,
sentence memory, r⫽.34; Peabody Picture Vocabulary [Dunn &
Dunn, 1981], r⫽.28). When all of the kindergarten variables were
entered simultaneously, 49% of the variance in first-grade word
reading was accounted for. However, once letter and number
identification were entered into the equation, very little additional
variance was accounted for by phonological and linguistic
variables.
In conclusion, although phonological skills are of undeniable
theoretical importance in reading development, it is important to
consider other factors, most notably measures of letter knowledge,
print awareness, and oral-language skill in order to form a more
complete picture of the predictive factors in early reading achieve-
ment. In the next section, we consider whether the picture obtained
from studies of monolingual reading development holds true when
children learn to read in an L2.
Cross-Language Transfer
Cummins (1979; Cummins et al., 1984) discussed the relation-
ship between L1 abilities and L2 acquisition. His linguistic inter-
dependence hypothesis suggests that the acquisition of an L2 is
mediated by the level of L1 competence at the time the child
begins to acquire the L2. Transfer would be expected for skills that
are thought to be fundamental for reading acquisition in any
language, such as phonological awareness and lexical access.
Transfer should be enhanced when a child has received some
instruction in L1 and has made a transition to L2 reading and
language instruction (August, Calderon, & Carlo, 2001).
Although the research on transfer of reading-related skills from
one language to another has not been extensive, there is growing
evidence for cross-language transfer of phonological awareness
(August et al., 2001; Cisero & Royer, 1995; Comeau et al., 1999;
Durgunog˘lu, Nagy, & Hancin-Bhatt, 1993), single-word reading
errors and fluency (August et al., 2001; DaFontoura & Siegel,
1995; Geva, Wade-Woolley, & Shany, 1997; Kendall, Lajeunesse,
483
PREDICTION OF ENGLISH READING IN SPANISH SPEAKERS
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Chmilar, Shapson, & Shapson, 1987; Lambert & Tucker, 1972),
and reading comprehension (Escamilla, 1987; Jime´nez Gonzalez
& Haro Garcı´ a, 1996). Evidence of transfer from Chinese to
English phonological awareness and word reading has been ob-
tained as well (Gottardo, Yan, Siegel, & Wade-Woolley, 2001).
Taken together with the results for alphabetic languages, this last
result suggests that phonological skills are fundamental to reading
acquisition across a wide variety of languages and orthographies.
The nature of the relationship between phonological skills and
word reading in L1 and L2 needs greater specification. In addition,
it is important to take other phonologically related skills (such as
rapid serial naming and phonological working memory) into ac-
count. Comeau et al. (1999) found that phonological awareness in
French contributed to later word reading in English in an immer-
sion context, even when age, gender, general cognitive ability, and
two components of phonological processing (rapid serial naming
and verbal working memory) were partialed out of the predictive
equation. This indicated that phonological awareness had a unique
relation to word reading in a cross-linguistic context, just as it does
in a monolingual context (e.g., Wagner et al., 1997). Complemen-
tary relations were found for English as L1 and French as L1 by
Comeau et al. (1999), strengthening the view that phonological
awareness is a general, and not a language-specific, contributor to
reading acquisition.
A limitation of previous studies of cross-language transfer is
that most of them have focused on a narrow range of variables,
mainly phonological awareness and word reading ability. It is clear
that letter knowledge, print awareness, and oral-language skills are
also prime predictors of later reading skill in English (Scanlon &
Vellutino, 1996; Scarborough, 1998). Hence, it is of interest
whether these variables operate cross-linguistically and whether
some variables are more predictive of word reading and others of
reading comprehension. Finally, an open question is whether any
evidence for language-specific effects can be obtained. The greater
relationship of rapid serial naming to reading skills in orthograph-
ically regular languages is an example (van den Bos, 1998; Wim-
mer, 1993; Wolf et al., 1994). Although rapid serial naming would
be expected to show some cross-language correlations (as it did in
the longitudinal study by Comeau et al., 1999), it might be more
highly predictive of reading skill in Spanish than in English.
Overview of the Study
This study investigated cross-language transfer from Spanish to
English for the interval spanning the beginning of kindergarten to
the end of first grade. We included a broad range of predictive
measures: phonological awareness, rapid serial naming, sentence
memory, letter knowledge, print awareness, and oral-language
skill. Predictive measures were obtained only in Spanish for kin-
dergarten (at two test points) because of the children’s limited
English skills. The same predictor variables were administered in
English in the first grade. Outcome measures in first grade in-
cluded phonological decoding in English and word identification
and reading comprehension in both languages.
Three hypotheses pertaining to cross-language transfer were
tested. The first hypothesis is that cross-language transfer would be
observed for phonological awareness and word-identification skill,
in keeping with past studies. Second, we predicted that additional
variables that have been strong predictors of later word reading for
monolingual children would show cross-language transfer (e.g.,
letter knowledge, print awareness, rapid serial naming). Third, a
hypothesis derived from research on German and Dutch (e.g., van
den Bos, 1998; Wimmer, 1993) was that the predictive relationship
between rapid serial naming and word reading would be stronger
for Spanish to Spanish than for Spanish to English, owing to the
greater orthographic regularity of Spanish.
The second major purpose of the study was to determine how
well Spanish-speaking children at risk for reading difficulties in
English at the end of first grade could be identified from a small
battery of cognitive measures administered in Spanish during their
kindergarten year. This has obvious practical utility, as children
can be assessed at least 1 year earlier in L1 than they can in L2,
even in an early-transition bilingual program. Because the children
were instructed in both Spanish and English reading through the
end of first grade, an interesting feature of the study is the assess-
ment of differential predictability of Spanish and English reading
skills. Finally, the study extended previous studies by examining
the prediction of both word-level and reading comprehension skills
and by exploring whether these skills had different predictors.
Method
Participants
Our initial sample consisted of 303 Latino kindergarten children from a
Texas border town who were participating in an early transition bilingual
curriculum called Esperanza (Hagen, 1997). A requirement of the school
district was that all of the children had very limited knowledge of English
at the outset of kindergarten, as determined by language assessment (LAS)
tests. The LAS data were not available to the research project, but our own
oral-language measures given in early fall of kindergarten confirm this
picture (see Table 1). The children ranged in age from 57 months to 80
months (mean age ⫽67.8 months) at the time of first testing (fall 1998).
The sample was 47.5% boys and 52.5% girls. The socioeconomic status
based on family income was very low, as indicated by the fact that over
98% of the children in the school district qualified for the free lunch
program.
The Esperanza program was a Spanish language reading and language
arts program that was modeled closely after the Basic Language Skills
program (Neuhaus Education Center). This program in turn was based on
principles of the classic Orton–Gillingham multisensory reading and spell-
ing curriculum. The program began in kindergarten with phonological
awareness activities, multisensory introduction of new letters, and oral-
language training in Spanish and English (about 1 hr per day of English).
It proceeded in first grade into handwriting (in cursive), explicit phonics
activities, reading decodable texts, daily spelling practice, and activities in
writing and listening comprehension. In mid-first grade, many, but not all,
of the children made a transition from Esperanza to a closely parallel
English language program, Basic Language Skills (Neuhaus Education
Center). There were no explicit criteria for the transition, and the decision
was left up to individual teachers. Most of the children continued to
communicate in a mixture of Spanish and English with their fellow pupils
and teachers. An effort was made to increase gradually the proportion of
English instruction as the first grade year wore on. All of the teachers and
teachers’ aides were native Spanish speakers.
Two schools from each of the five subdistricts in the town were chosen
at random, resulting in a total of 10 schools. Fifteen entire classrooms were
then randomly picked from within these 10 schools. Fifteen bilingual LAS
testers employed by the school district were individually trained by Kim A.
Lindsey to administer the assessment batteries. The testers were retrained
before each subsequent testing period and the quality of their work was
monitored closely. Every effort was made to follow the children who
484 LINDSEY, MANIS, AND BAILEY
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moved within the school district as the study progressed. This was largely
successful, as the sample size at the end of first grade was 249, an attrition
rate of 17.8% over a 19-month period. Children who were lost from the
sample (n⫽54) were not statistically different on any of the kindergarten
measures than those who remained (n⫽249). Analyses for the present
article were conducted only on cases for whom complete scores were
available at all three test times (n⫽249). The only exception to this was
for the variable Letter Sounds, for which the sample size dropped to 213
cases, because of a testing error at Time 2.
We tested all the subjects within a 4-week interval between October and
November 1998 of the first semester of kindergarten (referred to herein-
after as Time 1), again within a 4-week interval in May 1999 at the end of
kindergarten (Time 2), and during a 4-week interval in May 2000 at the end
of first grade (Time 3). The children were individually tested in a quiet
room during regular school hours. The Time 1 and Time 2 test battery took
approximately 45 min to administer. The Time 3 battery took 50–90 min.
Overview of Assessment Battery
The study aims called for measures of phonological awareness and rapid
serial naming, as well as other leading predictive variables that have been
identified in the literature, including letter knowledge, word identification,
sentence recall, confrontation naming, phonological awareness, and print
concepts. Although “general language ability” ranks high as a predictive
measure (e.g., Scarborough, 1998), it was deemed too complex to include
in a 45-min battery. We also did not include a direct measure of phono-
logical working memory because of the relatively weak predictive rela-
tionships of this variable with later word identification (de Jong & van der
Leij, 1999, 2002; Scarborough, 1998). In addition to addressing the issue
of cross-linguistic transfer, it was important for the battery to be short for
practical purposes (i.e., eventual use of portions as a screening device by
teachers). Finally, care was taken to choose Spanish and English versions
of tests that did not have the same items.
Tasks Administered in Spanish
The first eight tasks listed following were administered in Spanish at
Time 1 and Time 2. The last task (Spanish Passage Comprehension) was
administered at Time 3.
Picture Vocabulary (Woodcock & Munoz-Sandoval, 1995). This task
was a subtest of the Woodcock Language Proficiency Battery (WLPB).
Children were shown realistic drawings of objects and were asked to name
the object or what was going on in the scene. There were 58 items in all.
Testing was continued until the child missed 6 items in a row. Internal
consistency reliability (Cronbach’s alpha) was reported by the authors to be
.68 at age 6.
Memory for Sentences (Woodcock & Munoz-Sandoval, 1995). In this
subtest of the WLPB, children listened to and repeated phrases and sen-
tences that increased in length and grammatical complexity. There were a
total of 32 items and testing was continued until the child missed 4 in a
row. Internal consistency reliability from norms was .88 at age 6.
Sound Matching. A Spanish version of this task was adapted from a
subtest of the Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing (CTOPP;
Wagner, Torgesen, & Rashotte, 1998). The child was shown a picture and
the object in the picture was pronounced (e.g., caballo). The tester then
showed three additional pictures on a single card and pronounced their
names (e.g., cama, foco, burro). The child was asked to point to or name
the drawing that started with the same sound as the prompt word. The child
was given feedback on three practice items as well as the first three of the
twenty test items. All items were administered to all participants. Internal
consistency reliability (Cronbach’s alpha) for our sample calculated at
Time 2 was .63.
Sound Categorization. This task was adapted from the CTOPP (Wag-
ner et al., 1998) and based on earlier work by Bradley and Bryant (1985).
The child was asked to say which two of three words rhymed or sounded
alike at the end. Three examples were given for each of the 10 test items.
The words were presented as pictures, which were named by the experi-
menter, and the child was asked to point to the two items that rhymed (e.g.,
salero, basurero, sandia). All 10 items were administered to all partici-
pants. Internal consistency reliability calculated at Time 2 was .97.
Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN)—Objects. This task was adapted
from Wagner et al.’s (1998) CTOPP. The child was shown line drawings
of five simple objects on a practice trial and named them in Spanish to
ensure familiarity. The items were then presented in sets of five, in random
order, in a display with six rows of seven items each. The child named the
items as rapidly as possible from left to right, row by row, until the last
item was named. Total time and accuracy were recorded. Because the test
was administered only once per test session and a single accuracy and a
single rate score were obtained, it was not possible to calculate the
reliability of the test.
Letter Knowledge. All of the letters of the Spanish alphabet were
presented in random order, first in uppercase and then in lowercase.
Spanish has 30 letters, counting the double letters (e.g., ll), but one
uppercase letter (RR) was omitted because it never occurs at the beginning
of a word in Spanish, making 59 the maximum score on this task. This task
was administered differently at the Time 1 and Time 2 assessments as an
adaptation to the children’s relative naivete about print at the beginning of
kindergarten. At Time 1 children were asked to provide each letter’s name,
and if they knew it, the tester moved on. If they did not know it, they were
asked what sound it made. More than one sound was accepted as correct in
the few cases where Spanish has variable pronunciations. If the children
did not know the sound, they were asked whether they knew a word that
began with that letter. The score on the test for Time 1 provided in the
Results section is the total number of letters for which the child could give
at least one of the three responses (name, sound, or word) correctly (Letter
Knowledge). At Time 2, children were asked to give both the letter name
(Letter Names) and its sound (Letter Sounds) for all lowercase and upper-
case letters. Because all possible items were administered, reliability was
not calculated.
Table 1
Mean, Median, and Quartile Cutpoints for National Percentile
Scores at Times 1, 2, and 3
Test variable Mdn M SD
Time 1 (all Spanish)
Letter–Word Identification 14.0 24.5 23.7
Memory for Sentences 21.5 27.7 23.3
Picture Vocabulary 9.0 27.6 33.6
Time 2 (all Spanish)
Letter–Word Identification 52.0 55.2 36.0
Memory for Sentences 22.0 28.6 24.6
Picture Vocabulary 18.5 35.3 36.6
Time 3
Spanish Letter–Word Identification 99.9 79.3 33.3
Spanish Passage Comprehension 76.0 63.1 32.6
English Memory for Sentences 2.0 11.3 18.6
English Picture Vocabulary 0.1 2.5 6.0
English Letter–Word Identification 60.0 55.9 35.8
English Passage Comprehension 43.0 45.2 28.5
English Word Attack 61.0 56.5 29.0
English Phoneme Deletion 50.0 53.5 34.0
English Sound Matching 37.0 40.7 21.8
English RAN–Objects (time) 98.0 85.6 24.3
Note. RAN ⫽Rapid Automatized Naming.
485
PREDICTION OF ENGLISH READING IN SPANISH SPEAKERS
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Concepts About Print. The experimenter carried on a structured con-
versation with the child about a Spanish children’s book. The child was
asked 18 questions assessing knowledge of book and printing conventions,
such as “point to the front of the book,”“where does one start reading?”
“which direction along a line does one read?” and so on. This task was an
adaptation of the English language version of Clay’s (1979) Concepts
About Print task. Internal consistency reliability (Cronbach’s alpha) for our
measure calculated at Time 2 was .92.
Letter–Word Identification (Woodcock & Munoz-Sandoval, 1995).
The child was shown a series of letters and words that increased in
difficulty and was asked to name them. There were 12 letters and 46 words.
Testing was continued until the child missed 6 in a row. The internal
consistency reliability (Cronbach’s alpha) at age 6 was reported as .95 by
the authors.
Spanish Passage Comprehension (Woodcock & Munoz-Sandoval,
1995). The child was given a series of short printed passages in Spanish
that gradually increased in length, complexity and vocabulary level. The
child had to fill in a word or phrase that was missing. Internal consistency
(Cronbach’s alpha) was reported by the authors to be .89 at age 6.
Norms for all Woodcock–Munoz tests in Spanish were obtained from
predominantly monolingual Spanish-speaking children in the United States
and Mexico as well as Spain and several Latin American countries. The
items were Rasch-calibrated and compared across languages to make the
Spanish and English versions of the same test comparable in difficulty.
Tasks Administered in English
No English tasks were given at Times 1 and 2. The tasks listed below
were given at Time 3.
Letter Names and Letter Sounds. All of the letters of the alphabet were
presented in random order, first in uppercase and then in lowercase.
Children were asked to provide their names and sounds. Separate scores for
letter names and sounds were obtained. Any of the leading alternative letter
sounds in English were accepted (e.g., /ae/, /e/, and /a/ for a). One letter
was inadvertently administered twice in lowercase (g), but this was not
counted. The maximum possible score was 52. Because all possible items
were administered, reliability was not calculated.
Letter–Word Identification (Woodcock & Johnson, 1989). This was
the English version of the Letter–Word Identification test described pre-
viously. The test had different items than the Spanish version. Internal
consistency reliability (Cronbach’s alpha) at age 6 was reported to be .96
by the authors of the test.
Word Attack (Woodcock & Johnson, 1989). The child pronounced
orthographically regular nonsense words that had one or two acceptable
pronunciations in the language. There were 30 items, and testing was
continued until the child missed 6 items in a row. Internal consistency
reliability (Cronbach’s alpha) was reported to be .95 at age 6 by the
authors.
Passage Comprehension (Woodcock & Johnson, 1989). This is the
English version of the Spanish measure described previously. The items
were different from the Spanish version. Internal consistency reliability
(Cronbach’s alpha) was reported to be .94 at age 6 by the authors.
Picture Vocabulary (Woodcock & Johnson, 1989). This task had the
same format as the Spanish version of the task but different items. Internal
consistency reliability (Cronbach’s alpha) for age 6 was reported to be .77
by the authors.
Memory for Sentences (Woodcock & Johnson, 1989). This task had the
same format as the Spanish version but had different items. Internal
consistency reliability (Cronbach’s alpha) was reported to be .88 at age 6
by the authors.
Sound Matching (Wagner et al., 1998). This task was taken from the
CTOPP and had the same format as the Spanish language Sound Matching
task given in kindergarten but had different items. The internal consistency
reliability (Cronbach’s alpha) was reported to be .93 at age 6 by the
authors.
Phoneme Elision (Wagner et al., 1998). In this task from the CTOPP,
the child was asked to play a word game. The child was presented with a
word and asked to repeat it. The child was then asked to say the word with
a targeted syllable or phoneme deleted. There were 6 practice items and 20
test items. Feedback was provided on the 6 practice items and the first 5
test items. Testing was continued until the child missed 3 items in a row.
Internal consistency reliability (Cronbach’s alpha) was reported to be .92 at
age 6 by the authors.
Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN)—Objects and Digits (Wagner et al.,
1998). These two measures were from the CTOPP. RAN–Objects had the
same format as the Spanish version of the task but used the standard items
in the test and required the child to respond in English. In RAN–Digits, the
child was shown six numbers on a practice trail and named them to ensure
familiarity. The numbers were then randomly presented in four rows of
nine numbers. The child was asked to name the numbers as rapidly as
possible in English from left to right, row by row until the last item was
named. Total time and accuracy were recorded. Internal consistency reli-
ability was reported to be .81 for RAN–Objects and .75 for RAN–Digits
(time scores) at age 7 by the authors.
Results
Descriptive Statistics and Correlational Analyses
As an index of how well the children performed at each age on
the standardized tasks, percentile scores (based on national norms)
are shown in Table 1. The median and mean percentiles are shown
for Times 1, 2 and 3. RAN–Digits (Time 3) did not have a standard
score, as the norms extended down only to age 7, and many of the
children were under 7 years of age at the end of first grade.
Spanish literacy and language skills are considered first. The
children’s Spanish Letter–Word Identification scores were below
average at the outset of kindergarten (Time 1) but moved into the
average range by the end of kindergarten (Time 2) and were well
above average at the end of first grade (Time 3). This progress is
remarkable, as it constitutes catching up to and surpassing a
national average based on the normative scores of monolingual
Spanish-speaking children at a variety of socioeconomic levels.
Spanish Passage Comprehension was also above average at
Time 3. Turning to the Spanish oral-language variables, we saw
less progress. Memory for Sentences scores were below average at
Time 1 and Time 2. Picture Vocabulary scores improved slightly
over the same time period but were also below average.
English standardized test results at the end of first grade show
that the mean reading scores were within the average range but
oral-language task scores were quite low (the median was the 2nd
percentile for Memory for Sentences, and below the 1st percentile
for Picture Vocabulary). The CTOPP tests indicated that the chil-
dren were scoring in the average range for a monolingual English-
speaker on the two tests of phoneme awareness and well above
average for RAN–Objects time.
Raw scores on the Spanish tests are shown in Table 2, and raw
scores for English and Spanish tests at Time 3 are shown in
Table 3. There were no obvious floor or ceiling effects. One
exception to this was the rapid naming error scores, which were
exceptionally low (a mean of less than one error). Rapid naming
errors were not analyzed further and are not shown in the corre-
lation tables. Because the RAN–Objects time scores were posi-
tively skewed and not normally distributed, a reciprocal transfor-
mation was performed. Thus higher scores represented better
performance, as on all of the other tasks.
486 LINDSEY, MANIS, AND BAILEY
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Correlations among the Spanish variables are presented in Ta-
ble 2. Correlations within Time 1 are below the diagonal and
correlations within Time 2 are above the diagonal. Stability coef-
ficients (from Time 1 to Time 2) are shown along the diagonal.
Gender and age (not shown in the table) were not correlated
significantly with any of the other tasks and were dropped from
further analyses. Scores were moderately stable from Time 1 to
Time 2 for all of the measures (the range of rs was .47–.59). The
pattern of correlations within Time 1 and Time 2 was similar and
tended to show clusters of correlations that were consistent with
the intended measurement purpose of the tasks. For example, the
two phonological awareness variables tended to correlate more
highly with each other (.68 at Time 1; .68 at Time 2) than with
other variables (range ⫽.18–.46).
Table 3 shows intercorrelations of the variables at Time 3. One
interesting observation is that Spanish Letter–Word Identification
and Passage Comprehension correlated fairly well (.61 and .66)
with their English counterparts. Correlations within the English
variables were consistently in the .30–.60 range. All of the English
variables correlated with the Spanish reading measures, but cor-
relations were noticeably lower for English Picture Vocabulary.
Table 4 shows longitudinal correlations from Time 1 to Time 3,
and Table 5 shows longitudinal correlations from Time 2 to
Time 3. The pattern of correlations from Time 2 to Time 3 was
Table 2
Correlations, Stability Coefficients, Means, and Standard Deviations for Time 1 and Time 2
Variable at Times 1
and2 12345678 M
(Time 1) SD
(Time 1) MP
(Time 1)
1. Letter Knowledge .49*** .21** .39*** .33*** .33*** .41*** .25*** .28*** 26.6 17.6 59
2. Memory for Sentences .28*** .58*** .37*** .16* .41*** .36*** .28*** .33*** 32.0 4.9 59
3. Letter–Word Ident. .65*** .23*** .47*** .40*** .38*** .39*** .22*** .44*** 8.1 3.9 58
4. RAN–Objects (time) .22*** .18** .26*** .49*** .37*** .22** .18** .21** 77.8 25.8
5. Picture Vocabulary .38*** .39*** .28*** .17** .59*** .24*** .31*** .28*** 19.2 3.0 58
6. Sound Matching .55*** .25*** .42*** .15* .34*** .50*** .62*** .39*** 12.4 6.1 20
7. Sound Categorization .35*** .22*** .29*** .05 .18** .69*** .50*** .26*** 5.8 3.0 10
8. Concepts About Print .46*** .25*** .44*** .17** .23*** .48*** .36*** .52*** 6.2 3.9 20
M(Time 2) 47.4 33.4 20.5 73.0 20.7 16.2 7.2 12.2
SD (Time 2) 14.4 5.1 13.8 43.9 3.4 5.1 2.9 3.5
MP (Time 2) 59 59 58 58 20 10 20
Note. Correlations at Time 1 are shown below the diagonal; correlations at Time 2 are shown above the diagonal. Stability coefficients are shown with
underlining on the diagonal. Variables are listed in the same order at Time 1 and Time 2. All variables are in Spanish. MP ⫽maximum possible; Ident.
⫽Identification; RAN ⫽Rapid Automatized Naming.
*p⬍.05. ** p⬍.01. *** p⬍.001.
Table 3
Intercorrelations: Time 3
12345678910111213
1. SLW —
2. SPC .80*** —
3. EMS .26*** .36*** —
4. EPV .16* .18** .49*** —
5. ELW .66*** .66*** .50*** .43*** —
6. EPC .50*** .61*** .55*** .44*** .72*** —
7. EWA .52*** .48*** .39*** .39*** .75*** .62*** —
8. ELI .39*** .39*** .45*** .50*** .65*** .52*** .42*** —
9. ELS .38*** .31*** .29*** .40*** .53*** .40*** .40*** .61*** —
10. EROT .32*** .34*** .32*** .41*** .59*** .47*** .53*** .42*** .38*** —
11. ERDT .36*** .31*** .16* .28*** .56*** .39*** .47*** .46*** .30*** .60*** —
12. ESM .44*** .48*** .46*** .37*** .49*** .48*** .42*** .47*** .42*** .39*** .22*** —
13. EPD .54*** .59*** .51*** .40*** .71*** .63*** .56*** .52*** .53*** .45*** .34*** .53*** —
M40.3 13.8 32.3 18.1 25.2 9.3 7.5 47.0 43.4 53.3 32.9 14.3 9.6
SD 16.8 8.1 4.9 3.8 9.4 5.4 6.5 10.4 11.3 21.8 16.9 4.6 6.0
MP 58 43 59 58 58 43 45 52 52 20 20
Note. S⫽Spanish; E ⫽English; LW ⫽Letter–Word Identification; PC ⫽Passage Comprehension; MS ⫽Memory for Sentences; PV ⫽Picture
Vocabulary; WA ⫽Word Attack; LI ⫽Letter Identification; LS ⫽Letter Sound; ROT ⫽Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN)—Objects (time); RDT ⫽
RAN–Digits (time); SM ⫽Sound Matching; PD ⫽Phoneme Deletion; MP ⫽maximum possible.
*p⬍.05. ** p⬍.01. *** p⬍.001.
487
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similar to that for Time 1 to Time 3 but tended to be slightly
stronger across the board. The first prediction about cross-
linguistic transfer we considered was that phonological awareness
and developing word-reading skill would show cross-language
transfer. The two Spanish measures of phonological awareness at
Times 1 and 2 (Sound Categorization and Sound Matching) cor-
related in the range .21–.36 with the two English measures of
phonological awareness at Time 3 (Sound Matching and Phoneme
Elision). The Spanish measure of letter–sound knowledge at
Time 2 correlated .37 with English letter–sound knowledge and
.37 with English Word Attack scores. These correlations indicate
that there is cross-language transfer of phonological awareness and
phonological decoding skills. The highest Spanish to English cor-
relations were observed for Letter–Word Identification scores,
which correlated .44 from Time 1 to Time 3 and .62 for Time 2 to
Time 3. It is of interest that these correlations compared favorably
with the correlations across these age spans for Spanish Letter–
Word Identification with itself, indicating that there was much
overlapping variance between the Spanish and English reading
measures. The correlational data also indicate that Spanish mea-
sures of phonological awareness correlated in the range .19–.37
with developing English reading and word decoding skills. These
relationships are explored further in the regression analyses.
The second cross-language transfer hypothesis was that other
leading predictors of early reading skills would show evidence of
transfer. Spanish Letter Knowledge, Spanish Memory for Sen-
tences, and Spanish RAN–Objects time correlated significantly
with their English counterparts (r⫽.22–.44). Although still sig-
nificant (r⫽.15 and r⫽.15 at Times 1 and 2, respectively), the
correlation of Spanish and English Picture Vocabulary was more
modest than this, suggesting that skills tapped by this vocabulary
test might have operated in a more language-specific fashion than
the other measures. This was not due to low reliability or low
predictive power for the Picture Vocabulary measure in general
(see Tables 2–5).
When correlations between the full range of Spanish language
predictor variables at Times 1 and 2 and the English and Spanish
reading measures at Time 3 were examined, all of the predictors
(including Picture Vocabulary) had correlation values with the
English reading measures that were in the same range as their
Table 4
Correlations: Time 1 With Time 3
Time 1
variable
Time 3 variable
SLW SPC EMS EPV ELW EPC EWA ELI ELS EROT ERDT ESM EPD
1. SLK .28*** .36*** .29*** .32*** .50*** .39*** .36*** .38*** .31*** .11 .05 .28*** .41***
2. SMS .27*** .28*** .37*** .15* .27*** .23*** .24*** .20*** .17* .15* .11 .20** .23***
3. SLW .23*** .27*** .24*** .30*** .44*** .35*** .40*** .33*** .26*** .08 .02 .23*** .37***
4. SROT .23*** .23*** .21** .16* .35*** .26*** .24*** .29*** .20** .22*** .09 .24*** .25***
5. SPV .28*** .34*** .22*** .15** .31*** .28*** .25*** .23*** .21** .02 ⫺.17* .22*** .21**
6. SSM .24*** .29*** .32*** .27*** .37*** .34*** .29*** .26*** .16* .16* .09 .28*** .32***
7. SSC .18** .20** .20** .17** .24*** .19** .21** .18** .11 .17* .08 .25*** .21***
8. SCAP .27*** .22*** .23*** .18** .38*** .24*** .33*** .29*** .31*** .17** .12 .33*** .23**
Note. S⫽Spanish; E ⫽English; LW ⫽Letter–Word Identification; PC ⫽Passage Comprehension; MS ⫽Memory for Sentences; PV ⫽Picture
Vocabulary; WA ⫽Word Attack; LI ⫽Letter Identification; LS ⫽Letter Sound; ROT ⫽Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN)—Objects (time); RDT ⫽
RAN–Digits (time); SM ⫽Sound Matching; PD ⫽Phoneme Deletion; LK ⫽Letter Knowledge; SC ⫽Sound Categorization; CAP ⫽Concepts About
Print.
*p⬍.05. ** p⬍.01. *** p⬍.001.
Table 5
Correlations: Time 2 With Time 3
Time 2
variable
Time 3 variable
SLW SPC EMS EPV ELW EPC EWA ELI ELS EROT ERDT ESM EPD
1. SLN .30*** .29*** .26*** .21*** .41*** .30*** .30*** .44*** .30*** .32*** .30*** .23*** .32***
2. SLS .37*** .35*** .29*** .30** .42*** .36*** .37*** .38*** .37*** .26*** .32*** .17*** .32***
3. SMS .24*** .30*** .39*** .15* .30*** .29*** .25*** .22*** .17** .17* .19** .20** .31***
4. SLW .48*** .49*** .36*** .26*** .62*** .46*** .52*** .33*** .27*** .42*** .36*** .22*** .52***
5. SROT .35*** .33*** .22** .20** .43*** .33*** .38*** .33*** .24*** .43*** .37*** .21*** .34***
6. SPV .27*** .32*** .19** .15* .32*** .21** .22*** .22*** .20** .25*** .16* .16* .26***
7. SSM .38*** .39*** .31*** .29*** .44*** .35*** .34*** .30*** .34*** .26*** .20*** .31*** .38***
8. SSC .20** .21*** .24*** .22*** .32*** .23*** .27*** .22*** .14* .15* .18** .22*** .24***
9. SCAP .25*** .25*** .30*** .33*** .43*** .31*** .32*** .41*** .36*** .25*** .30*** .21*** .36***
Note. S⫽Spanish; E ⫽English; LW ⫽Letter–Word Identification; PC ⫽Passage Comprehension; MS ⫽Memory for Sentences; PV ⫽Picture
Vocabulary; WA ⫽Word Attack; LI ⫽Letter Identification; LS ⫽Letter Sound; ROT ⫽Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN)—Objects (time); RDT ⫽
RAN–Digits (time); SM ⫽Sound Matching; PD ⫽Phoneme Deletion; LN ⫽Letter Name; SC ⫽Sound Categorization; CAP ⫽Concepts About Print.
*p⬍.05. ** p⬍.01. *** p⬍.001.
488 LINDSEY, MANIS, AND BAILEY
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correlations with the two Spanish reading measures. There were no
variables that showed dramatically higher or lower correlations
with Spanish reading measures at Time 3 than with English mea-
sures at Time 3. This indicates that phonological awareness and
word decoding are not the only skills that show cross-language
relationships.
The third hypothesis was that RAN Objects or Digits time
would be more closely associated with reading achievement in
Spanish, an orthographically regular language, than English, an
orthographically irregular language. However, the correlations in
Tables 4 and 5 were of similar magnitude within versus across
languages, providing no support for the hypothesis. It is possible
that different results would be obtained in later grades, particularly
with fluency measures.
To summarize, the correlational analyses revealed a substantial
degree of cross-language transfer. The data indicated that predic-
tions from Spanish to English were generally as strong as predic-
tions within Spanish. The three cross-language transfer hypotheses
and questions about the prediction of reading difficulties were
explored more systematically via hierarchical regression analyses.
Regression Analyses
Hypotheses 1 and 2 were tested more systematically with a
series of hierarchical regressions (shown in Tables 6 and 7). The
first question was whether phonological awareness accounted for
variance in reading (both across languages and within language)
after the contribution of previous literacy attainment had been
partialed out. This is a test of the extent to which phonological
awareness contributes to growth or change in reading skills over a
1-year period. We conducted the hierarchical regressions with
letter knowledge as the control variable, entered on the first step.
Letter Knowledge was used here as a proxy for literacy experience
and knowledge and was preferred over Letter–Word Identification
because the latter variable taps into word decoding and therefore
might overlap too much with phonological awareness. Sound
Matching, as a representative phonological awareness measure,
was always entered on the second step. For Time 1 to Time 3
predictions, Sound Matching accounted for a generally nonsignif-
icant 1% to 2% of residual variance, but at Time 2, Sound Match-
ing accounted for significant residual variance in reading ranging
from 5.7% to 8.8%. Similar results were obtained for Sound
Categorization at Times 1 and 2, and Letter Sound knowledge at
Time 2 (not shown in the tables).
To test the second hypothesis about cross-linguistic transfer, we
asked whether the other predictor variables in the study accounted
for additional variance in reading beyond that accounted for by
prior literacy attainment and phonological awareness. These anal-
yses were conducted by entering Letter Knowledge and Sound
Matching on the first two steps, and the other hypothesized pre-
dictors on the 3rd through 6th steps (see lower portion of each
section in Tables 6 and 7).
In every case, at least one additional variable was significant
when considering whether it contributed to a significant change in
R
2
. Looking at beta weights for the final regression equations, it is
apparent that Concepts About Print and RAN–Objects time were
the most consistent predictors of the English reading variables for
both Time 1 to Time 3 and Time 2 to Time 3 predictions. The most
important predictors for the Spanish variables differed somewhat
for Times 1 and 2 and for the two reading measures, but Picture
Vocabulary, Memory for Sentences and RAN–Objects time were
the most important variables. The hierarchical regression analyses
did not support the hypothesis that the predictive power of RAN–
Objects time would be substantially larger for Spanish than for
English, contrary to the third hypothesis.
To summarize, the hierarchical regression analyses revealed that
all of the predictor variables showed some evidence of cross-
linguistic transfer for one aspect of reading or another. Letter
knowledge and phonological awareness variables were consis-
tently predictive of first-grade reading across languages when
entered as the first two predictors. The total amount of variance
accounted for by the four additional predictors ranged from about
Table 6
Hierarchical Regression Analyses Predicting Time 3 Scores
From Time 1
Time 1 variable R
2
⌬R
2
Final

Time 3 variable: Spanish Letter–Word Identification
1. Letter Knowledge .077 .077*** .082
2. Sound Matching .088 .011 .038
3. Picture Vocabulary .117 .029** .131
4. Memory for Sentences .137 .020* .128*
5. Concepts About Print .151 .014* .130
6. RAN–Objects (time) .168 .017* .134*
Time 3 variable: Spanish Passage Comprehension
1. Letter Knowledge .127 .127*** .187*
2. Sound Matching .139 .012 .076
3. Picture Vocabulary .181 .042*** .171**
4. Memory for Sentences .195 .014* .121
5. Concepts About Print .195 .000 .004
6. RAN–Objects (time) .209 .014* .123*
Time 3 variable: English Letter–Word Identification
1. Letter Knowledge .247 .247*** .308***
2. Sound Matching .258 .011 .045
3. Picture Vocabulary .270 .012* .071
4. Memory for Sentences .280 .010 .020
5. Concepts About Print .298 .018* .145*
6. RAN–Objects (time) .345 .047*** .225***
Time 3 variable: English Passage Comprehension
1. Letter Knowledge .151 .151*** .215**
2. Sound Matching .174 .023* .145*
3. Picture Vocabulary .188 .014* .090
4. Memory for Sentences .194 .006 .068
5. Concepts About Print .194 .000 .01
6. RAN–Objects (time) .217 .023** .159**
Time 3 variable: English Word Attack
1. Letter Knowledge .131 .131*** .181*
2. Sound Matching .143 .012 .048
3. Picture Vocabulary .154 .011 .069
4. Memory for Sentences .165 .011 .088
5. Concepts About Print .166 .001 .161*
6. RAN–Objects (time) .203 .037* .136*
Note. RAN ⫽Rapid Automatized Naming.
*p⬍.05. ** p⬍.01. *** p⬍.001.
489
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4% to about 13% across outcome variables for the two predictive
intervals. This was a stringent test of the predictive power of these
variables, as variance due to letter knowledge and phonological
awareness had already been partialed out.
Classification of Good and Poor Readers
Discriminant analyses were conducted to discover what percent-
age of children could be correctly classified as either good or poor
readers at Time 3 on the basis of six Time 1 and six Time 2
variables (see Table 8). Poor reading was defined at Time 3 as at
or below the 25th percentile, and good reading as above the 25th
percentile on the basis of national norms for the five standardized
reading outcome measures. The classification results are reported
in Table 8. Predictive accuracy generally followed the pattern
found in the literature (e.g., Scanlon & Vellutino, 1996; Scarbor-
ough, 1998). The percentage of correctly classified children ranged
from 63.4% to 76.6% for poor readers and from 60.1% to 78.3%
for good readers, with chi-square statistics all significant at alpha
levels below .01. Predictive accuracy for poor readers was slightly
higher at Time 1, and for good readers at Time 2.
The variables correlating most strongly with the discriminant
functions varied across outcome measures (see Table 9) in a
pattern that roughly paralleled the results for the regression anal-
yses, with some notable exceptions. Concepts About Print corre-
lated well with the discriminant functions for all outcome mea-
sures except Spanish Passage Comprehension. Letter Knowledge
correlated well with both Passage Comprehension–based discrimi-
nant functions. Memory for Sentences correlated with the Spanish
reading functions for Time 1 only. RAN–Objects time correlated
with all functions, with the single exception of Spanish Passage
Comprehension (for the Time 1 RAN–Objects prediction). Sound
Matching was one of the strongest contributors to the Spanish
reading function at Time 2, but in contrast to the regression data,
it did not correlate with the English reading functions other than
Word Attack at Times 1 and 2. Picture Vocabulary correlated with
Spanish Passage Comprehension for both Time 1 and Time 2, with
Spanish Letter–Word Identification at Time 1 and with English
Passage Comprehension for Times 1 and 2. The results indicate
that children with the poorest reading abilities in both languages
tended to have slow rapid naming times and poor print awareness.
Letter Knowledge was one of the strongest predictors, but Sound
Matching discriminated well only for Spanish outcome reading
measures, and only for the Time 2 to Time 3 prediction interval.
To summarize, predictive accuracy for good and poor readers
was comparable to the literature on monolingual prediction of
reading difficulties. The variables that discriminated best between
good and poor readers overlapped with the best predictors for the
sample as a whole, except that Sound Matching did not discrim-
inate well, and Concepts About Print played more of a role than it
had in the correlation and regression analyses.
Discussion
The two main purposes of the study were to study cross-
linguistic transfer of early reading skills and to study the cross-
linguistic prediction of reading difficulties in a group of English-
language learners participating in an early transition bilingual
program. Three specific hypotheses regarding cross-linguistic cor-
relations were explored. The first hypothesis was that phonological
skill would predict from Spanish to English in line with past
studies. We found that correlations of Spanish phonological aware-
ness with Spanish word identification were no larger than those of
Spanish phonological awareness with English word identification.
In an extension of previous work, we also found a significant
correlation of Spanish phonological awareness with later English
Passage Comprehension. In addition, Spanish phonological aware-
ness was moderately correlated with differently composed mea-
sures of phonological awareness in English over the 1-year pre-
diction period. Taken together with results of previous studies
(Cisero & Royer, 1995; Comeau et al., 1999; Durgunog˘lu et al.,
1993; Gottardo et al., 2001), the results indicate phonological
Table 7
Hierarchical Regression Analyses Predicting Time 3 Scores
From Time 2
Time 2 variable R
2
⌬R
2
Final

Time 3 variable: Spanish Letter–Word Identification
1. Letter Name .089 .089*** .070
2. Sound Matching .170 .081*** .237**
3. Picture Vocabulary .181 .011 .069
4. Memory for Sentences .187 .006 .051
5. Concepts About Print .191 .004 .059
6. RAN–Objects (time) .241 .050*** .236***
Time 3 variable: Spanish Passage Comprehension
1. Letter Name .083 .083*** .048
2. Sound Matching .175 .072*** .230***
3. Picture Vocabulary .202 .027** .130*
4. Memory for Sentences .214 .012 .103
5. Concepts About Print .216 .002 .028
6. RAN–Objects (time) .250 .034*** .205***
Time 3 variable: English Letter–Word Identification
1. Letter Name .169 .169*** .147*
2. Sound Matching .257 .088*** .194**
3. Picture Vocabulary .273 .016* .068
4. Memory for Sentences .283 .010 .053
5. Concepts About Print .329 .046*** .222***
6. RAN–Objects (time) .349 .060*** .259***
Time 3 variable: English Passage Comprehension
1. Letter Name .091 .091*** .106
2. Sound Matching .153 .062*** .168*
3. Picture Vocabulary .155 .002 .036
4. Memory for Sentences .181 .026** .145**
5. Concepts About Print .199 .018* .121*
6. RAN–Objects (time) .233 .034*** .218***
Time 3 variable: English Word Attack
1. Letter Name .093 .093*** .088
2. Sound Matching .150 .057*** .169*
3. Picture Vocabulary .154 .004 .003
4. Memory for Sentences .166 .012 .059
5. Concepts About Print .188 .022** .141*
6. RAN–Objects (time) .246 .058*** .272***
Note. RAN ⫽Rapid Automatized Naming.
*p⬍.05. ** p⬍.01. *** p⬍.001.
490 LINDSEY, MANIS, AND BAILEY
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awareness is a general and not a language-specific cognitive pro-
cess involved in early reading.
Regression analyses further explored implications of the first
hypothesis. Phonological awareness was found to account for
variability in later reading skills cross-linguistically, even when
prior letter knowledge was partialed out of the prediction equation.
This indicates that phonological awareness is critical to the growth
of reading skills, although the correlational nature of the data does
not allow us to conclude that its influence is a direct causal one.
What seems likely is that a general capacity for analyzing words at
the level of the phoneme contributes to the process of learning to
decode in alphabetic languages such as Spanish and English.
However, at the same time, there is evidence from previous studies
that learning to read itself promotes phonological awareness, so the
more appropriate theoretical model is one in which relations be-
tween phonological awareness and reading are reciprocal (Morais,
Cary, Alegria, & Bertelson, 1979; Perfetti, Beck, Bell, & Hughes,
1987). The fact that the relationship of Spanish phonological
awareness to English reading skill was generally larger for the
Time 2 to Time 3 prediction than for the Time 1 to Time 3
prediction is consistent with the reciprocal influence hypothesis, as
it suggests that phonological awareness may be a better predictor
of reading after a period of instruction has taken place. It is
important to point out that the procedures for measuring phono-
logical awareness did not allow us to determine which aspects of
phonological awareness transfer from Spanish to English.
The second hypothesis explored the extent of cross-linguistic
transfer for a battery of tasks consisting of many of the leading
predictors of early reading skills in the monolingual reading de-
velopment literature (Scanlon & Vellutino, 1996; Scarborough,
1998; Wagner & Torgesen, 1987). We found that most of these
variables correlated as well or better with later English reading
skills as they did with later Spanish reading skills. Correlations
were significant for oral-language measures (Memory for Sen-
tences and Picture Vocabulary), for rapid object naming, and for
print awareness. Regression analyses explored whether these vari-
ables accounted for unique variance in reading over and above that
explained by prior literacy skill and phonological awareness. Not
only did some of the variables account for significant amounts of
variance in reading achievement over the 1-year period, but they
Table 8
Discriminant Analyses: Prediction of Reading Ability Group From Time 1 to Time 3 and From
Time 2 to Time 3
Time 3 variable
Percentage correctly classified
2
(6, N⫽249) pPoor readers Good readers
T1 to T3 T2 to T3 T1 to T3 T2 to T3 T1 to T3 T2 to T3 T1 to T3 T2 to T3
SLW 68.2 67.7 60.1 75.7 21.5 34.3 ⬍.01 ⬍.001
SPC 68.2 67.6 60.1 75.7 21.5 34.3 ⬍.01 ⬍.001
ELW 76.1 68.6 67.4 78.3 62.8 71.3 ⬍.001 ⬍.001
EPC 76.6 66.2 67.4 74.6 44.9 50.2 ⬍.001 ⬍.001
EWA 76.2 68.0 65.0 71.9 28.0 41.8 ⬍.001 ⬍.001
Note. T⫽Time; S ⫽Spanish; E ⫽English; LW ⫽Letter–Word Identification; PC ⫽Passage Comprehen-
sion; WA ⫽Word Attack.
Table 9
Discriminant Analyses: Correlation of Predictors With the Discriminant Function
Time 3 variable CAP LN MS RAN–Objects SM PV
Time 1 to Time 3
SLW .24 .34 .26 .34 .11 .31
SPC .04 .43 .26 .06 .08 .54
ELW .47 .54 ⫺.06 .37 ⫺.04 .19
EPC .30 .63 ⫺.09 .32 ⫺.10 .35
EWA .26 .38 ⫺.13 .56 .27 .09
Time 2 to Time 3
SLW .27 .16 .18 .38 .46 .13
SPC .08 .31 .07 .32 .44 .30
ELW .47 .54 ⫺.06 .37 ⫺.04 .19
EPC .30 .63 ⫺.09 .32 ⫺.10 .35
EWA .26 .38 ⫺.13 .56 .27 .09
Note. CAP ⫽Concepts About Print; LN ⫽Letter Name; MS ⫽Memory for Sentences; RAN ⫽Rapid
Automatized Naming; SM ⫽Sound Matching; PV ⫽Picture Vocabulary; S ⫽Spanish; E ⫽English; LW ⫽
Letter–Word Identification; PC ⫽Passage Comprehension; WA ⫽Word Attack.
491
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did so cross-linguistically. These data indicate that cross-linguistic
transfer is not unique to phonological skills but occurs for mea-
sures of print awareness, letter knowledge, and rapid serial nam-
ing. This was particularly notable in the case of rapid serial
naming, which was significant for all tasks over both prediction
intervals. This is consistent with a large literature examining rapid
naming tasks as predictors of early reading (de Jong & van der
Leij, 2002; Scarborough, 1998; Wolf & Bowers, 1999). This
highlights the need to understand which aspects of reading are
subsumed by measures of rapid naming.
Picture Vocabulary was one of the best predictors of Spanish
Reading Comprehension (in the final regression equations) but did
not account for more than 1.5% of unique variance for any other
reading tasks in the hierarchical regression equations. The other
oral-language variable, Memory for Sentences, did not show this
pattern, and in general was a weaker predictor than Picture Vo-
cabulary. At Time 3, English Picture Vocabulary correlated be-
tween .39 and .40 with English reading variables and less than .20
with Spanish reading variables. A tentative hypothesis is that these
relationships reflect a language-specific relationship between vo-
cabulary knowledge and reading comprehension. However, cau-
tion needs to be exercised in interpreting differences in the sizes of
correlations. It would be of interest to further explore linkages of
a variety of oral-language skills to reading skills in a biliteracy
context to determine which variables show strong cross-language
transfer to reading and which do not. It is likely that the unique
predictive role of vocabulary becomes increasingly important in
later grades (e.g., Torgesen et al., 1997).
As already noted, the RAN measures were not better predictors
for Spanish than for English, contrary to some data on young
readers in highly regular languages (e.g., van den Bos, 1998;
Wimmer, 1993; Wolf et al., 1994). It should be noted that most of
the measures that showed the high correlations with RAN in these
languages were fluency measures, as the children rapidly reach a
level of near perfection in the accuracy of decoding. This trend is
apparent in the Spanish Letter–Word Identification data, as indi-
cated by a median national percentile of 99.9 for the sample.
Hence, it will be crucial to examine this hypothesis for fluency
measures as children participate in the continuing longitudinal
study.
The basis for cross-linguistic transfer of letter knowledge, print
awareness, RAN, and phonological awareness to later reading
skills is not clear. It is possible that these relationships are influ-
enced by factors common to the two languages, such as the ability
to create accurate phonological representations in long-term mem-
ory (Perfetti, 1985), the capacity for learning the names of symbols
(Wolf & Bowers, 1999), or motivation to explore printed materi-
als. Experiential factors may also be shared across languages. For
example, parents who encourage literacy activities in Spanish (thus
promoting letter knowledge and print awareness) may also encour-
age literacy activities in English, once instruction in that language
has begun at school. Another possibility is that there was direct
transfer of instructional activities in the classroom from one lan-
guage to another. Although an effort was made within the school
district to provide a common curriculum across classrooms, it is
possible that some teachers focused more than other teachers on
basic letter and print recognition skills in both Spanish and English
(or were more successful at teaching these skills in both languag-
es), leading children in their classrooms to score high on both
measures at two different times in the study.
The finding from the regression analyses that Concepts About
Print in Spanish accounted for unique variance in nearly every
English measure but none of the Spanish measures (in the final
regression equations) is intriguing. If this variable reflected the
child’s general experience with books and knowledge of print
conventions, it makes sense that it would predict reading skills in
both languages. Indeed, this is what the correlations in Tables 4
and 5 show. However, when variance due to letter knowledge and
phonological awareness was partialed out of regressions on the
reading measures, the contribution of Concepts About Print
dropped out for Spanish but remained significant for English. A
possible explanation for this is that exposure to print was more
important for English than for Spanish, because letter–sound rela-
tionships are less predictable in English. In Spanish, it is not as
critical that students see particular words, as their pronunciation
can be worked out using knowledge of Spanish letter–sound rela-
tionships and Spanish phonotactics. However, it is possible that
print experience would become more important for Spanish when
fluency becomes more of an issue (e.g., beyond first grade).
Overall predictive results (total variance explained and predic-
tion of reading ability status) were consistent with previous stud-
ies. Scarborough (1998) reported that across studies, poor readers
tested entirely in English were classified correctly 55% of the time,
and good readers, 78% of the time. Our figures for prediction from
Spanish to English ranged from 66% to 76% for poor readers and
from 60% to 78% for good readers, meaning that on the average,
our cross-linguistic battery predicted reading as well as or better
than monolingual English prediction studies. This underscores the
extent of cross-language transfer that was seen from Spanish to
English. The generally disappointing prediction accuracy in the
literature points to the need to consider other factors in the cur-
riculum and home environment.
Many of the same variables that correlated with reading out-
comes in the sample as a whole were also prominent in discrim-
inating between good and poor readers (such as letter knowledge,
print awareness, and rapid serial naming). One exception to this
was Sound Matching, which played a strong role in the regression
analyses for English but not in the discriminant analyses. How-
ever, Sound Matching became important for discrimination of
good and poor readers in Spanish when the classification was
made at Time 2. This jibes somewhat with Scarborough’s (1998)
observation that phonological awareness has tended to predict
good reading more accurately than it does poor reading. This may
mean that reading skills need to develop to a certain point before
phonological awareness becomes an important contributor.
The study had three main limitations. First, the stated goal of the
educational program was to facilitate transition of the children as
quickly as possible to all-English classrooms. At the end of first
grade, the children had not become proficient in oral English even
though most of them were reported informally by teachers to have
made the transition to reading instruction in English. The combi-
nation of limited command of English and a heavy emphasis on
learning to decode (in Spanish, and subsequently in English) may
have given more weight to phonological and letter knowledge
variables in the prediction equations, and less to oral-language
skill.
492 LINDSEY, MANIS, AND BAILEY
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Second, the very success of the program in teaching the children
to decode Spanish words and the high orthographic regularity of
Spanish, may have limited the predictive power of the cognitive
variables for Spanish reading skills because of a restriction of
range. Many of the children were virtually at ceiling on Spanish
Letter–Word Identification at Time 3, resulting in some restriction
of range on that variable. This was less the case for Spanish
Passage Comprehension. A more sensitive measure of Spanish-
word-identification skill would be word reading speed, a variable
that will be used in follow-ups of the present sample.
Third, the explanatory value of the cognitive measures obtained
in kindergarten was limited because we did not have data on
language and reading experiences in the home environment nor on
the amount of time spent on various reading activities in the
classroom. It is possible that variables such as Letter Knowledge or
Concepts About Print were proxies for home or classroom literacy
experiences.
To summarize, the present study replicated and extended the
findings of several previous studies focusing on cross-linguistic
prediction of reading skills in bilingual children. Phonological
awareness was found to have a high degree of transfer from
Spanish to English and to be predictive of word-identification
skills, findings that were consistent with previous studies. The
study broadened the range of variables for which cross-linguistic
transfer is observed, both at the level of predictor variables (such
as letter knowledge, rapid lexical access, print awareness, and
oral-language skill) as well as outcome variables (word identifi-
cation, word attack, and comprehension). The most important
finding was that variation in reading skills in English was strongly
related to variation in empirically well-supported predictors in
Spanish. This demonstrates that data on prediction of reading in
English can be used for the task of predicting reading among
English-language learners. A number of important issues remain,
including the effects of curriculum and home literacy experiences,
as well as the variables that predict the progress of English-
language learners in later grades when fluency and language
comprehension presumably become more important than decoding
skills.
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