Annotated Bibliography

Brandy Mathewson
EDCI 591.20 Spring

Gibson, T. A., Peña, E. D., Bedore, L. M., & Mccarter, K. S. (2020). A longitudinal investigation

of the semantic receptive-expressive gap in Spanish-English bilingual children.

International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 1–15. doi:

10.1080/13670050.2020.1721427

This article by Gibson, Peña, Bedore, and Mccarter follows kindergarten and first

grade bilingual students over a year of learning. They closely monitor the

receptive and expressive language in an attempt to analyze the gap in both

English and Spanish respectively, in addition to any trends seen comparatively.

Findings give insight into the expected gap in receptive and expressive

development, as well as suggestions for identifying possible language impairment

in younger students.

This would be a useful source to better understand the complexities of expected

language development in the primary years of school. The authors provide a

reliable case study that not only looks at bilingual language development, but

compares monolingual student’s expressive and receptive skills as well. This

source appears to eliminate any bias within the study.

Over all this source is helpful for me. I have been working with thirteen first

grade EL students this year. One student’s language development seems to differ
 greatly from his peers who are from the same country and have been in American

schools for the same time period. The authors state that, “The gap is larger for

bilingual children with language impairment.” (Page 5) It goes on to give

suggestions for SLPs to consider when evaluating ELLs. These suggestions and

findings have changed the way I will approach the SLPs in our building.

Olivares-Orellana, E. (2020). More than an English language learner: testimonios of immigrant

high school students. Bilingual Research Journal, 1–21. doi:

10.1080/15235882.2019.1711463

Olivares-Orellana, once an immigrant herself, now examines the views of four

newcomer high school students. She attempts to answer questions about whether

American schools are prepared to work with immigrant children. Through the

testimonios, we are given a look into their perspectives and experiences.

This source is different than the others here in that it is based on student’s first-

hand experiences and hardships they faced in their own country, how they were

treated on the way, and what they experienced once they entered school in the

United States. Olivares-Orellana says, “With this article, I don’t intend to give

students a voice, for they have one, rather I want to create opportunities to learn

from their perspectives and make these accessible and audible to a wider

audience.” (Page 3) By doing this we get an insight that could never have been

seen through statistics or a researcher lens. Using the student’s voice as the guide
 helps to eliminate the author’s bias and allows it to be as reliable as the student’s

recall of events, opinions, and feelings.

Being an EL teacher, this article helped me to realize even more that I don’t know

the back-story for most of my students, especially my newcomers. Understanding

first-hand experiences and learning from testimonios like these will only to serve

to help improve programs we have in place for EL students. It also reinforced

how important it is to know and understand what those programs are in order for

them to effectively help the students they are intended to help.

Wong, K. M., & Neuman, S. B. (2019). Learning vocabulary on screen: A content analysis of

pedagogical supports in educational media programs for dual-language learners.

Bilingual Research Journal, 42(1), 54–72. doi: 10.1080/15235882.2018.1561551

Wong and Neuman analyze 5 children’s programs in an effort to identify if they

help improve vocabulary development in preschool age dual-language learners

(DLLs). They ask three guiding questions in their study, “To what extent do these

programs focus on vocabulary development in two languages, when teaching

vocabulary, what pedagogical supports are used, and what is the quality of words

taught on the screen?” (Page 57) The findings concluded that overall there was

minimal time spent on vocabulary development, most vocabulary was simple

words presented mostly in English, and more frequent supports included

demonstrations, repetitions, and visuals.

I did find this to be a useful source. Whereas the other articles in this bibliography

are studies involving EL students, this one addresses and analyzes programs that

are marketed to young children to help them learn multiple languages. This study

appears to have eliminated any possible bias to present reliable information. The

goal of this source is to provide an understanding of the possibility that

vocabulary development is or is not improved by these programs.

Learning technology for preschool and primary age children seems to be a

debatable topic. This study was helpful to me in understanding that debate a little

better. Programs that say they help vocabulary development and promote

bilingualism may just be a marketing ploy. While the authors found that programs

may just be marketing they also say, “ Exposing preschool-aged children to

educational media supports was one of the most effective instructional tools

because it successfully combined explicit and implicit instruction and provided

multiple opportunities to learn words in isolated and meaningful contexts.” (Page

57) Based on this, I think if a program is being used to reinforce vocabulary

development, it needs to be vetted to make sure it has the appropriate resourced

needed.