Journal of School Psychology, Vol. 40, No. 1, pp.

85–111, 2002
Copyright © 2002 Society for the Study of School Psychology
Printed in the USA
0022-4405/02 $–see front matter

PII S0022-4405(01)00095-4

Phonological Awareness and Beginning Reading

in Spanish-Speaking ESL First Graders:
Research into Practice
Teresa Quiroga,1 Zenia Lemos-Britton,1
Elizabeth Mostafapour, Robert D. Abbott,
and Virginia W. Berninger
University of Washington

In the first study, 30 Spanish-speaking English-as-a-second language (ESL) first

graders whose families were Latino immigrants and who received all their school
instruction in English completed an assessment battery with both Spanish and En-
glish measures of phonological awareness, Verbal IQ (VIQ), oral language profi-
ciency, and single-word reading (real words and pseudowords); they also named
English alphabet letters. Phonological awareness in Spanish predicted (a) phono-
logical awareness in English and (b) English word reading; thus, phonological
awareness may transfer across first and second languages and across oral and writ-
ten language. English VIQ and oral language proficiency predicted both English
and Spanish word reading, but Spanish VIQ and oral language proficiency did not
predict English word reading. In the second study, the 4 males and the 4 females
with the lowest reading achievement participated in an instructional design experi-
ment in which empirically supported instructional components for teaching begin-
ning reading to monlingual English speakers were included. These components
were phonological awareness training (in both Spanish and English), explicit in-
struction in alphabetic principle (in English), and repeated reading of engaging
English text with comprehension monitoring (in English). Both individual stu-
dents and the group as a whole increased in real-word reading and pseudoword
reading beyond the level expected on the basis of their Spanish or English VIQ or
oral proficiency. Implications of this research for school psychology practice are
discussed, especially the importance of early reading intervention and progress
monitoring for Spanish-speaking ESL first graders. © 2002 Society for the Study of
School Psychology. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd

Keywords: Phonological awareness, Beginning reading, Spanish-speaking, English-

as-a-second-language (ESL).

Received June 19, 2001; accepted October 24, 2001.

Address correspondence and reprint requests to Virginia Berninger, Department of Edu-
cational Psychology, 322 Miller, Box 353600, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195-
3600. Phone: (206) 616-6372; E-mail: vwb@u.washington.edu
1
The first two authors, bilingual school psychologists and native speakers of both Spanish
and English, contributed equally to this research, which was conducted while they were in-
terns in school psychology at the University of Washington; thus, order of authorship is arbi-
trary. They are continuing their work with Spanish-speaking ESL students in schools in
Arizona and California, respectively.

85
86 Journal of School Psychology

Linguistic diversity is widespread throughout the United States (Weber,

1991), and schools are increasingly facing the challenges of educating lin-
guistically diverse students whose first language is not English (e.g., Fitzger-
ald, 1995; Garcia, 2000; Hakuta & Garcia, 1989; Weber, 1991). Of the vari-
ous English-as-a-second language (ESL) language minority groups in the
United States, the largest is Spanish speaking (Garcia, 2000; Weber, 1991).
Language and learning differences are not the only challenges these stu-
dents face, especially when they are living in low-income families that have
recently immigrated and are dealing with poverty and acculturation issues.
School psychologists may play an important role in optimizing the educa-
tional success of these students, especially in light of (a) the expanded role
of school psychologists that goes beyond merely qualifying students for
special education, and (b) educational practices in some states and schools
that provide only English instruction for bilingual children.
One of the questions school psychologists are frequently asked about
Spanish-speaking ESL students is whether their struggles in reading are
due to the second language or to a learning disability. The question is best
addressed in the context of a model of bilingualism that differentiates be-
tween additive and subtractive bilingualism (Lambert, 1981).
In additive bilingualsim, the individual acquires a second language while
continuing to develop the first language. Students with additive bilingual-
ism tend to score at or above grade level on both Spanish and English
reading measures. For example, Hakuta and Diaz (reported in Cummins,
1991) found that correlations between English and Spanish academic skills
increased from 0 to .68 from kindergarten to third grade; growth in both
languages may be reciprocally facilitating in additive fashion rather than
growth in one language being blocked by the skill level in the other. Addi-
tive bilingualism is associated with cognitive, linguistic, and psychosocial
advantages (Diaz, 1983; Cummins, 1981; Troike, 1978). Students who ex-
hibit this advantage accruing from bilingualism tend to come from homes
where the parents are highly educated and speak both Spanish and En-
glish fluently and read to their children in both Spanish and English.
These students are able to switch between Spanish and English readily and
have well-developed vocabularies in each language. If the multidisciplinary
team including the school psychologist determines that a child is strug-
gling with reading despite a home language and literacy environment that
provides the kinds of supports that typically result in additive bilingualism,
then the child should be assessed formally for a possible language or learn-
ing disability.
In subtractive bilingualism, the second language interferes with mainte-
nance and further development of the first language, and neither oral pro-
ficiency nor reading in the second language develops easily. Dual immer-
sion programs may offset subtractive bilingualism in children without
language or learning disabilities. However, dual immersion programs are
 Quiroga et al. 87

not available to many bilingual children. Furthermore, any of the follow-

ing four home literacy factors may be contributing to the struggle of the
ESL beginning reader rather than language or learning disabilities. First,
the parents may have had little formal education. They may have immi-
grated from Latin America where close to 50% of the population does not
complete fourth grade (Oakland & Ramos-Canal, 1985). Second, because
they did not attend school in the United States, they may not know how to
help their child succeed in a school system with which they are unfamiliar,
even though they very much want to work with the schools to help their
child. Third, these parents may have little time to read to their children
because they are working long hours to provide economically for their
families. Fourth, the parents may have little time to spend with their chil-
dren because they are struggling themselves to adjust to a new culture and
develop a social support system apart from the extended families they left
behind.
There is empirical support for the second, third, and fourth factors. In a
program designed to improve literacy levels of children from low income
Latino homes, Kermani and James (1997) found that 60% of the partici-
pating families reported that they looked at or read to their children for
only 15 min or less once a week, even after attending a tutor training pro-
gram that emphasized the importance of this activity. The parents were
found to be unfamiliar with the activity of reading to children and infre-
quently used verbal praise or positive affect while reading. In videotapes of
the reading sessions, the parents were generally found to have an inexpres-
sive reading style, and were frequently unresponsive to initiations by the
child. Neither the children nor the parents appeared to enjoy the story-
book interaction and there was limited physical or eye contact. In follow-
up questionnaires, the parents reported that they felt inadequate about
their own reading skills and were unsure of what schools required of their
children whose early educational experiences were very unlike their own
school experience.
The implication of subtractive bilingualism for school psychological as-
sessment of Spanish-speaking ESL students is that the language and liter-
acy learning environment at home should first be assessed. If one or more
of the four factors just discussed may be contributing to the struggle with
beginning reading, then the first step in the assessment process should be
to provide supplemental instructional intervention and assess the child’s
response to that intervention. Vellutino, Scanlon, and Tanzman (1998)
recommended a similar approach for monolingual English-speaking stu-
dents. Although many Spanish-speaking ESL students will begin to develop
literacy skills when provided adequate language stimulation (see Fitzgerald
& Noblit, 1999), some may still not do so even with such supplemental in-
structional intervention. Those children should indeed be given formal as-
sessment and, if warranted, special education services.
88 Journal of School Psychology

FIRST STUDY: BEST PREDICTORS OF BEGINNING READING IN

SPANISH-SPEAKING ESL STUDENTS
Given that a child’s first language may influence the child’s second oral
and written language in an additive or subtractive fashion, it is important
for school psychologists to have empirical evidence for which assessment
measures are the best predictors of oral and written second language de-
velopment in Spanish-speaking ESL students. Two of the best predictors of
beginning reading in monolingual English-speaking beginning readers are
letter knowledge and phonological awareness (National Institute of Child
Health and Human Development, 2000). Considerable research has shown
that phonological awareness contributes to learning to read not only in English
but also in Chinese, Swedish, Danish, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Turkish, and
Serbo-Croatian (see Adams, 1990; Ciscero & Royer, 1995; Durgunoglu,
Nagy, & Hancin-Bhatt, 1993; Liberman, Shankweiler, Fisher, & Carter,
1974; Roberts & Corbett, 1997; Wagner & Torgesen, 1987). Less research has
addressed this issue for bilingual students and, specifically, in relationship to
whether phonological awareness in the first language predicts phonological
awareness and reading acquisition in the second language. Educational
linguists and educational psychologists interpret findings of significant re-
lationships across language in the same or related skills as evidence of
cross-linguistic transfer. Two prior empirical studies investigated such cross-
linguistic transfer in Spanish-speaking ESL beginning readers whose fami-
lies were Latino immigrants. Our first study was designed to replicate and
extend these studies.
In the initial study, Durgunoǧlu and colleagues (1993) administered mea-
sures of Spanish phonological awareness, Spanish and English oral profi-
ciency, letter naming, and Spanish and English word recognition to 27
Spanish-speaking ESL first graders. They addressed two research questions:
(a) whether phonological awareness in a child’s first language (Spanish) is
related to their word recognition in a second language (English), thus
providing evidence of cross-language transfer of phonological awareness,
and (b) whether oral language proficiency in the second language affects
learning to read in the second language. Their sample consisted of Latino
children in mostly low-income schools in two school districts. These chil-
dren were in transitional bilingual education programs because of their
limited oral language proficiency and received most of their instruction in
Spanish. English was taught as a second language and the instructional
program focused more on oral language proficiency than reading. Of the
27 children, only 4 came from highly literate families. All tests were given
by examiners fluent in Spanish and English. Results showed that Spanish
phonological awareness predicted learning to read English words and,
thus, provided evidence for cross-language transfer of phonological aware-
ness. Their results also showed that neither Spanish nor English oral lan-
 Quiroga et al. 89

guage proficiency predicted learning to read English words. The authors

interpreted this result to support a pedagogical approach in which reading
instruction begins before children achieve a prerequisite level of oral lan-
guage proficiency. A growing body of research appears to support this con-
clusion, although there is still some debate about the issue (e.g., Auguste &
Hakuta, 1998; Fitzgerald, 1995; Garcia, 2000).
In the next study, Ciscero and Royer (1995) studied the developmental
order of specific phonological awareness skills and their transfer across
languages in 40 Spanish- and English- speaking first graders. Their Spanish
ESL sample was mostly from Puerto Rico and received instruction both in
Spanish and in English as a second language. Their battery of phonologi-
cal tasks in two languages was administered in December and again in May
of first grade. Although their first study supported the hypothesized devel-
opmental progression from rhyme to onset phonemes to ending pho-
nemes, their second study found that onset and ending phonemes did not
differ in difficulty. They also examined whether phonological awareness in
the first language at Time 1 predicted phonological awareness in the sec-
ond language at Time 2. They found evidence for cross-language transfer
of phonological awareness, in that Time 1 phonological awareness in both
the first and second language predicted Time 2 phonological awareness in
both the first and second language.
Traditionally, bilingual assessment has focused on oral language devel-
opment rather than literacy acquisition (Garcia, 2000), and has included
measures of oral proficiency but not phonological awareness. We included
measures of both oral proficiency and phonological awareness in our bat-
tery of predictor and outcome measures for the following reasons. First, ev-
idence has accumulated over the course of 2 decades that even when ESL
learners have limited control of oral English, they can learn to read and
write English (Hudelson, 1984). For example, in an early finding, the Cali-
fornia State Department of Education (1985) reported higher correlations
between English and Spanish reading skills (range .60 to .74) than be-
tween English reading and oral language skills (range .36 to .59) in His-
panic students. Gonzalez (1986) reported similar findings for Hispanic im-
migrant students. Additional evidence is needed to resolve this issue,
especially as it relates to beginning reading in Spanish-speaking ESL chil-
dren. We evaluated predictor measures of phonological awareness because
of the evidence already reviewed that it is an important predictor of mono-
lingual beginning reading.

SECOND STUDY: EARLY INTERVENTION AS A DIAGNOSTIC TOOL

School psychologists who are knowledgeable about empirically supported
best practices in early reading instruction for monolingual English-speak-
ing children may be the most able to help the Spanish-speaking ESL begin-
90 Journal of School Psychology

ning readers by translating assessment results into effective intervention. A

growing body of research provides empirical support for the effectiveness
of early intervention in preventing reading disabilities (e.g., Berninger et
al., 2000; Foorman, Francis, Fletcher, Schatschneider, & Mehta, 1998;
Torgesen et al., 1999; and Vellutino et al., 1996). The recent National
Reading Panel report, which was mandated by the U.S. Congress, provides
a comprehensive review of research evidence for the necessary instruc-
tional components in teaching beginning reading: phonological aware-
ness, phonics (alphabetic principle), oral reading fluency, and compre-
hension (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development,
2000). These findings are based on research with English-speaking mono-
lingual learners, but school psychologists may draw upon them in plan-
ning, conducting, and evaluating early interventions with Spanish-speaking
ESL students. Such early intervention has been shown to be effective for
preventing reading disability in other groups of ESL students. For exam-
ple, Roberts and Corbett (1997) provided training in phonological aware-
ness and alphabetic principle for Hmong! ESL kindergartners and found
that their reading improved.
In our second study, we used an instructional design experiment (Brown,
1992) to evaluate whether Spanish-speaking ESL first graders would improve
in word reading when given supplemental early intervention containing
empirically supported instructional components (phonological awareness,
alphabetic principle, oral reading fluency, and comprehension). In contrast
to controlled research that evaluates which component is most effective,
design experiments evaluate whether including a specific set of components
achieves the desired outcome. Design experiments are ideally suited for
school psychologists to evaluate implementation of research-supported in-
structional approaches in their own school settings. Moreover, short-term
instructional design experiments can be an important part of the diagnostic
process as clinicians evaluate a student’s response to intervention (Berninger &
Abbott, 1994; Vellutino et al., 1998).

RESEARCH QUESTIONS
Four research questions are addressed in the research reported in this arti-
cle. First, is phonological awareness important in the beginning stages of
learning to read English when the student’s first language is Spanish? Sec-
ond, can the prior findings of cross-language transfer from phonological
awareness in the first language to reading (Durgunoglu et al., 1993) or
phonological awareness in the second language (Ciscero & Royer, 1995)
be replicated in another sample of Spanish-speaking ESL students? If so,
what are the instructional applications of these findings? Third, in the case
of children whose first language is Spanish and second language is English,
do language skills other than phonological awareness in Spanish or En-
 Quiroga et al. 91

glish influence learning to read in English? Specifically, is oral language

proficiency such as vocabulary and syntax in oral expression and listening
in either Spanish or English critical in learning to read English? Fourth,
based on knowledge of the necessary instructional components for English
speakers learning to read English (e.g., the findings of the recent National
Reading Panel report mandated by the U.S. Congress; National Institute of
Child Health and Human Development, 2000), might an early interven-
tion based on all these necessary instructional components help Spanish-
speaking ESL students learn to read in English?

STUDY 1
Participants
Although there is an influx of immigrants to the metropolitan region
where the study took place, no individual school had a critical mass of any
one language minority; therefore, each of the schools working with our
center had only a few Spanish-speaking ESL first graders. Thus, it was nec-
essary to draw children from different schools and classrooms. First-grade
teachers in 10 schools and 15 classrooms in three school districts (urban,
suburban, and semirural) that were participating in other studies in the re-
search center were asked to call all parents of Spanish-speaking ESL stu-
dents to tell them about the possibility of participating in a research study.
As the schools were not able to provide statistics on the total number of
Spanish-speaking ESL children in first grade in their districts, we relied on
teacher judgment for extending the invitation to participate. Parental in-
formed consent was obtained in Spanish from parents of 30 children (14 fe-
males, 16 males) who granted permission for their children to participate.
These parents had all immigrated to the United States in the last decade.
The first and second authors determined through parental interview that
three of the families met criteria discussed in the introduction for bilingual
additive (supportive) and 27 met the criteria for bilingual subtractive.
As in the Durgunoǧlu et al. (1993) and Ciscero and Royer (1995) stud-
ies, the first graders in this study were Latino and their families were immi-
grants, but in contrast to those prior studies, the children were receiving a
very different instructional program at school. Instead of receiving some
instruction or most of their instruction in Spanish, the children were re-
ceiving no instruction in Spanish. Their regular instructional program was
only in English. Their pull-out ESL services, for the purpose of teaching
them to speak English, were provided in small groups by teachers who did
not speak Spanish. Groups could include children whose first language was
any of the other 88 languages spoken in the area, depending on demo-
graphics of a particular school. Thus, the first study evaluates whether the
cross-language transfer observed in two prior studies replicates when the
92 Journal of School Psychology

instructional program is exclusively in English and never in Spanish. This

study also evaluates whether Durgunoǧlu et al.’s (1993) finding that oral
language proficiency and literacy in the second language are unrelated
replicates when the instructional program is exclusively in English.
None of the children had repeated kindergarten or first grade, but 4
had delayed entry and were 1 to 2 years older than other children in the
grade. All children received instruction in English in the regular reading
program, which tended to be balanced. Although there is a state mandate
to teach phonics in first grade, the nature of the phonics instruction varied
from school to school, and even across classrooms within schools. Most of
the regular classrooms and ESL language-enrichment programs of the stu-
dents in this study used literature-based reading materials.

Assessment Battery
As in the Ciscero and Royer (1995) study, measures of phonological aware-
ness in both English and Spanish were included. As in the Durgunoǧlu et al.
(1993) study, measures of oral language proficiency in Spanish and En-
glish, letter knowledge, and real-word and pseudoword reading were in-
cluded. However, in contrast to Durgunoǧlu et al. (1993), who used exper-
imenter-designed measures of real-word and pseudoword reading, we used
only psychometric measures of real-word and pseudoword reading with na-
tional norms. For Spanish phonological awareness, the same three mea-
sures that Durgunoǧlu et al. (1993) used and two other measures that the
present article’s second and third authors (both fluent speakers of Span-
ish) created were used. Those two measures, created for purposes of this
study, were parallel in task to the measures of English phonological pro-
cessing that were used. The same stimulus words were not used because
they would not be phonologically equivalent across languages.

Durgunoǧ lu et al.’s (1993) three-task Spanish phonological awareness

composite. For the Blending Task [see p. 456 of Durgunoǧlu et al. (1993)
for the 26 items], the examiner gave the child two word parts spoken at
half-second intervals and asked the child to blend them to make a com-
plete word. There were six 2-phoneme words, given as phonemes; six 3- or
4-phoneme words given as two syllables; six 3-phoneme words given as on-
set-rime units; and eight 3- or 4-phoneme words given as phonemes. Scores
range from 0 to 26, with 1 point for each correct response. For the Segment-
ing Task [see p. 456 of Durgunoǧlu et al. (1993) for the 20 items], the ex-
aminer asked the child to divide a pronounced word into small parts (pho-
nemes, syllables, or onset-rime units). Items included eight 2-phoneme
words, four 2-syllable words, and eight 3-phoneme words. Scores range
from 0 to 20, with 1 point for each correct response (phonemes for the
first and last set, and syllables for the second set). However, following pro-
cedures in Durgunoglu et al. (1993), if on the third set of items, a child
 Quiroga et al. 93

segmented by onset-rime rather than separate phonemes, a half point was

given for onset-rime division. Full credit was given for a full rather than re-
duced vowel (e.g., no-o-s for nos). For the Matching Task [see p. 465 of Dur-
gunoglu et al. (1993) for the 20 items], the examiner pronounced a target
word followed by three alternatives that began with the same sound or
sounds as the target word. Items included six target words matched on ini-
tial phoneme in a broken syllable, eight target words matched on initial
two phonemes in an intact syllable, and six target words matched on initial two
sounds in a broken syllable. Scores on this test range from 0 to 20, with 1
point for each correct response. No partial credit was given. The total pos-
sible score on this instrument based on both syllable and phoneme aware-
ness and three different tasks is 66.

The Spanish Modified Rosner for phonological awareness (Appendix A).

This instrument is a Spanish version of the English Modified Rosner
(Berninger, Thalberg, DeBruyn, & Smith, 1987). Both versions have paral-
lel tasks (10 syllable deletion items, 10 single phoneme deletion items, and
10 phoneme-in-a-blend items), but the Spanish version (see Appendix A)
is not a direct translation of the words in the English Modified Rosner be-
cause the words would not be phonologically equivalent across languages.
The Spanish version has high-frequency words that are familiar to primary-
grade speakers of Spanish and that lend themselves to syllable or phoneme
deletion. Scores for each of the three tasks range from 0 to 10, with 1 point
for each correct response.

The English Modified Rosner for phonological awareness (Berninger et al.,

1987). In contrast to the original Rosner, the items in the modified ver-
sion are organized in blocks according to the developmental order in
which they are usually mastered: syllable deletion at the kindergarten level,
single phoneme deletion at the first-grade level, and phoneme-in-a-blend
deletion at the second-grade level (Liberman et al., 1974). For the last
block, only half of the items are phonemes in blends (two sequential pho-
nemes), which are difficult for beginning readers; the other half are pho-
nemes in digraphs (single phonemes corresponding to a two-letter spelling
unit), which are easier and, thus, children can end the test without feeling
frustrated if the deletions in a blend are too difficult. Scores range from 0
to 30 for the whole test, with 1 point for each correct response (10 for the
syllable items and 20 for the phoneme items).

Letter knowledge or orthographic awareness. The 26 letters of the alpha-

bet were presented in random order, first in upper case, which is easier for
young children, and then in lower case. The child’s task was to name each
letter. The task was scored for accuracy, with 1 point for each correct letter.
94 Journal of School Psychology

Oral language proficiency. Both the Spanish and English versions of the
Pre-LAS (Duncan & DeAvila, 1986) were given and scored per instructions
in the test manual. Each has identical formats (subtests) and administra-
tive procedures, but neither test is a direct translation of the other. A total
standard score based on four subscales was used in the data analyses be-
cause the subscales were highly intercorrelated (range .99 to 1.00) within
both the Spanish and English versions. These subscales included measures
of receptive language (a “Simon Says”-type task), expressive vocabulary
(naming common objects in a drawing), listening comprehension (select-
ing a picture that illustrates what the examiner has said), and language
comprehension and production (repeating verbatim phrases with differ-
ent syntactic structures, completing sentences, and retelling stories read by
the examiner).
Verbal intelligence. The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC)-
III Verbal Scale (Wechsler, 1991) was given to obtain a Verbal IQ (VIQ)
in English. The Comprehension-Knowledge cluster of the Woodcock-
Muñoz Pruebas de Habilidad Cognitiva-Revisada (Woodcock & Muñoz-
Sandoval, 1996a) was given to obtain a comparable VIQ in Spanish. Both
IQ measures were administered and scored according to instructions in
the test manuals. Standard scores for age were used, with a mean of 100
and standard deviation of 15.
Real-word and pseudoword reading. The Word Identification and Word
Attack subtests of the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test-Revised (WRMT-R;
Woodcock, 1987) were given to assess real-word and pseudoword reading,
respectively, in English. The comparable subtests on the Pruebas de Aprove-
chamiento-Revisada (Woodcock & Muñoz-Sandoval, 1996b) were given to
assess the same word reading skills in Spanish. All reading measures were
administered and scored according to instructions in the test manuals.
Standard scores for age were used, with a mean of 100 and standard devia-
tion of 15.

Procedures
All tests were administered by the first two authors who are native speakers
of Spanish and English or by the third author who is a bilingual specialist
fluent in Spanish. The battery took about 2 hr to administer and, depend-
ing on when schools allowed access to children, was given in either two 1-hr
sessions on different days or all on the same day with multiple frequent
breaks. Whenever children seemed tired or to not be giving an optimal
performance, testing was discontinued and resumed when they were rested
and invested in the tasks. The battery was given in a standard order, with
Spanish measures first and English measures second, because there were
too many measures to completely counterbalance order effects with the
 Quiroga et al. 95

number of participating children. Within a language, reading measures

were given first, followed by phonological awareness measures, followed by
oral proficiency measures, followed by IQ measures.
Results
Characteristics of the sample. Table 1 summarizes the central tendency
and variability for each measure in the assessment battery. None showed a
significant gender difference.
The English and Spanish VIQs did not differ significantly, despite a com-
mon assumption that ESL children will test higher in their first language
on measures of intellectual ability. The children did differ significantly
across the languages in their Pre-LAS oral proficiency scores, which were,
as expected, significantly lower in English than in Spanish, t(28)  2.82,
p  .009; see Table 1 for the means. (Pre-LAS scores in both languages
were only available for 29 of the children). Both the IQ and Pre-LAS scores
are standard scores for age, on a scale with a mean of 100 and a standard
deviation of 15. Thus, it is noteworthy that these children were, on average,
considerably below age peers in both verbal intelligence and oral language
proficiency in both languages.
The children read significantly better in English, the language of their
reading instruction, than in Spanish for Word Identification (real words),
t(29)  3.63, p  .001, and for Word Attack (pseudowords), t(29)  6.57, p 
.001. Within each language there was no significant difference in Word
Identification or Word Attack standard scores for age.
Criteria for evaluating multiple comparisons. Because results were ana-
lyzed in reference to whether prior findings replicated, the following ap-
proach was adopted to ensure reliability of findings. If a correlation was

Table 1
Descriptive Statistics for First Graders (N  30) Whose First Language
Is Spanish and Whose Parents Are Immigrants

Measures M SD

Durgunoglu et al. (1993) Spanish total 30.1 18.4

Rosner Spanish total 7.9 7.8
Rosner English total 10.0 8.6
Spanish IQ 73.3 18.4
English IQ 74.8 16.4
Lower case letters 19.8 7.5
Pre-LAS Spanish 85.1 15.4
Pre-LAS English 78.1 16.3
Word Indentification Spanish 68.6 23.3
Word Identification English 81.6 20.5
Word Attack Spanish 62.1 19.8
Word Attack English 83.3 17.9
96 Journal of School Psychology

Table 2
Correlations of Phonological Measures, Letter Knowledge, Oral Language Proficiency, and
Verbal Reasoning With Beginning Word Reading of Spanish-Speaking ESL Students

Spanish WIDa Spanish WAa English WIDb English WAb

Durgunoǧ lu et al. (1993) totalc .56*** .44* .54** .55**

Spanish Rosner totald .57*** .42* .45* .47**
English Rosner totale .61*** .54** .53** .58***
Lower case letters .33 .29 .52** .45*
Spanish Pre-LASf .21 .31 .33 .35
English Pre-LASf .51** .47* .49* .44*
Spanish IQg .41* .43* .32 .36
English IQh .55** .47* .64*** .59***

a
Woodcock and Muñoz-Sandoval (1996b).
b
Woodcock (1987).
c
Durgunoǧlu et al. (1993).
d
Appendix A.
e
Berninger et al. (1987).
f
Duncan and DeAvila (1986).
g
Woodcock and Muñoz-Sandoval (1996a).
h
Wechsler (1991).
WID  Word Identification, WA  Word Attack, ESL  English-as-a-second language.
* p  .05, **p  .01, ***p  .000.

significant between one of the eight measures evaluated (see Table 2) and
both criterion measures of word reading (real words and pseudowords)
within a language, then the finding was considered to be reliable. By this
criterion, all correlations between predictor and criterion measures in Ta-
ble 2 were reliable within a language.
Spanish phonological awareness. As shown in Table 2, the Durgunoglu
et al. (1993) Spanish phonological awareness composite based on three
tasks was significantly correlated with real-word and pseudoword reading
in both Spanish and English. Magnitudes of the correlations were similar
across Spanish and English word reading. Likewise, the total score on the
Spanish Rosner (Appendix A) was significantly correlated with word read-
ing in Spanish and English.
English phonological awareness. As shown in Table 2, the total score on
the English measure of phonological awareness correlated significantly
with both Spanish and English word reading. Again, the magnitude of the
correlations was about the same across word reading in the two languages.
Correlation between Spanish and English phonological awareness. The
Spanish phonological awareness measure based on blending, matching, and
segmenting was significantly correlated with the English phonological mea-
sure based on syllable and phoneme segmentation, r(27)  .632, p  .001.
Both the Spanish and English versions of the Modified Rosner tasks were sig-
 Quiroga et al. 97

nificantly correlated, r(28)  .6586, p  .001. (Differences in degrees of

freedom are due to missing data). In contrast, the correlation between
Spanish and English VIQs (r  .22, p  .25) was not statistically significant.

English orthographic awareness. Because knowledge of upper and lower

case letters was nearly perfectly correlated, results are reported in Table 2
only for lower case letter recognition. This letter knowledge correlated sig-
nificantly with word reading in English but not in Spanish, possibly be-
cause these children are exposed more to printed English at school than
printed Spanish at home.

Oral language proficiency. The English Pre-LAS was significantly corre-

lated with both English and Spanish word reading, but the Spanish Pre-
LAS was not significantly correlated with word reading in either language.
Oral language proficiency in English accounted for 19–24% of the vari-
ance in learning to read English words.

VIQ. Only VIQ was given because it has been shown to be a more valid
predictor of reading achievement than Performance IQ or Full Scale IQ
(Vellutino, Scanlon, & Lyon, 2000). As shown in Table 2, the Spanish IQ
was significantly correlated with word reading in Spanish but not in En-
glish. The English IQ was significantly correlated with word reading in
both Spanish and English.

Unique predictors. Hierarchical multiple regression was applied to four

models to evaluate which of the measures contributed uniquely when the
measures were entered in a specific order based on theoretical consider-
ations. In the first model, the English phonological awareness measure was
entered in the first step. In the second model, the Spanish phonological
awareness was added in the second step. In the third model, the lower case
letter-knowledge measure was added in the third step. In the fourth model,
the oral language proficiency measures were added in the fourth step. The
results displayed in Table 3 show the correlation between the predictor and
outcome variable after the preceding variable(s) in the model are accounted
for and, thus, indicate whether the predictor is accounting for additional
unique variance beyond the previous step(s). The R2 value in Table 3 is the
total amount of variance accounted for by the hierarchical regression for
each model. As shown in Table 3, only the English phonological awareness
measure contributed uniquely to reading pseudowords, and only the En-
glish phonological awareness measure and letter knowledge contributed
uniquely to reading real words. This finding for Spanish-speaking ESL chil-
dren is comparable to the conclusions reached by the National Reading
Panel (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000)
for English-speaking non-ESL beginning readers.
98 Journal of School Psychology

Table 3
Hierarchical Multiple Regression of Best Predictors of WRMT-R Word Identification
and Word Attack for Spanish-Speaking ESL Beginning Readers

Predictor Criterion Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4

English WAa
English phonological awarenessb .59*** .66* .62* .68*
Spanish phonological awarenessc .09d .21d .22d
Letter knowledge .27 .27
English Pre-LASd .16d
Spanish Pre-LASd .14d
R2 .589 .591 .630 .640
English WIa
English phonological awarenessb .55** .62* .55* .52*
Spanish phonological awarenessc .09d .29d .28d
Letter knowledge .42* .40*
English Pre-LASe .05
Spanish Pre-LASe .03
R2 .547 .549 .646 .648

a
Woodcock (1987).
b
Berninger et al. (1987).
c
Durgunoǧlu et al. (1993).
d
Sign reflects suppressor effect due to correlation with other predictors and pattern of correlation with
criterion.
e
Duncan and DeAvila (1986).
WRMT-R  Woodcock Reading Mastery Test-Revised, WA  Word Attack, WI  Word Identification,
ESL  English-as-a-second language.
*** p  .001, ** p  .01, * p  .05.

Discussion
The answer to the first research question (see Research Questions) is that
phonological awareness is related to learning to read English when one’s
first language is Spanish and reading instruction is in English. Both Span-
ish and English phonological awareness predicted English word reading.
This finding is of interest because (a) Spanish has a more transparent pho-
nology (especially at the syllable level) than spoken English, and (b) Span-
ish has more regular spelling-phoneme correspondences than does En-
glish for decoding.
The answer to the second research question is that the findings of both
Durgunoǧlu et al. (1993) and Ciscero and Royer (1995) replicated and
generalized to a population that received its reading instruction in English
rather than Spanish. These findings were that phonological awareness in
Spanish, the first language, predicted reading in English, the second lan-
guage (Durgunoǧlu et al., 1993), and that phonological awareness corre-
lated across the first and second language (Ciscero & Royer, 1995). These
findings replicated even though their children read better in Spanish, the
language of their instruction, than in English; our children read better in
 Quiroga et al. 99

English, the language of their instruction, than in Spanish (see Table 1).
An educational application of these findings is that if reading instruction is
only in English, it might be supplemented with phonological awareness
training in both English and Spanish. Possibly, the ESL teacher or other
Spanish-speaking professional could provide the Spanish phonological
awareness training. As second-language learners move from contextualized
language proficiency to decontextualized language proficiency (Cummins,
1984, 1991), one of the decontextualized skills they need to acquire is pho-
nological awareness. Coupling phonological awareness in the second lan-
guage with phonological awareness in the first language may be beneficial.
At the same time, Spanish phonological awareness did not contribute
uniquely in additive fashion to pseudoword or real-word reading. School
psychologists who do not speak Spanish and can only give phonological
awareness measures in English may still obtain valuable assessment infor-
mation for planning and evaluating early intervention for Spanish-speak-
ing ESL students; phonological awareness training in English only is better
than no phonological awareness training for Spanish-speaking ESL stu-
dents.
Regarding the third research question, the second major finding of Dur-
gunoǧlu et al. (1993)—that oral language proficiency in the second lan-
guage did not predict reading achievement in the second language—was
not confirmed. Oral language proficiency in the second language pre-
dicted reading achievement in the second language probably because
reading instruction was in the second language and ability to understand
oral instructional language influences reading development. Thus, the dif-
ference in findings across studies is attributable to the difference in the
language of instruction. When Spanish-speaking ESL children receive
reading instruction in English, their English oral language proficiency in
vocabulary, syntax, and discourse skills will affect how they benefit from
that instruction. However, as Durgunoǧlu et al. (1993) argued, reading in-
struction should not be withheld until children reach a certain level of oral
language proficiency. Our findings based on correlations do not support
that educational recommendation. Children will probably benefit from
concurrent instruction in both oral and written English so that their ability
to process oral instructional language develops along with their ability to
read English.
Also pertinent to the third research question are the findings that al-
though phonological awareness was correlated across the first and second
language, VIQ was not. Thus, beginning readers may draw on phonologi-
cal ability that transcends specific languages but their ability to use lan-
guage to reason may be language specific.
Future research might explore whether the findings for all three re-
search questions hold for schools having a critical mass of Spanish-speak-
ing children whose families have lived in the United States for more than
100 Journal of School Psychology

one generation. Future research should also investigate whether these

findings hold for other ESL language groups as well.

STUDY 2
Participants
The 4 lowest achieving males and 4 lowest achieving females participated
in a one-to-one tutorial. Their mean word reading achievement prior to the
tutorial was nearly two standard deviations below the mean in real-word
and pseudoword reading; see Table 4. This study used an instructional de-
sign experiment (Brown, 1992) that provided empirically supported in-
structional components to achieve the desired outcome of improved word
reading (see the introduction).
Procedures
Each child received twelve 30-min lessons that were taught by either the
second or third author (who were fluent in Spanish and English) in a one-
on-one session. The tutorials occurred twice a week over a 6-week period
and were always structured in the same way for each child: Children re-
ceived phonological awareness training in both Spanish and English, ex-
plicit instruction in alphabetic principle in which the correspondences be-
tween one- and two-letter spelling units and phonemes were modeled out
of word context and in word context (Berninger, Stage, Smith, & Hilde-
brand, 2001), practice in reading and rereading text, and comprehension
monitoring. That is, children received training in phonological awareness
in both their first and second language, and reading instruction was aimed

Table 4
Monitoring Achievement Before and After Tutorial Intervention

English WIa English WAa

Pretest Posttest Pretest Posttest

1 96 99 88 104
2 86 98 78 94
3 72 81 76 86
4 52 78 68 58
5 54 62 70 78
6 78 82 76 77
7 72 82 64 63
8 72 95 76 94
M 72.8 84.7 74.5 81.8
SD 13.8 11.6 6.8 14.9

Note. N  8; standard scores for age were used; M  100, SD  15.

a
Woodcock (1987) Word Identification (WI) and Word Attack (WA).
 Quiroga et al. 101

at all levels of language (subword, word, and text) in the same instruc-
tional session.
At the beginning of the session, the Spanish-speaking children com-
pleted one lesson in the Spanish Phonological Awareness Training Pro-
gram. Over the course of the tutorial, they completed the first 12 lessons in
this 24-lesson program, which is an analog in terms of tasks (not words
used) of a research-validated English phonological awareness training pro-
gram (Berninger, 1998). The first six lessons focused on syllable segmenta-
tion activities and the last six lessons focused on phoneme segmentation
activities. In each lesson, they played four kinds of “sound games” in Span-
ish: detecting whether a target sound was hidden in a group of words; de-
tecting whether a target sound was missing in a partial word pronounced
by the tutor; saying a word without a designated target sound; and saying a
word with a designated sound substituted for a target sound. Appendix B
contains a sample lesson from the program. All lessons are available from
the second author.
Next, children played “sound games” in English with words selected
from the book they would read later in the session. In this way their phono-
logical awareness training was yoked close in time to specific words, first
presented in phonological form and then presented in written form. Chil-
dren counted the number of syllables in spoken words and used colored
counters to denote each phoneme in the spoken word.
Next, children learned the alphabetic principle of spelling–phoneme
correspondence in English using the Talking Letters Program (Berninger,
1998). This program teaches frequent spelling–sound correspondences in
primary-grade reading materials in written English. A student card summa-
rizes the one- and two-letter spelling units along with pictured words con-
taining the associated phonemes. As in direct instruction, the tutor mod-
eled and the child repeated, thus ensuring success on each teaching trial.
The tutor named the letter (e.g., a) or letters (e.g., au) in the spelling unit,
then named the pictured word producing the target phoneme (e.g., apple
or auto), and then made the target phoneme sound in isolation. The child
repeated the sequence of naming the letter and pictured word and making
the target phoneme in order to build automatic associations between the
spelling unit and the phoneme. The entire set of 92 spelling–sound corre-
spondences was divided into three sections that were alternated every
three lessons for a total of four exposures each. In the first section, 29
spelling–phoneme correspondences involving single consonants or short
vowels were modeled. In the second section, 27 spelling–sound correspon-
dences involving two-letter consonant or vowel combinations of moderate
predictability or difficulty were modeled. In the third section, 36 spelling–
sound correspondences involving two-letter vowel or consonant combina-
tions of moderate or low predictability were modeled. This approach to
teaching alphabetic principle fosters growth in phonological awareness be-
102 Journal of School Psychology

cause the child’s attention is drawn to phonemes both in the context of a

spoken word (the named picture) and in isolation (naming the target pho-
neme by itself). At the same time, it fosters growth in orthographic aware-
ness by drawing attention to the fact that a phoneme may be represented
by either a two-letter or one-letter spelling unit.
Finally, children were given guided assistance and practice in applying
the alphabetic principle to specific words singly and in the written texts
they read. To practice applying the alphabet principle to single words out
of context, children were given a list of selected written words from the
passage to be read later on. They were asked to pronounce the words, and
when they came to a word they did not know how to pronounce, to refer
back to the student card and use the pictured words as retrieval cues for
the phonemes associated with each spelling unit in a word. Words on the
list were presented in all the morphological variations that occurred in the
text (e.g., shop, shops, shopping, shopped).
To practice applying the alphabetic principle to text, children read a
highly engaging book, The Popcorn Shop (Low, 1993) at the first-grade level
in the Scholastic series. This book did not have exclusively perfectly decod-
able words (based solely on single letter–single phoneme correspondence)
or a repeating controlled vocabulary, and was more like the literature-
based reading materials in the children’s regular reading program and the
ESL language enrichment pull-out program. However, with the addition of
a few sentences in Appendix C, this book contained all the spelling–sound
correspondences in the Talking Letters Program, and every word was at least
partially decodable using the alphabet principle. To ensure multiple expo-
sures to the same words and all the spelling–phoneme correspondences,
children read this same text repeatedly. For the first four lessons, students
read one fourth of the book. For the next three lessons, they reread one
third of the book in each session. For the next two lessons, they read half
the book in each session. For the last three lessons, they read the entire
book in each session. Text reading was always oral. Comprehension was
also monitored and children were encouraged to talk about the book; for
example, what they liked about it, what was funny, and what might happen
next. At the completion of the 12 lessons, children were given a bag of
popcorn and another paperback book in the Scholastic series.
Results
As a group, the children improved reliably in real-word reading, F(1, 7) 
16.39, p  .005, but not in pseudoword reading, which missed conven-
tional levels of significance for a two-tailed test, F(1, 7)  4.32, p  .076;
see Table 4 for means. (However, if a one-tailed directional hypothesis is
evaluated, both reading measures would show significant improvement).
Of the eight children, 100% had higher posttest than pretest scores in real-
word reading, and 75% had higher posttest than pretest scores in English
 Quiroga et al. 103

pseudoword reading; see Table 4. The average English reading scores at

posttest fell in the low-average range (see Table 4), well above the level ex-
pected on the basis of their English VIQ, Spanish VIQ, English oral profi-
ciency, or Spanish oral proficiency, all of which fell in the below-average
range. It is unlikely that this improvement is the result of regression to the
mean. For real-word reading, of the 8 children, 4 improved more than 2 SEM,
2 improved between 1.5 and 2.0 SEM, 1 improved between 1.0 and 1.5
SEM, and 1, who scored 96 at pretest, improved less than 1 SEM. For
pseudoword reading, the same pattern of relative substantial gain was
found, consistent with improved reading achievement not attributable
merely to regression to the mean. The intervention appeared to be effec-
tive based on student learning outcomes.
Discussion
The intervention addressed the fourth research question. It showed that by
including instructional components aimed at phonological awareness in
both languages along with explicit instruction in English alphabet princi-
ple and repeated reading of meaningful English text, the reading achieve-
ment of Spanish-speaking ESL students was raised by 0.8 standard devia-
tion in real-word reading and nearly 0.5 standard deviation in pseudoword
reading in less than 2 months. Following the tutorial, their average reading
achievement exceeded their English or Spanish VIQ, which has been the
traditional benchmark for setting expectations for reading achievement.
Both Vellutino and colleagues (1998) and Berninger and Abbott (1994)
advocated strongly that learning disability should not be diagnosed solely
on the basis of a single administration of psychometric tests, but rather on
the basis of monitoring progress in response to systematic, appropriate,
and sustained early intervention. The results of the second study show that
children who start out seriously delayed in reading can make substantial
gains in a short period of time if given empirically supported reading inter-
vention, indicating that the reading delays of ESL students may be due, to
some degree, to missing literacy experiences rather than to language dif-
ferences or constitutionally based learning disabilities. Monitoring response
to early intervention is an important safeguard in not erroneously labeling
ESL students learning disabled.

GENERAL DISCUSSION
Cummins (1980) found that pull-out bilingual programs focus on the
more visible manifestations of language, which do not carry over to areas
other than basic communication. He referred to this level of language pro-
ficiency as “basic interpersonal communications skills” (BICS). Within the
highly structured milieu of an elementary school, students can appear to
have more developed language ability when, in reality, they are function-
104 Journal of School Psychology

ing within the BICS level of ability. Cummins (1981) questioned the as-
sumption that a BICS level of language proficiency is adequate for reading
comprehension. Many academic tasks require verbal reasoning and a level
of language proficiency Cummins (1981) dubbed as “cognitive academic
language ability” (CALPS). He suspected that 3 to 4 years are needed to de-
velop CALPS under supportive conditions. Thus, beginning ESL readers
may appear to have sufficient proficiency with English to take advantage of
the reading instruction provided in English for word recognition but not
for reading comprehension.
Maldonado-Colon (1995) found that both parents and instructors over-
estimate the oral language abilities of ESL students as well as underesti-
mate what it takes to operate in an academic environment. Teachers may
refer ESL students at the BICS level who lack proficiency at the CALPS
level for psychological evaluation of learning disability. School psycholo-
gists can help teachers understand that the students may not have a learn-
ing or language disability because they are making progress in the acquisition
of English, demonstrating that the student can learn language (Cummins,
1984). Nevertheless, these students may also need additional instructional
experiences that help them move beyond the BICS level to the CALPS
level, and experimental controlled research as well as design experiments
are needed on this issue. We emphasize that the Spanish IQ measure used
in this study (Woodcock & Muñoz-Sandoval, 1996a) may be a better pre-
dictor of CALPS than BICS level of proficiency. Although that measure was
not correlated with beginning word reading in Spanish, it may be very valu-
able in assessing whether older students have moved beyond a BICS level
to a CALPS level of proficiency for academic learning later in schooling
(cf., Cummins, 1981), and is an important tool for school psychologists to
use when needed.
Implications for the Practice of School Psychology
Assessment. Study 1 showed that IQ and oral language proficiency in ei-
ther the first or second language did not uniquely predict beginning word
reading in English for Spanish-speaking ESL students. Thus, it may not be
necessary to include a time-consuming measure of oral proficiency or VIQ
in a screening battery for supplemental early intervention in reading for
Spanish-speaking ESL beginning readers. The differences between the En-
glish and Spanish VIQ measures may be related to differences in the norm-
ing sample, but we emphasize that neither VIQ uniquely predicted English
word reading in these Spanish-speaking ESL beginning readers. However,
Spanish and English phonological awareness measures predicted begin-
ning word reading in English, but only English phonological awareness
predicted it uniquely for Spanish-speaking ESL students instructed in En-
glish. For these children, a measure of English phonological awareness
might be included in Tier 1 assessment to identify at-risk students for early
 Quiroga et al. 105

intervention, Tier 2 progress monitoring in the general education class-

room, and Tier 3 assessment for special education placement and differen-
tial diagnosis of language and learning disabilities (for a discussion of
these tiers in a systems-wide prevention program for reading disabilities,
see Berninger, Stage, Smith, & Hildebrand, 2001; Berninger, in press).
There are a number of nationally normed measures now available that
could be used for this purpose (reviewed in Berninger, in press).

Intervention. School psychologists may enhance student learning outcomes

of Spanish-speaking ESL students by organizing and supervising tutorials di-
rected to phonological awareness in English (and Spanish, if possible) and
the alphabetic principle for English. As ESL students acquire basic word rec-
ognition skills, it is also important to provide instruction directed to compre-
hension in academic subjects. School psychologists who are sensitive to the
linguistic and cultural differences of Latino immigrant families and are aware
of empirically supported instructional practices in beginning reading instruc-
tion as discussed in the introduction are likely to be able to work effectively
with parents and teachers of Spanish-speaking ESL students in promoting lit-
eracy. Parents who cannot read English should be encouraged to read to their
children in the first language, which stimulates language development that
may transfer to the second language. If the parents cannot read in any lan-
guage, creative efforts to find another adult volunteer to read to the child are
called for. Many parents of Spanish-speaking ESL students may not appreciate
the contribution of language stimulation at home in their child’s first lan-
guage to their child’s future reading development, and school psychologists
should work with them to develop the kinds of verbal interactions with their
children that foster literacy development in school. At the same time, school
psychologists should work with teachers to provide for Spanish-speaking ESL
students the same instructional components for beginning reading that non-
ESL English-speaking students require (see Berninger, 1998).
A language-stimulating school environment in the regular classroom
(see Fitzgerald & Noblit, 1999) may facilitate literacy acquisition of chil-
dren whose home literacy environment cannot due to any of the four po-
tential factors discussed in the introduction. Supplemental early interven-
tion in reading, as investigated in Study 2, may be a useful adjunct to the
language-stimulating regular classroom. Of course, future research should
evaluate alternative approaches to providing supplementary early interven-
tion to identify the most effective ones for a given school setting. Ulti-
mately, teachers’ reflections about children’s response to intervention
(Fitzgerald & Noblit, 1999), design experiments for evaluating specific im-
plementations of research findings (as described in Study 2 of this article),
and large-scale controlled experimental comparisons of contrasting alter-
native instructional components will all contribute to school psychologists
serving linguistically diverse students more effectively.
106 Journal of School Psychology

Assessment–intervention links. When school psychologists are asked

whether an ESL student’s school learning problems are due to language
differences or learning differences, some of the assessment measures used
in Study 1 would be appropriate to include in an in-depth assessment (e.g.,
English VIQ, English Pre-LAS, English and Spanish phonological aware-
ness, and English letter knowledge) that may follow failure to respond to
early intervention. However, monitoring response to intervention should
also be a part of the assessment process (Berninger, 1998; Vellutino et al.,
1998). As in the case of English-speaking children with learning disabilities
(Berninger & Abbott, 1994; Vellutino et al., 1998), many ESL children will
benefit from an intervention component in the assessment process and
not exclusive reliance on psychometric testing in evaluation.

CONCLUSION
This research focused on only one ESL student group: those who speak
Spanish as a first language, are instructed in school in English, are begin-
ning readers in first grade, and live in families that have recently immi-
grated to the United States. Clearly, more research is needed with different
language-speaking ESL groups and with other groups of Spanish-speaking
ESL students. However, the two studies reported here do provide some in-
sight into how school psychologists might serve ESL students effectively by
applying research to practice. Rather than focusing on the oral language
skills a Spanish-speaking ESL student may lack in the second language,
schools should begin to work with these children as early as first grade on
learning to read. Early intervention that provides phonological awareness
training in both the first and second languages or in the second language
only, and explicit instruction in the alphabetic principle in the second lan-
guage may help these students learn to read. However, as these students
progress through school, they will also require instruction geared at im-
proving (a) oral proficiency for understanding instructional language in
English, and (b) reading comprehension for academic subjects. The most
important question a school psychologist can ask is not whether the ESL
child has a disability but, rather, what kinds of instructional support and
consultation can be put in place early in schooling to stimulate literacy at
school, at home, and in the community.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This research was supported by a minority fellowship to the first author as a
supplement to a Multidisciplinary Learning Disability Center Grant from
the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (P 50
33812-03 and -04) for which the last author is Principal Investigator and
the fourth author is the statistician. The second author, who was a gradu-
 Quiroga et al. 107

ate research assistant, and third author, who was the research coordinator
for the Center, developed the Spanish version of the Modified Rosner as-
sessment instrument and the Spanish phonological awareness training pro-
gram; they also delivered the instructional interventions in this study. The
authors thank the participating children, parents, and teachers for their
cooperation, and Mardean Francis for assistance in recruiting participants.
The authors thank anonymous reviewers for helpful comments.

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110 Journal of School Psychology

APPENDIX A
Modified Rosner (Copyrighted Spanish version)

Syllables (Kindergarten Level) Score_____

Di Ahora di la palabra otra vez, pero no digas: Score (/)
porque por (que)
finca fin (ca)
salir sal (ir)
falda fal (da)
cabeza ca (beza)
parte te (par)
manga ga (man)
soltar sol (tar)
bola a (bol)
fino o (fin)

Single Phonemes (First-Grade Level) Score______

Di Ahora di la palabra otra vez, pero no digas: Score (/)
con /k/ (on)
mal /m/ (al)
pan /p/ (an)
vez /v/ (ez)
tan /t/ (an)
sol /l/ (so)
más /s/ (ma)
sed /d/ (se)
pez /z/ (pe)
pan /n/ (pa)

Blends/digraphs (Second-Grade Level) Score_____

Di Ahora di la palabra otra vez, pero no digas: Score (/)
claro /k/ (laro)
pleno /p/ (leno)
estar /t/ (esar)
simple /m/ (siple)
llamar /ll/ (amar)
chupar /ch/ (upar)
asombro /br/ (asomo)
grasa /g/ (rasa)
chulo /lo/ (chu)

Permission to reproduce by Lemos-Britton and Mostafapour (1997).

 Quiroga et al. 111

APPENDIX B
Sample Lesson From the Spanish Phonological Awareness Assessment
and Training Program (© SPAAT)a

Sílabos–Lección 1

DESCUBRE LA ESCONDIDA
Di fin. ¿Se esconde la palabra fin en la palabra final?
perfil?
finca?
fingir?

Di sol. ¿Se esconde la palabra sol en la palabra soltar?

parasol?
solo?
sala?

Di por. ¿Se esconde la palabra por en la palabra portar?

para?
porque?
portal?

Di mar. ¿Se esconde la palabra mar en la palabra remar?

martes?
mercado?
marzo?
DI LA QUE FALTA
Di camarón. Ahora di cama. ¿Qué se falta?
Di bebida. Ahora di bida. ¿Qué se falta?
Di levantar. Ahora di levan. ¿Qué se falta?
Di acostar. Ahora di costar. ¿Qué se falta?
DI LA PALABRA SIN
Di instrumento. Ahora díla sin to.
Di distinto. Ahora díla sin dis.
Di semejante. Ahora díla sin jante.
Di maleta. Ahora díla sin ma.
SUSTITUYE
Di pasatiempo. Ahora no la digas con tiempo, díla con porte.
Di quemar. Ahora no la digas con mar, díla con dar.

a
Permission to reproduce by Lemos-Britton and Mostafapour (1997).

APPENDIX C
Sentences Added to the Popcorn Shop (Low, 1993, Scholastic Books)

1. I followed the rules. How awful!

Pizza everywhere!
2. She caught some dough and pulled it from the ground, so no one would slip.
3. She put a mask on her head so she could not hear the noise of people laughing in the road.
4. She phoned for help. Twenty swift boys pressed the pizza in a pan.
5. Now it is quiet and she smiles.
6. Was this a dream?