Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 19(4), 214–224

Copyright 
C 2004, The Division for Learning Disabilities of the Council for Exceptional Children

Development of Reading in Grades K–2 in Spanish-Speaking

English-Language Learners
Franklin R. Manis, Kim A. Lindsey, and Caroline E. Bailey
University of Southern California

Development of English- and Spanish-reading skills was explored in a sample of 251 Spanish-
speaking English-language learners from kindergarten through Grade 2. Word identification and
reading comprehension developed at a normal rate based on monolingual norms for Spanish-
and English-speaking children, but English oral language lagged significantly behind. Four
categories of predictor variables were obtained in Spanish in kindergarten and in English in
first grade: print knowledge, expressive language (as measured by vocabulary and sentence
repetition tasks), phonological awareness, and rapid automatic naming (RAN). Longitudi-
nal regression analyses indicated a modest amount of cross-language transfer from Spanish
to English. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that developing English-language skills
(particularly phonological awareness and RAN) mediated the contribution of Spanish-language
variables to later reading. Further analyses revealed stronger within- than cross-language as-
sociations of expressive language with later reading, suggesting that some variables function
cross-linguistically, and others within a particular language. Results suggest that some of the
cognitive factors underlying reading disabilities in monolingual children (e.g., phonological
awareness and RAN) may be important to an understanding of reading difficulties in bilingual
children.

Children who learn to read in a language different from the
one spoken at home face an enormous challenge. Research
attention to the developmental issues facing these children
has increased in recent years (August & Hakuta, 1997). The
present study is concerned with English-language learners
in the United States. For these children, learning to read in
English is vital to their academic success. Little is known
about the cognitive mechanisms underlying reading acqui-
sition in this group. The general thrust of the present re-
search is to apply what is known about cognitive processes in
reading within a monolingual context to a biliteracy context.
The present study was conducted with a sample of 251 chil-
dren participating in an early-transition bilingual Spanish-
English program. The specific purpose of the study was to
explore associations between theoretically important cogni-
tive skills assessed in Spanish or English in Grades K–1 with
reading skill in both English and Spanish in Grade 2. Both
cross-language and within-language relationships between
early Spanish-language skills and later English- and Spanish-
reading skills were explored. Developmental data on reading
in a representative sample of biliterate children will provide
a foundation for the investigation of reading disabilities in
such a population.
A great deal of knowledge about cognitive processes in
reading acquisition has accumulated in the past 25 years. A
clear insight emerging from this research is that accurate and
efficient recognition of individual words is of crucial impor-
tance to the development of fluency and reading comprehen-
Requests for reprints should be sent to Frank R. Manis, Department of
Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-
1061. Electronic inquiries may be sent to manis@usc.edu.
sion (see Adams, 1990; Perfetti, 1985; Rayner et al., 2002). In
addition, expressive and receptive language can be expected
to contribute increasingly to reading comprehension as chil-
dren master printed-word recognition and move on to more
difficult texts in mid to late elementary school (Hoover &
Gough, 1990; Perfetti, 1985).
There is considerable evidence that phonological process-
ing is one of the major cognitive determinants of the devel-
opment of word-reading skills in the early phases of learning
to read (Goswami & Bryant, 1990; Share & Stanovich, 1995;
Wagner & Torgesen, 1987). Wagner and Torgesen (1987) dis-
tinguished between three types of phonological skill. Phono-
logical 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. Phonological processing in
verbal working memory is the retention of verbal information
for a short period of time (as in digit, word, or sentence recall).
The evidence for longitudinal correlational relationships be-
tween the three aspects of phonological awareness and read-
ing is well documented in several different language com-
munities (e.g., Bruck, Genesee, & Caravolas, 1997; Comeau,
Cormier, Grandmaison, & Lacroix, 1999; de Jong & van der
Leij, 2002; Lundberg, Olofsson, & Wall, 1980; Manis, Sei-
denberg, & Doi, 1999; Sprenger-Charolles, Siegel, & Bonnet,
1998; Wagner et al., 1997; Wimmer, 1993; Wolf, Pfeil, Lotz,
& Biddle, 1994).
Other processes beyond the phonological domain
(although perhaps correlated with phonological skill) are
important in reading acquisition. Scarborough (1998) ana-
lyzed 61 prediction studies of young readers in English. The
 MANIS, LINDSEY, AND BAILEY: SPANISH-SPEAKING ENGLISH-LANGUAGE LEARNERS
criterion for inclusion was that a minimum of one year in-
tervened between initial and follow-up measures. A repeated
finding was that once a child had begun formal literacy train-
ing, the best predictor of future reading was the child’s current
level of skill with printed letters and words. For preliterate
children, a measure of letter naming by itself accounted for
an average of 35 percent of the variance in later reading. As-
sessment of the child’s functional knowledge of print (Clay,
1979) was nearly as good a predictor, with a mean correla-
tion of 0.53 with later reading. Of the cognitive variables, the
next best predictors were confrontation naming, full scale IQ,
verbal IQ, broad language skill, verbal memory for sentences
or stories, and phonological awareness (r values about 0.40
to 0.45), followed by rapid serial naming, digit or word span,
and receptive vocabulary (r values of 0.30 to 0.40). These
studies indicate that phonological awareness, lexical access,
and verbal working memory are part of a group of actively de-
veloping skills associated with early reading progress. Stud-
ies employing these predictors in combination are rare, but
Scanlon and Vellutino (1996) found that a combination of the
above predictors accounted for 49 percent of the variance in
Grade 1 word reading. Letter naming alone accounted for the
majority of variance.
To summarize this brief review of the reading acquisition
literature, phonological skills are of undeniable theoretical
importance in reading development. However, it is also im-
portant to consider other factors, most notably measures of
letter knowledge, print awareness, and oral-language skill in
order to achieve a more complete picture of the predictive
factors in early reading achievement. Applying this insight
to the biliterate context, it is of both theoretical and practical
importance to assess the relationship of these skills to reading
in both L1 and L2.
Although research on transfer of reading-related skills
from one language to another has not been extensive (see
Cummins, 1979 for a review of earlier research), there is
growing evidence for cross-language transfer of phonolog-
ical awareness (August, Calderon, & Carlo, 2001; Cisero
& Royer, 1995; Comeau et al., 1999; Durgunoglu, Nagy, &
Hancin-Bhatt, 1993; Lindsey, Manis, & Bailey, 2003), single-
word reading errors and fluency (August et al., 2001; Da
Fontoura & Siegel, 1995; Geva, Wade-Woolley, & Shany,
1997; Kendall, Lajeunesse, Chmilar, Shapson, & Shapson,
1987; Lambert & Tucker, 1972; Lindsey et al., 2003), and
reading comprehension (Escamilla, 1987; Jimenéz Gonzalez
& Haro Garcia, 1996; Lindsey et al., 2003).
What evidence is there that variables beyond phonological
awareness and word recognition show cross-language trans-
fer? Analyses of the sample of children in the current study at
an earlier point in time (Grades K–1) by Lindsey et al. (2003)
contrasted the predictive power of Spanish-language mea-
sures of phonological awareness with other variables. Lindsey
et al. (2003) found that letter knowledge, print concepts, sen-
tence memory, and rapid automatic naming speed showed
correlations with English-reading skill (word identification
and reading comprehension) of similar magnitude to corre-
sponding correlations of phonological awareness. However,
a measure of expressive vocabulary showed stronger within-
language correlations with later reading skill, particularly for
reading comprehension.
215
It makes sense that certain kinds of knowledge obtained
early in reading development (such as phonological aware-
ness) would play a fundamental role in the acquisition of
reading skill in both L1 and L2, and hence would show cross-
linguistic correlations. However, vocabulary knowledge may
be specific to languages, as the ability to retrieve word mean-
ings in the course of reading a passage is dependent on famil-
iarity with that specific language. Processing of grammatical
structure may also show language-specific relationships to
reading, to the extent that L1 and L2 differ in their gram-
matical structure. Durgunoglu et al. (1993) did not find a
relationship between oral-language proficiency (as measured
by a pre-LAS test) and word- and pseudoword-reading skill in
Spanish or English. However, they pointed out that a stronger
relationship might be expected between oral language and
reading comprehension.
Bialystok and Hakuta (1994) argue that bilingual speak-
ers have certain language representations in common (such
as metalinguistic understandings) and others that are spe-
cific to a language (such as idiomatic meanings). Durgunoglu
(2002) suggests certain reading concepts and strategies may
operate across languages, but there may be other con-
cepts and strategies that are specific to languages. This
means that developing competence in L2 should show a
complex relationship with prior competence in L1. One
such relationship would be mediational. For example, in
the present case, English linguistic competence may in-
creasingly mediate the influence of Spanish competence on
English-reading ability, particularly in a typical early-exit
bilingual program like the one employed with the present
sample where the major emphasis is on early transition to
L2 reading skill. For example, children with high phono-
logical awareness in Spanish can be expected to develop
phonological awareness more quickly than other children in
English, reflecting not only metalinguistic insights about on-
sets, rimes, phonemic units, and so forth, but also knowl-
edge of shared spelling-sound correspondences (such as the
pronunciation of most consonants). A measure of phoneme
awareness in English might be expected to mediate the
cross-linguistic influence of Spanish phoneme awareness on
English reading.
A second kind of relationship would be that develop-
ing English competence would account for unique variance
in later reading, over and above that explained by cross-
language transfer. Some part of this may be language-specific
knowledge, such as vocabulary items, orthographic patterns,
and so forth, as Dugunoglu (2002) indicates. However, an-
other part may simply reflect the further development of
basic skills common to literacy in both languages, such as
phonological awareness. Phonological awareness, particu-
larly at the level of the phoneme, is thought to be influ-
enced by the child’s developing knowledge of words (Ehri,
1998; Goswami & Bryant, 1990; Morais, Cary, Alegria, &
Bertelson, 1979). As knowledge of English words and their
spelling-sound correspondences develops, phoneme aware-
ness should develop within English. A measure of phono-
logical awareness in English might therefore be expected to
account for some common and some unique variance as com-
pared to an earlier measure of phonological awareness in
Spanish.
216 SPECIAL SERIES: READING RISK AND INTERVENTION FOR YOUNG ELs
Overview of the Study
The study investigated cross-language transfer from Spanish
to English, and development within each language, from the
end of kindergarten to the end of second grade. We included a
broad range of cognitive predictive variables in keeping with
the monolingual research literature: phonological awareness,
rapid serial naming, sentence memory, letter knowledge, print
awareness, and expressive vocabulary. Predictive measures
were obtained only in Spanish in kindergarten because of
the children’s limited English skills. Similar measures of
the predictor variables were obtained in English in the first
grade. Outcome measures in second grade included word
identification in English and reading comprehension in both
languages.
Three hypotheses pertaining to cross-linguistic, language-
specific, and mediational relationships with later literacy
skill were tested. First, significant cross-language relation-
ships should be found between print knowledge, phonologi-
cal awareness, and rapid automatic naming on the one hand,
and later reading skills on the other, for two basic theoretical
reasons. One reason is that the development of literacy in
Spanish should help children make crucial insights and ac-
quire fundamental strategies for decoding and word reading
that would be applicable in learning to read English (August
et al., 2001). An example of this would be the acquisition
of the insight that printed words relate to word meanings
(Bialystok, 2001) and the insight that words are composed of
discrete phonemes that map onto specific letters of the alpha-
bet (Ehri, 1998). An additional theoretical justification for
cross-language correlations is that a child who has acquired
skill more quickly in an important domain in L1 should tend
to acquire skill in a similar domain more quickly in L2. For
example, children who develop rapid retrieval of the names of
common objects or letters and digits in L1 might have more
efficient long-term memory retrieval, and hence manifest
the same skill in L2. Hence, the RAN test, which taps into
name retrieval (Wolf & Bowers, 1999), should show cross-
language correlations.
Second, we predicted that within-language correlations
should be stronger than cross-language correlations for
tasks that reflect language-specific vocabulary and gram-
matical skills. Hence, the measures of sentence recall and
picture vocabulary administered in this study should tend
to show language-specific correlations with later reading-
comprehension skill. Support for this hypothesis was ob-
tained for the period from kindergarten to first grade, when
the children were just beginning to acquire English-reading
skills (Lindsey et al., 2003), and we would expect such
language-specific relationships, if anything, to grow over
time.
Third, we anticipated that developing cognitive skills
in English would partially mediate or supplant the influ-
ence of similar Spanish-language skills on English reading.
This hypothesis could not be tested in our previous study,
as the period of development under study, kindergarten to
first grade, was too short to expect strong influences of
English language and emergent reading skills on later reading
competence.
METHOD
Participants
Our initial sample consisted of 303 Latino kindergarten chil-
dren from a Texas border town who were participating in
a districtwide early-transition bilingual curriculum called
“Esperanza” (Hagen, 1997). The vast majority of the children
in this school district had very limited knowledge of English
at the outset of kindergarten, as determined by language as-
sessment (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 Lindsey
et al., 2003). The children ranged in age from 57 months to
80 months (mean age 67.8 months) at the time of first testing
(fall of 1998). The sample was 47.5 percent boys and 52.5 per-
cent girls. The socioeconomic status based on family income
was low, as indicated by the fact that over 98 percent of the
children in the study qualified for the free-lunch program.
The Esperanza (Hagan, 1997) program is a Spanish-
language reading and language arts program that was mod-
eled directly on the Basic Language Skills program (Neuhaus
Education Center, 1980). This program in turn is based
on principles from Alphabetic Phonics, the classic Orton-
Gillingham multisensory reading and spelling curriculum.
The program began in kindergarten with phonological-
awareness activities, multisensory introduction of new let-
ters, and oral-language training in Spanish and English (about
one hour 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 writ-
ing and listening comprehension. In mid first grade, many,
but not all, of the children made a transition from Esperanza
to a parallel English-language program, a version of Orton-
Gillingham Alphabetic Phonics developed by the Neuhaus
Education Center (Neuhaus Education Center, 1980). There
were no explicit criteria for the transition, and the decision
was left up to individual teachers. Most of the children con-
tinued 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 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 language testers
employed by the school district were individually trained by
the second author to administer the assessment batteries. The
testers were retrained before each subsequent testing period
and the quality of their work was monitored closely.
We tested all the subjects within a four-week interval be-
tween October and November 1998 of the first semester of
kindergarten, again within a four-week interval in May 1999
at the end of kindergarten, and during a four-week interval
in May 2000 and 2001, at the end of first and second grade,
respectively. Data from the last three intervals (end of kinder-
garten to Grade 2) will be analyzed here. The number of
children having complete scores at all three time points was
 MANIS, LINDSEY, AND BAILEY: SPANISH-SPEAKING ENGLISH-LANGUAGE LEARNERS
251, an attrition rate of 5.7 percent per year. Children who
were lost from the sample (N = 52) were not statistically dif-
ferent on any of the kindergarten measures from those who
remained.
The children were individually tested in a quiet room dur-
ing regular school hours. The kindergarten test battery took
approximately 45 minutes to administer. The Grade 1 and 2
batteries took 50–90 minutes.
Overview of Assessment Battery
The study aims called for measures of leading predictive vari-
ables, such as letter knowledge, word identification, sentence
recall, confrontation naming, phonological awareness, and
print concepts. Care was taken to choose Spanish and En-
glish versions of tests that did not have the same items.
Tasks Administered in Spanish
The tasks are listed below along with the time periods during
which they were administered. Unless indicated otherwise,
tasks were given in kindergarten only.
Picture Vocabulary (Woodcock
& Muñoz-Sandoval, 1995)
This task was a subtest of the Woodcock Language Profi-
ciency Battery (WLPB) that measures the ability to pro-
duce the names of pictured objects. Split-half reliability from
norms was 0.68 at age six.
Memory for Sentences (Woodcock
& Muñoz-Sandoval, 1995)
In this subtest of the WLPB, children listened to and repeated
phrases and sentences increasing in length and grammatical
complexity. Split-half reliability from norms was 0.88 at age
six.
Sound Matching
A Spanish version of this task was adapted from a sub-
test of the Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing
(CTOPP) (Wagner, Torgesen, & Rashotte, 1998). The child
was shown a picture and the name of 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. Internal consistency reliability (Cronbach’s
alpha) for our sample calculated at Time 2 was 0.63.
Sound Categorization
This task was adapted from the CTOPP (Wagner et al., 1998).
The child was asked to say which two of three words rhymed
217
or sounded alike at the end. The words were presented in sets
of three pictures, which were named by the experimenter,
and the child was asked to point to the two items that rhymed
(e.g., salero, basurero, sandia). Internal consistency reliabil-
ity calculated at Time 2 was 0.97.
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 fa-
miliarity. 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 a single overall time
and a single accuracy score were obtained, and responses to
each object were not recorded, it was not possible to calcu-
late test-retest or internal consistency reliability for time or
accuracy.
Letter Knowledge
All the letters of the Spanish alphabet were presented in ran-
dom 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. Children were asked to give the letter name
(Letter Names) and its sound (Letter Sounds) for all lowercase
and uppercase letters. Because the entire population of pos-
sible items was administered, it was not necessary to calcu-
late reliability, as reliability is only needed when an estimate
of the true ( population) score is being made. The task was
given in kindergarten only. Only the letter-name data were
analyzed.
Concepts about Print
The experimenter carried on a structured conversation 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 0.92.
Letter-Word Identification (Woodcock &
Muñoz-Sandoval, 1995) (Kindergarten and Grade 1)
The child was first shown letters and then words increasing
in difficulty and asked to name them. There were 12 letters
and 46 words. Split-half reliability at age six from norms was
0.95.
218 SPECIAL SERIES: READING RISK AND INTERVENTION FOR YOUNG ELs

Spanish Passage Comprehension (Woodcock &
Muñoz-Sandoval, 1995) (Kindergarten, Grade 1,
and Grade 2)
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. Split-half reliability from norms was 0.89
at age six.
Norms for all Woodcock-Muñoz 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
(First and Second Grades)
Letter Knowledge (First Grade)
All the letters of the alphabet were presented in random order,
first in uppercase and then in lowercase. Children provided
their names and sounds. Separate scores for letter names and
sounds were obtained. One letter was inadvertently adminis-
tered twice in lowercase (g) and was scored only once. The
maximum possible score was 52. Because all possible items
were administered, reliability was not calculated. Only letter-
naming scores were analyzed in the present study.
Letter-Word Identification ( Woodcock & Johnson,
1989) (Grades 1 and 2)
This was the English version of the test already described.
Split-half reliability from norms at age six was 0.96.
Passage Comprehension ( Woodcock & Johnson,
1989) (Grades 1 and 2)
This is the English version of the Spanish measure described
previously. Split-half reliability from norms was 0.94 at age
six.
Sound Matching ( Wagner et al., 1998) (Grade 1)
This task was taken from the CTOPP and had the same format
as our Spanish-language task given in kindergarten but had
different items. Internal consistency reliability (Cronbach’s
alpha) from norms was 0.93 at age six.
Phoneme Elision ( Wagner et al., 1998) (Grade 1 Only)
In this task from the CTOPP, the child was presented a word
orally and asked to repeat it. The child was then asked to say
the word with a target syllable/phoneme deleted. Split-half
reliability from norms was 0.92 (age six).
Rapid Automatic Naming (RAN)—Objects and Digits
( Wagner et al., 1998) (Grade 1 Only)
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, numbers were randomly
presented in four rows of nine. Children named 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. Test-retest reliability for two equivalent forms of
each task (letters or digits) obtained from the manual was 0.81
for RAN–Objects and 0.75 for RAN–Digits (time scores) at
age seven.
RESULTS
Preliminary Analyses
Mean percentile scores are shown in Table 1 for tasks on
which normative data was available. It is apparent that the
children’s reading scores in English and Spanish and their
oral-language scores in Spanish were within the average
TABLE 1
Descriptive Information for the Normative Tests
Minimum Maximum
Mean Score Score
Measure Percentile SD Achieved Achieved

Spanish Letter-Word Ident. (K) 56.6 35.8 0.1 99.9

Picture Vocabulary ( Woodcock & Johnson, 1989) Spanish Memory for Sent. (K) 30.9 25.5 0.0 96.0
(Grades 1 and 2) Spanish Picture Vocabulary (K) 36.8 36.6 0.0 99.9
English Letter-Word Ident. (1) 57.8 35.0 0.1 99.9
This task had the same format as the Spanish version of the English Passage Comp. (1) 48.5 29.7 0.4 99.9
task but different items. Internal consistency reliability (split- English Memory for Sent. (1) 12.4 19.5 0.1 99.5
half ) for age six was reported to be 0.77 by the authors. English Picture Vocabulary (1) 3.2 7.1 0.1 50.0
English Phoneme Elision (1) 56.4 33.6 0.0 99.0
English Sound Matching (1) 41.6 22.4 0.0 99.0
Memory for Sentences ( Woodcock & Johnson, Spanish Letter-Word Ident. (1) 79.0 33.8 0.1 99.9
1989) (Grade 1) Spanish Passage Comp. (1) 64.8 33.3 0.1 99.9
English Letter-Word Ident. (2) 59.9 35.2 0.0 99.9
This task had the same format as the Spanish version but had English Passage Comp. (2) 46.2 32.5 0.0 99.9
different items. Split-half reliability from norms was 0.88 at English Picture Vocabulary (2) 8.1 14.8 0.0 98.0
age six. Spanish Passage Comp. (2) 48.1 32.7 0.0 99.9
 MANIS, LINDSEY, AND BAILEY: SPANISH-SPEAKING ENGLISH-LANGUAGE LEARNERS 219
TABLE 2
Intercorrelations in Kindergarten

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

1. Spanish Letter Naming —

2. Spanish Concepts about Print 0.31∗∗∗ —
3. Spanish Sound Categorization 0.22∗∗ 0.24∗∗∗ —
4. Spanish Sound Matching 0.37∗∗∗ 0.36∗∗∗ 0.65∗∗∗ —
5. Spanish log RAN Time −0.33∗∗∗ −0.18∗∗ −0.16∗ −0.21∗∗ —
6. Spanish Picture Vocabulary 0.32∗∗∗ 0.28∗∗∗ 0.29∗∗∗ 0.35∗∗∗ −0.20∗∗∗ —
7. Spanish Memory for Sent. 0.23∗∗∗ 0.34∗∗∗ 0.28∗∗∗ 0.29∗∗∗ −0.15∗ 0.43∗∗∗ —
8. Spanish Letter-Word Ident. 0.36∗∗∗ 0.42∗∗∗ 0.25∗∗∗ 0.38∗∗∗ −0.43∗∗∗ 0.42∗∗∗ 0.37 —
Means 48.4 12.6 7.2 16.4 1.8 20.8 33.8 20.9
SD 14.1 3.4 2.9 5.0 0.12 3.5 4.6 14.0
Maximum possible 59 18 10 20 2.3 58 59 58
∗p < 0.05; ∗∗ p < 0.01; ∗∗∗ p < 0.001.

range across the three years of testing, but their oral-language
scores in English were below average, with the exception of
the phonological-awareness tasks, where they scored within
the average range. The findings suggest the children were
able to transfer phonological awareness and word-decoding
skills from Spanish to English. However, they were develop-
ing much more slowly in the domain of English vocabulary
and memory for sentences. Scores in English Passage Com-
prehension were only slightly lower overall than those for
Spanish Passage Comprehension, suggesting that this com-
prehension task measured primarily word-identification skills
at this point in development. In other words, lagging English-
oral-language-comprehension skills have not begun to hold
down English-reading comprehension yet in first and second
grade. It is possible that they will in later grades, if the chil-
dren do not begin to make more progress in vocabulary and
other oral-language skills.
Descriptive data (means and correlations) are reported for
the Spanish variables in kindergarten in Table 2 and for the
English (and two Spanish) variables at first grade in Table 3.
It can be seen that the variables were for the most part inter-
correlated within a time period.
Because the number of variables across the three test in-
tervals was fairly large, the data were reduced prior to con-
ducting longitudinal analyses by combining pairs of vari-
ables (where they existed). The two tasks making up the pair
were weighted equally. This resulted in composite scores
for Spanish Print Knowledge (Letter Naming and Con-
cepts about Print), Spanish Phonological Awareness (Sound
Matching and Sound Categorization), English Phonological
Awareness (Phoneme Elision and Sound Matching), Span-
ish and English Expressive Language (Picture Vocabulary
and Memory for Sentences), and English RAN Time (RAN–
Objects and RAN–Digits). All other variables represented in
the longitudinal analyses were represented by a single task.
Table 4 provides the correlations from kindergarten to Grade
1 and 2 for each variable.
Cross-Language Predictions
The first hypothesis was that key cognitive variables would
show cross-language relationships between Spanish and
English. The data in Table 4 show significant and moderately
sized correlations between Spanish measures in kindergarten
and parallel English measures in first grade. In addition,
Spanish measures in kindergarten correlated significantly
with English-reading measures in second grade. More com-
plete data on correlations in kindergarten and first grade
(e.g., measures of phonological awareness) were reported
in Lindsey et al. (2003). To determine the relative impor-
tance of each variable in cross-language associations with
reading achievement, three sets of hierarchical regressions
were conducted. The variables were entered in a fixed order.
Print knowledge was entered on the first step, phonological
awareness on the second step, RAN on the third step, and
expressive language on the last step. Entering print knowl-
edge on the first step serves to control (to some extent) for
previous literacy experience and training. Entering phono-
logical awareness on the second step allowed us to determine
whether it accounted for any variance in later reading con-
trolling for prior reading knowledge. RAN was entered third
to see if it accounted for a different portion of the variability
from phonological awareness. Expressive language was en-
tered last for purposes of comparing the strength of this vari-
able’s unique contribution to later reading within and across
languages.
Spanish (Kindergarten) to English (Grade 2)
In the first analysis, the outcome variable was English Letter-
Word Identification at Grade 2 and the predictors were the
four kindergarten measures in Spanish. The results are shown
in the top half of Table 5. Results of the hierarchical regression
are shown as R2 values and change in R2 and the significance
of the change at each step is indicated. The final column of the
table shows the beta values for the final simultaneous regres-
sion, and the significance of these beta weights. In this first
analysis, the four predictor variables accounted for 26.3 per-
cent of the variance in second grade Letter-Word Identifi-
cation, and each variable contributed significant variance to
Letter-Word Identification at each step in the hierarchical re-
gression, and in the final equation. However, print knowledge
was clearly the strongest contributor.
220 SPECIAL SERIES: READING RISK AND INTERVENTION FOR YOUNG ELs

TABLE 3
Intercorrelations in First Grade

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

1. English Letter —
Naming
2. English Sound 0.48∗∗∗ —
Matching
3. English 0.54∗∗ 0.55∗∗∗ —
Phoneme
Deletion
4. English log −0.42∗∗∗ −0.37∗∗∗ −0.42∗∗∗ —
RAN–Object
time
5. English log −0.48∗∗∗ −0.21∗∗ −0.31∗∗∗ 0.61∗∗ —
RAN–Digit
time
6. English Picture 0.52∗∗∗ 0.39∗∗∗ 0.43∗∗∗ −0.37∗∗∗ −0.29∗∗∗ —
Vocabulary
7. English 0.46∗∗∗ 0.48∗∗∗ 0.53∗∗∗ −0.32∗∗∗ −0.16∗ 0.53∗∗∗ —
Memory for
Sent.
8. English 0.63∗∗∗ 0.51∗∗∗ 0.69∗∗∗ −0.57∗∗∗ −0.54∗∗∗ 0.47∗∗∗ 0.46∗∗∗ —
Letter-Word
Ident.
English Passage 0.51∗∗∗ 0.49∗∗∗ 0.65∗∗∗ −0.44∗∗∗ −0.34∗∗∗ 0.50∗∗∗ 0.56∗∗∗ 0.69∗∗∗ —
Comp.
Spanish 0.39∗∗∗ 0.41∗∗∗ 0.50∗∗∗ −0.29∗∗∗ −0.32∗∗∗ 0.11 0.22∗∗∗ 0.64∗∗∗ 0.47∗∗∗ —
Letter-Word
Ident.
Spanish Passage 0.38∗∗∗ 0.47∗∗∗ 0.60∗∗∗ −0.33∗∗∗ −0.25∗∗∗ 0.21∗∗ 0.34∗∗∗ 0.62∗∗∗ 0.62∗∗∗ 0.77∗∗∗ —
Comp.
Means 47.3 14.5 10.1 1.7 1.5 18.5 32.6 25.7 10.0 40.2 14.5
SD 10.0 4.6 6.0 0.17 0.15 3.9 5.0 9.3 5.9 16.9 8.7
Maximum 52 20 20 2.3 2.3 58 59 58 43 58 43
possible
∗p < 0.05; ∗∗ p < 0.01; ∗∗∗ p < 0.001.

In the second analysis (top half of Table 6), the outcome
variable was English Passage Comprehension. Print knowl-
edge, phonological awareness, and expressive language were
significant at each step of the hierarchical regression, but
phonological awareness dropped out in the final equation.
Altogether, the four variables accounted for 19.8 percent of
the variance, and print knowledge was once again the most
powerful predictor.
First-Grade English to Second-Grade
Spanish Prediction
The third cross-linguistic analysis examined the contribu-
tion of the four English predictor variables in first grade
to Spanish Passage Comprehension at Grade 2 (Table 7).
Print knowledge and phonological awareness were signifi-
cant contributors at their point of entry in the hierarchical

TABLE 4
Correlation of Four Key Composite Variables from Kindergarten (in Spanish) to First Grade and to Reading Achievement in Second Grade

Kindergarten Kindergarten Kindergarten Log Kindergarten

Grade 1 (1) & Grade 2 (2) Variables Print Knowledge Phonological Awareness RAN–Objects Time Expressive Language

English Print Knowledge (1) 0.52∗∗∗ 0.27∗∗∗ −0.28∗∗∗ 0.29∗∗∗

English Phonological Awareness (1) 0.39∗∗∗ 0.33∗∗∗ −0.29∗∗∗ 0.34∗∗∗
English log RAN Time (1) −0.33∗∗∗ −0.16∗ 0.34∗∗∗ −0.16∗
English Expressive Language (1) 0.40∗∗∗ 0.28∗∗∗ −0.21∗∗ 0.30∗∗∗
English Letter-Word Identification (2) 0.43∗∗∗ 0.34∗∗∗ −0.31∗∗∗ 0.34∗∗∗
English Passage Comprehension (2) 0.40∗∗∗ 0.27∗∗∗ −0.21∗∗ 0.33∗∗∗
Spanish Passage Comprehension (2) 0.35∗∗∗ 0.30∗∗∗ −0.26∗∗∗ 0.49∗∗∗
 MANIS, LINDSEY, AND BAILEY: SPANISH-SPEAKING ENGLISH-LANGUAGE LEARNERS 221
TABLE 5 TABLE 7
Cross-Language Hierarchical Regression Analyses Predicting Cross-Language Hierarchical Regression Analyses Predicting
Second-Grade English Letter-Word Identification Second-Grade Spanish Passage Comprehension

Kindergarten Variable Change Final R2 —First First Grade Variable Change Final R2 —These
(Spanish) R2 in R2 Four Variables (English) R2 in R2 Four Variables

1. Print Knowledge 0.188 0.188∗∗∗ 0.261∗∗∗ 1. Print Knowledge 0.103 0.103∗∗∗ 0.087
2. Phon. Awareness 0.220 0.032∗∗ 0.143∗ 2. Phon. Awareness 0.194 0.091∗∗∗ 0.395∗∗∗
3. Log RAN–Objects 0.248 0.028∗∗ −0.170∗∗ 3. Log RAN Time 0.203 0.009 −0.112
4. Expr. Language 0.263 0.015∗ 0.139∗ 4. Expr. Language 0.208 0.005 −0.095
∗p < 0.05; ∗∗ p < 0.01; ∗∗∗ p < 0.001.
Kindergarten Variable Change Final R2 —All
(Spanish) R2 in R2 Eight Variables
Continuation of Hierarchical Regression—Adding the First-Grade single predictor. In contrast, only phonological awareness
English Predictors was significant for the English to Spanish prediction. These
1. Print Knowledge 0.188 0.188∗∗∗ 0.036 findings suggest that the amount of exposure to printed ma-
2. Phon. Awareness 0.220 0.032∗∗ 0.076 terials in Spanish is the primary predictor of later English-
3. Log RAN–Objects 0.248 0.028∗∗ −0.023 reading skills. In contrast, children’s ability to acquire English
4. Expr. Language 0.263 0.015∗ 0.064 phonological awareness seems to be most closely associated
First-Grade Variable (English) with later Spanish-reading ability, suggesting that in a lan-
5. Print Knowledge 0.408 0.145∗∗∗ 0.104 guage with very consistent spelling-sound correspondences,
6. Phon. Awareness 0.530 0.122∗∗∗ 0.390∗∗∗ phonological skills are a key predictor of reading in this
7. Log RAN Time 0.574 0.034∗∗∗ −0.258∗∗∗
population.
8. Expr. Language 0.578 0.004 0.089
∗p < 0.05; ∗∗ p < 0.01; ∗∗∗ p < 0.001.
Comparing Cross- and Within-
Language Predictions

Based on previous research (Durgunoglu et al., 1993; Lindsey

analysis, but only phonological awareness was significant in et al., 2003), the second hypothesis was that expressive lan-
the final regression equation. The total amount of variance guage would show stronger within- than cross-language cor-
explained was comparable to the two previous regressions relation with reading outcomes. Looking back at Tables 5–7,
(20.8 percent). it can be seen that expressive language, entered last in the
To sum up, all four variables were significant predictors cross-language equations, always accounted for less than
from Spanish to English, but print knowledge was the greatest 2 percent of the variance. Table 8 shows the two possible
within-language regressions, with expressive language en-
tered last. Variables were entered in the same order as the
TABLE 6
Cross-Language Hierarchical Regression Analyses Predicting
hierarchical regressions for the cross-language data.
Second-Grade English Passage Comprehension For Spanish to Spanish (Grades K to 2), expressive
language accounted for 11.2 percent unique variance in
Kindergarten Variable Change Final R2 —First second-grade Passage Comprehension. The four Spanish
(Spanish) R2 in R2 Four Variables
TABLE 8
1. Print Knowledge 0.158 0.158∗∗∗ 0.270∗∗∗
Within-Language Hierarchical Regression Analyses
2. Phon. Awareness 0.172 0.014∗ 0.083
3. Log RAN–Objects 0.178 0.006 −0.072
4. Expr. Language 0.198 0.02∗ 0.162∗ Kindergarten Variable Change Final R2 —These
(Spanish) R2 in R2 Four Variables
Kindergarten Variable Change Final R2 —All
(Spanish) R2 in R2 Eight Variables Predicting Second-Grade Spanish Passage Comprehension
1. Print Knowledge 0.125 0.125∗∗∗ 0.118
Continuation of Hierarchical Regression—Adding the First-Grade 2. Phon. Awareness 0.152 0.027∗∗ 0.070
English Predictors 3. Log RAN Time 0.173 0.021∗ −0.130∗
1. Print Knowledge 0.158 0.158∗∗∗ 0.101 4. Expr. Language 0.285 0.112∗∗∗ 0.384∗∗∗
2. Phon. Awareness 0.172 0.014∗ 0.016
3. Log RAN–Objects 0.178 0.006 0.038 First-Grade Variable Change Final R2 —These
4. Expr. Language 0.198 0.02∗ 0.088 (English) R2 in R2 Four Variables
First-Grade Variable (English) Predicting Second-Grade English Passage Comprehension
5. Print Knowledge 0.274 0.076∗∗∗ 0.008 1. Print Knowledge 0.215 0.215∗∗∗ 0.056
6. Phon. Awareness 0.390 0.116∗∗∗ 0.358∗∗∗ 2. Phon. Awareness 0.366 15.1∗∗∗ 0.383∗∗∗
7. Log RAN Time 0.405 0.015∗ 0.157∗ 3. Log RAN Time 0.381 0.015∗ −0.152∗
8. Expr. Language 0.420 0.015∗ 0.162∗ 4. Expr. Language 0.401 0.02∗∗ 0.186∗∗
∗p ∗p < 0.05; ∗∗ p < 0.01; ∗∗∗ p < 0.001.
< 0.05; ∗∗ p < 0.01; ∗∗∗ p < 0.001.
222 SPECIAL SERIES: READING RISK AND INTERVENTION FOR YOUNG ELs
variables in kindergarten accounted for a total of 28.5 per-
cent of the variance in later Spanish Passage Comprehension.
Expressive language was the strongest predictor in the final
equation. A different picture emerged for English to English
(Grades 1 to 2). The four English predictors accounted for a
total of 40.1 percent of the variance in English Passage Com-
prehension. Although expressive language was significant, it
accounted for only 2 percent unique variance. Phonological
awareness was the strongest predictor.
Consistent with the second hypothesis, expressive lan-
guage in Spanish at kindergarten was a stronger predictor
of second-grade Spanish reading comprehension (accounting
for 11.2 percent unique variance) than second-grade English-
reading comprehension (accounting for 2 percent unique vari-
ance, from Table 6). For English expressive language at first
grade, there was less of a difference (2 percent in Table 8 vs.
0.5 percent in Table 7). The results are consistent with the
second hypothesis, but indicate that within-language effects
are stronger for Spanish.
Unique Contribution of English Variables
to the Prediction Equations
A final question posed in this article was whether reading-
related cognitive development in English makes a significant
contribution to English-reading acquisition over and above
that made by Spanish-language variables in kindergarten. It
is also possible that the English variables mediate the Spanish
variables in the prediction of later English reading. Two con-
ditions need to be observed to conclude that mediation is
taking place: the Spanish predictors at Grade K must share
variance with the English predictors at Grade 1, and the addi-
tion of the English variables to the equation at Grade 1 must
reduce the contribution of the Spanish variables to second-
grade English reading to nonsignificance.
For English Letter-Word Identification at Grade 2, English
print knowledge accounted for 14.5 percent entered on the
fifth step, followed by 12.2 percent for English phonological
awareness, 3.4 percent for English RAN time, and 0.4 per-
cent for English expressive language (see Table 5, bottom
half ). Altogether, 57.8 percent of the variance was accounted
for by the Spanish and English variables combined. Im-
portantly, none of the Spanish variables were significant in
the final regression equation, but two of the English vari-
ables were (phonological awareness and RAN). Common-
ality analyses (which involve subtracting unique variance
from the total variance to identify common variance), indi-
cated that the four English variables accounted for 31.5 per-
cent unique variance, the four Spanish variables 1.6 per-
cent unique variance, and the common variance between
the Spanish and English predictors was 24.7 percent. The
drop in the Spanish variables’ unique contribution to second-
grade English Letter-Word Identification was quite large
(from 26.3 percent to 1.6 percent). This means that the
English variables at first grade were virtually complete medi-
ators of the relationship between Spanish variables at kinder-
garten and later English Letter-Word Identification. The size-
able common variance can be thought of as cross-linguistic
variance.
Turning to English Passage Comprehension at Grade 2,
English letter-name knowledge accounted for 7.6 percent
entered on the fifth step, followed by 11.6 percent for En-
glish phonological awareness, 1.5 percent for English RAN
time, and 1.5 percent for English expressive language (see
Table 6, bottom half ). Altogether, 42.0 percent of the vari-
ance was accounted for by the Spanish and English variables
combined. Once again, none of the Spanish variables were
significant in the final regression equation, but three of the
English variables were (phonological awareness, RAN, and
expressive language). Commonality analyses indicated that
the four English variables accounted for 22.2 percent unique
variance, the four Spanish variables 1.9 percent unique vari-
ance, and common variance was 17.9 percent. Once again the
English variables nearly completely mediated the relationship
of Spanish variables to English Passage Comprehension.
DISCUSSION
The central purpose of the study was to examine the contri-
bution of early linguistic skills to reading achievement in a
biliterate context. The children in the study were given about
one-and-a-half years of intensive Spanish-literacy training
in kindergarten to first grade, and then were transitioned
to a parallel program in English literacy as part of a dis-
trictwide program. The current study reports results for the
period from the end of kindergarten to the end of second
grade. Three specific hypotheses regarding cross-linguistic
and within-language relationships were explored.
The first hypothesis was that print knowledge, phono-
logical awareness, and rapid naming would be significant
cross-language predictors of second-grade reading achieve-
ment. All the kindergarten Spanish variables were correlated
with English reading in second grade (see Table 4). Hier-
archical regressions indicated that phonological awareness
and log RAN object-naming time were unique predictors of
English Letter-Word Identification. Expressive language was
also a unique predictor, but accounted for only 1.5 percent
of the variance (see Table 5). In the final regression equa-
tion, print knowledge in Spanish was the strongest predictor.
Similar results were obtained for English Passage Compre-
hension (see Table 6), except that phonological awareness
and RAN did not contribute as much unique variance. The
results extend previous work showing cross-language corre-
lations for phonological awareness (Cisero & Royer, 1995;
Comeau et al., 1999; Durgunoglu et al., 1993; Gottardo, Yan,
Siegel, & Wade-Woolley, 2001; Lindsey et al., 2003). To-
gether, these findings indicate that a variety of theoretically
important skills can be measured in L1, and can be used to
predict later reading achievement in L2. It will be important
to assess the contribution of Spanish-language skills to other
aspects of English-reading achievement, such as the devel-
opment of fluency, and specific comprehension skills, such
as inferential thinking.
The second hypothesis was based on findings that oral-
language skill tends to be a stronger predictor of read-
ing within than across languages (Durgunoglu et al., 1993;
Lindsey et al., 2003). We combined two correlated measures
of oral language, sentence recall and picture vocabulary, into
 MANIS, LINDSEY, AND BAILEY: SPANISH-SPEAKING ENGLISH-LANGUAGE LEARNERS
one measure of expressive language. Our data support this
hypothesis for Spanish Passage Comprehension (compare
Tables 7 and 8). The difference favored the within-language
predictions for English, but was smaller in magnitude (com-
pare Tables 6 and 8). The fact that children’s performance
was generally low on the English expressive language tasks
in first grade (below the 13th percentile, see Table 1), may
account for their weakness as predictors of later reading
achievement. A limitation of the present study is that re-
ceptive language generally progresses more quickly than ex-
pressive language in second-language learners (Bialystok,
2001). It is possible that receptive language measures
would show a more robust relationship with later reading
comprehension.
A final set of questions concerned the contribution of
developing English-language skills to English reading, in-
dependent of the correlation of earlier Spanish skills. The
results were striking. When entered after the four Spanish
language predictors, the four parallel measures in English
reduced the contribution of the Spanish variables to non-
significance. The English measures accounted for substantial
unique variance (22.2 percent for Passage Comprehension
and 31.5 percent for Letter-Word Identification). In addition,
they shared substantial amounts of variance with the earlier
Spanish measures. The strongest English-language predictor
across both reading measures was unquestionably phonologi-
cal awareness, followed by RAN. Expressive Language made
a significant contribution only for Passage Comprehension.
In comparison to the English-language measures, all four
of the Spanish measures accounted for less than 2 percent
unique variance. Virtually all the variability previously ac-
counted for by the Spanish measures, considered alone (e.g.,
as shown in the upper part of Tables 5 and 6), was shared in
common with the English measures. One cautionary note on
interpreting these results is that the English predictors were
obtained closer in time than the Spanish predictors to the
English outcome measures. As the study continues, it will
be possible to compare the contribution of the two sets of
predictors over an equal interval of time (K to second grade
vs. first to third grade).
There are several implications of the last set of results.
What is important about the present research design is that
this is the first study (to our knowledge) to examine the per-
formance of parallel predictors of reading in Spanish and
English. This means that the additional variability accounted
for by the English tasks is not due to the fact that they measure
different skills, but the fact that the development of English
literacy and language skills over a one-year period is an im-
portant predictor of future success in English reading. The-
oretical accounts of the development of biliteracy will need
to factor in the extent to which developing English-language
skills mediate the earlier influence of L1 skills as opposed to
accounting for unique variability. The extent of unique and
common variance for the two languages will need to be stud-
ied for a larger set of measures, at different time points, and
in different samples. For example, a different set of relation-
ships might be predicted for early-exit bilingual programs as
compared to other programs. In a dual-language program,
where children are theoretically encouraged to develop both
L1 and L2 literacy, both L1 and L2 predictors might maintain
223
their independent predictive power, both within- and cross-
linguistically.
One interpretation of the findings for the English variables
is that cross-language transfer accounts for about half of the
variability in reading achievement in L2 in second grade.
The other half appears to be related to developing skills in
English. A possible practical implication of this finding is
that assessment strategies will need to be dynamic (Lundberg,
2002). Children at risk for poor reading might tentatively be
identified based on their performance on a screening battery
in L1. Previously reported analyses of our first-grade data
indicated that about 68 percent of poor readers (depending
on the outcome measure) could be correctly classified us-
ing the present set of kindergarten variables (Lindsey et al.,
2003). However, classification accuracy might improve sig-
nificantly if the first-grade English measures were utilized
in combination with, or even in place of, the kindergarten
Spanish measures. Our findings may help to point the way
toward development of screening measures for reading dis-
ability in biliterate children. Nevertheless, the results of our
study are limited to a particular time, place, and curriculum,
and a broader picture of biliterate development will be nec-
essary before firm recommendations about practice can be
made.
To summarize, the present study replicated and ex-
tended the findings of several previous studies focusing
on cross-linguistic prediction of reading skills in bilin-
gual children. Print knowledge, phonological awareness,
and rapid naming correlated cross-linguistically with later
reading achievement. Expressive language, by contrast, was
found to show a stronger within- than across-language
relationship to later reading. The most novel result was
the finding that English-predictor measures mediated the
contribution of Spanish variables to the prediction of later
English reading. In addition, English variables accounted for
unique variance beyond that attributable to cross-linguistic
associations.
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About the Authors

Frank Manis, Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Southern California. Dr. Manis earned his Ph.D. in Child
Psychology in 1981 at the University of Minnesota. His current research interests are reading and learning disabilities, literacy
development in bilingual children, and neuropsychological bases of cognitive development.
Kim Lindsey, Research Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Southern California. Dr. Lindsey earned
her Ph.D. in Psychology in 2003 at the University of Southern California. Her current research interests are bilingualism and
biliteracy, and the manifestation of dyslexia across languages.
Caroline Bailey, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Children’s Hospital of Oakland. Dr. Bailey received her Ph.D. in 2004 at the
University of Southern California. Her current research interests are prediction, assessment, and treatment of reading disabilities
and the neuropsychological foundations of childhood cognitive disorders.