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Differentiating Literacy Instruction for Culturally, Linguistically and Ability Diverse Students
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Research Findings

Differences in Literacy Development for Students Who Speak Diverse Languages

• The skills required for the development of literacy are similar in many ways for students from diverse language backgrounds, but there are important differences. Effective strategies for teaching literacy to monolingual English speakers are not always effective for English language learners. It is not sufficient, for example, to simply translate reading instructional materials into a child's native language.
• Differences in orthography and structure among different languages may greatly influence how children develop literacy and the rate at which they learn. For example, children may develop phonological awareness at different stages and at different rates depending on the language, and in some phonetically-based languages, children may decrease reliance on this skill earlier than do English-speakers (Durgunoglu, 1997, 2000).
  

Literacy and language

• The development of prerequisite literacy skills, including phonological and syntactical awareness and listening comprehension seems to be most effective when provided in the home language (Ramírez, 2000), indicating the importance of encouraging families to interact as much as possible in their strongest language with their young children.
• Research indicates that English language learners can more easily access literacy skills (Snow, Burns & Griffin, 1998) and tend to reach higher levels of achievement in the long-term when they have received initial literacy instruction in their home language (California Department of Education, 1984, 1991; Collier & Thomas, 1989; Cummins, 1979, 1981, 1986, 1991; Ramírez, 2000; Thomas & Collier, 1997).
• Research is inconclusive regarding the optimal time to introduce literacy in English. Some researchers suggest that English literacy may be taught simultaneously with literacy in the first language without negative consequences (Thomas & Collier, 1997), while others have found benefits to sequencing instruction in the two languages. (Cummins & Swain, 1986). Most agree that the development of biliteracy is beneficial to students.
• When native language instruction is not possible, students should be provided with an enriched, content-based English language curriculum that addresses students' cultural and linguistic differences and learning needs (Thomas & Collier, 1997).
  

Transfer of skills

• A review of brain research (Ramírez, 2000) suggests that language and concepts are developed in the same area of the brain, and that these concepts and skills may be accessed from any language children know.
• Regardless of the language of literacy instruction, research seems to support the idea that a broad range of literacy skills can transfer from one language to any other language the child understands (Cummins & Swain, 1984; Durgunoglu & Oney, 2000; Ramírez, 2000).
  

Instructional Language

• Teaching through short, artificially simplified utterances such as "What is this?" or "Who has the pencil?" is common to special education as well as ESL and foreign language education. Sole use of this constricted input, however, may actually impede students' language and literacy development because it reduces their exposure to authentic, natural language. Researchers suggest that it is desirable for teachers to build from simplified to rich and complex language while providing sufficient scaffolding for students to understand (Gersten, Baker, & Marks, 1998).
• Furthermore, a focus on correcting students' mechanical errors or pronunciation tends to distract students from meaning and to limit opportunities for fluency, as well as conceptual development and reasoning skills. As students develop their second language, they may begin to take more risks, increasing the number of errors in their speech. This is a sign that they are advancing their understanding, and not that they are regressing (Rueda & Earnest, 2001).
  

Vocabulary development

• Vocabulary development depends on both oral and written expression, prior cultural knowledge and experience, and cognitive skills such as memory and categorization as well as decoding proficiency. English language learners (ELLs) develop English vocabulary more slowly than native English speakers, and lack of vocabulary may serve as a barrier to reading comprehension and reading fluency. This barrier is also one of the predominant difficulties experienced by ELLs on English language assessments (McLaughlin, 2000; Ramírez, 2000).

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