Effects of a supplemental Spanish oral language program on sentence length, complexity, and grammaticality in Spanish-speaking children attending English-only preschools.
OBJECTIVE
The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a supplemental Spanish language instruction program for children who spoke Spanish as their native language and were attending English-only preschool programs. Specifically, the study evaluated the program's effects on the children's Spanish sentence length in words, subordination index, and grammaticality of sentences.


METHODS
Forty-five Spanish-speaking children attending English-only prekindergarten classrooms were selected for study. Of those, 15 children received 30 min of Spanish instruction 5 days a week for 16 weeks. The program targeted 5-10 vocabulary words a week, dialogic book reading, phonemic awareness, and letter knowledge. The remaining 30 children participated in regular preschool English instruction. Students were evaluated before intervention, immediately after intervention, and 4 months following intervention.


RESULTS
Repeated measures analyses of variance indicated that the children who received the small-group supplemental Spanish language instruction made significant gains in their Spanish sentence length in words and subordination index when compared to those receiving regular English-only classroom instruction. There were no differences in the children's grammaticality of sentences.


CONCLUSIONS
The findings demonstrate that a daily short native language program has significant effects on sentence length in words and subordination index in English language learners who are attending English-only preschool programs.
Restrepo
M Adelaida
MA
Arizona State University, Department of Speech and Hearing Science, P.O. Box 870102, Tempe AZ 85287-0102. laida.restrepo@asu.edu .
Castilla
Anny P
AP
Schwanenflugel
Paula J
PJ
Neuharth-Pritchett
Stacey
S
Hamilton
Claire E
CE
Arboleda
Alejandra
A
D000704:Analysis of Variance; D002663:Child Language; D002675:Child, Preschool; D004493:Education / Q000379:methods*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D007807:Language Tests; D008037:Linguistics; D008297:Male; D019303:Multilingualism; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012574:Schools; D013997:Time Factors