Ana Taboada Barber

The goals of this project are to explore how native English speakers' and English Learners' (ELs) degree of bilingualism relates to their cognitive, language, and reading comprehension skills and to identify features of effective literacy instruction in Dual Language Immersion (DLI) programs. Despite the recent rise of DLI programs, and the increased awareness of the value of foreign language learning, research on the effects of bilingualism in DLI programs and on identifying the key feature...

The purpose of this project is to examine known cognitive factors (e.g., word level factors, oral language, strategy use), as well as novel cognitive malleable factors (e.g., EF skills: inhibitory control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility) and reading engagement components involved in the development of reading comprehension in English Learners (ELs) and English Monolinguals (EMs). Although ELs have adequate word reading skills in the early elementary grades, they perform relatively...

National statistics point to a crisis in adolescent reading. According to the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress, 70% of 8th graders are at or below the basic level in reading, leaving them unable to make inferences or connections within and across texts, explain causal relations, or analyze text features. Further, only 22% of 8th graders agree that reading is their favorite activity and only 13% agree that they learn a lot from reading books. In this project, the research team...