Project Archive

Acquiring Literacy in English:
Crosslinguistic, Intralinguistic, and Developmental Factors

FUNDERS: Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development;
U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences

September 2000 - May 2009

Acquiring Literacy in English (ALE) was a 5-year program of research in which the Center for Applied Linguistics and its collaborators, Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, the University of Miami, and the University of Houston, studied the factors that predict success as Spanish-speaking children learn to read and write in English. While literacy in monolingual English-speaking children has been intensively studied, much less is known about how the process of acquiring literacy differs for monolingual and bilingual children. For example, does literacy in one language facilitate or hinder the acquisition of literacy in a second language? If literacy skills acquired in one language can be transferred to the development of literacy in another language, may all such skills be transferred? What are the conditions that favor transfer?

ALE was one component of a larger research initiative, Development of Literacy in Spanish Speakers (DeLSS) that was jointly organized and funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and the Institute of Education Sciences of the Department of Education. The grant period ran from 2000 to 2005.

 

Visit the Acquiring Literacy in English Web site to learn more about this project.

 

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