WEBINAR RECORDING
TITLE: Reading Science for Multilingual Learners: Lessons from Cognitive Development
DATE: November 18, 2025
TIME: 4:00–4:30 p.m. EDT
DETAILS:
In the United States (US), bilingual or Multilingual Learners (MLLs) tend to perform at grade level on word reading or decoding. However, scientific evidence shows that they tend to struggle with reading comprehension and with building knowledge from text throughout the elementary school years. Traditionally, vocabulary instruction has been leveraged to address many of MLLs’ needs in reading comprehension, yet this does not seem to be enough to address MLLs’ needs in understanding text. In fact, the history of bilingualism research shows that bilingualism has often been perceived as detracting to learning and reading, rather than contributing to it. However, evidence from the last two decades and recent evidence point to the role that Executive Function (EF) skills might play as plausible drivers of reading comprehension in MLLs. In this webinar conversation with CAL colleagues, Ana Taboada Barber draws on existing research and her work on Executive Functions in MLLs and their English-monolingual peers to help shed light on how an asset-based approach to teaching MLLs can help broaden our understanding of their challenges with reading comprehension and knowledge-building from text.
RESOURCES:
Reading Science for Emergent Bilinguals: Lessons From Bilingualism and Cognitive Research by Ana Taboada Barber (2025), The Reading Teacher: https://ila.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/trtr.70016
How Reading Motivation and Engagement Enable Reading Achievement: Policy Implications
Ana Taboada Barber (2020) ataboada@umd.edu
Volume 7, Issue 1. https://doi.org/10.1177/2372732219893385
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