Effects of paired bilingual and English-only intervention with struggling Spanish-speaking English language learners on generalized reading performance

There has been an increase of students whose first language is not English. In fact, Dominguez de Ramirez and Shapiro (2006) found that 78% of students whom are ELL and in special education are Spanish-speaking in grades K-12. This increases the demand for high quality interventions to address the needs of these students within the schools resources. Previous research by Vaughn et al. (2006), has suggested that an increasing number of students cannot read in their native language and conducted a building block assessments in English and Spanish and measured English and Spanish Reading Fluency. The current study investigated the effects of instructional language on acquiring sight words and fluency skills to generalize over to a reading comprehension skill in English to provide support for Vaughn et al. (2006). Drill flashcard interventions were conducted in Powerpoint formant to address the limited time and resources of teachers. Students were randomly assigned to one of two treatment conditions: English-only or Bilingual. The findings of the current study did not provide sufficient evidence to support bilingual intervention over English only intervention on generalized English reading skills