Walk into any classroom in the US, you’ll likely encounter students who speak a language other than English at home, who might have learned to read in another language before coming to school, or who are learning to read in more than one language in their classroom. Regardless of the language of the teacher, multilingual learners, including 10% students who are categorized as English Learners (Center for Educational Statistics, 2024) come to school every day and bring with them their valuable multilingual experiences and assets. In 2020, the NEA predicted that by 2025, one in four students in American classrooms will be an English Learner. (NEA, July 2020)
Educators are currently being asked to change the way we teach English literacy as State and local authorities follow one after the other to overhaul English Reading Instruction according to the Science of Reading (SoR). Strangely absent in the conversation about the best ways to teach foundational English reading skills is the discussion about what pedagogical approach might be best for multilingual learners. Although a robust body of research in bilingual development and biliteracy exists in the reading research corpus, it is largely tokenized, dismissed or ignored by SoR advocates (Rios, C. and Castillon, C. 2018; Escamilla, K. ; Olson, L. & Slavick, J. 2022; Mora, J.; Flores, B. and Diaz, E. 2024). As the new President of the Center of Applied Linguistics, I bring a long career of curating and translating research information into effective classroom support for bilingual teachers and students. For me, several questions remain unanswered by the advocates of Science of Reading: How is learning to read the same or different for multilingual learners? What are the ways in which English foundational reading skills can be best taught to students who come with multilingual skills? What is the role of the multilingual learners’ bilingual development in boosting English foundational literacy skills? To what extent do currently established school policies and practices in reading instruction help or delay multilingual learners’ literacy development? What is the evidence that SoR aligned approaches work effectively with multilingual learners?
In fact, evidence seems to point to the contrary. As SoR policies and practices gain popularity, bilingual researchers and advocates of ELs began to raise concerns that many of the one-size -fit all approaches to teaching reading imposed by State and schools adopting Science of Reading policies did not work well for multilingual learners. The National Committee on Effective Literacy released reports and resources sounding alarms to the harm that it may cause to multilingual learners.
Based on a recent study conducted with teachers of multilingual learners across the US implementing SoR approaches, NCEL researchers reported that while teachers agree on the importance of developing phonemic awareness and phonics as a part of foundational reading skills in English, they found many other required practices from SoR to be inadequate and/or harmful to their multilingual learners reading development (Strong, K.; Escamilla, K.; Hernandez, M. and Coleman-Spiegel, J., 2024). They noted that the experiences of multilingual students as literacy learners are largely ignored and need to be re-centered in the quest for effective reading instruction for all students.
Multilingual learners’ experiences is undoubtedly the missing piece to help solve the current pedagogical puzzle. In order to claim that SoR benefits all students, we must a) take into account the experiences of multilingual individuals who teach and learn in the multilingual classroom as valid and valuable information, b) incorporate research on bilingual, biliteracy development into the Science of Reading research central corpus and c) center multilingual learners experiences to inform effective reading policies and practices. To do otherwise is to fail in our responsibilities to educate these students.
References
Escamilla, K.; Olsen, L. and Slavick, J. (2022). Toward Comprehensive Effective Policy and Instruction for English Learner/Emergent Bilingual Students. (National Committee for Effective Literacy www.multiliteracy.org)
Mora, J.; Flores, B. and Diaz, E. ( 2024) , Response to “English Learners and Science of Reading”. Kaplan: the Grade.
National Center for Education Statistics (2024) The Condition of Education: English Learners in Public Schools. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cgf/english-learners#suggested-citation (Washington DC: Center for Educational Statistics)
National Educational Association (2020). English Language Learners Toolkit.
Strong, K.; Escamilla, K.; Hernandez, M. , and Spiegel- Coleman (2024). Voices from the field: the impact of Science of Reading implementation on bilingual/English Learners programs and teachers. Plenary Presentation (Santa Fe, NM: La Cosecha Conference, November 2024)
Ríos, Cristina and Catalina Castillón. (2018). “Bilingual Literacy Development: Trends and Critical Issues,” International Research and Review: Journal of Phi Beta Delta 7, no. 2: 85–96.
Diep Nguyen, Ph.D., serves as president and CEO of the Center for Applied Linguistics.
