ABSTRACT

Young English learners (ELs) whose home language is Spanish continue to lag behind in several school readiness areas including language and literacy skills in spite of their strong social skills, which are positively related to language and literacy. The purpose of this article is to identify challenges that preschool Spanish speaking ELs face, explore theoretical underpinnings of context-based instructional models, and discuss implications for research, practice, and policy making. Based on sociocultural theory and social transactional theory, we propose a conceptual framework that consists of embedding a teacher-scaffolded instruction within reciprocal peer mediated interactions to promote preschool Spanish speaking ELs’ English language and literacy skills for kindergarten readiness. Given the transactional nature of peer tutoring, we hypothesize that children receiving the scaffolded reciprocal peer tutoring will have increased social interaction. Additionally, we expect a mediating effect of children's social interaction on their language and literacy development.

摘要

母语为西班牙语的年轻英语学习者 (EL) 在包括语言和读写能力在内的几个入学准备领域仍然落后，尽管他们具有与语言和读写能力呈正相关的强大社交技能。本文的目的是确定学龄前西班牙语 EL 面临的挑战，探索基于情境的教学模式的理论基础，并讨论对研究、实践和政策制定的影响。基于社会文化理论和社会交易理论，我们提出了一个概念框架，该框架包括在互惠的同伴介导的互动中嵌入教师脚手架教学，以促进学龄前西班牙语 EL 的英语语言和识字能力，为幼儿园做好准备。鉴于同伴辅导的交易性质，我们假设接受脚手架互惠同伴辅导的孩子会增加社交互动。此外，我们预计儿童的社交互动对他们的语言和读写能力发展有中介作用。