Supporting multilingual children at-risk of reading failure: impacts of a multilingual structured pedagogy literacy intervention in Kenya

AbstractMany children living in linguistically diverse low- and middle-income countries learn to read and write in multiple languages. Recent research provides implications for effective reading instruction with multilingual learners (e.g., Hall et al. in New Dir Child Adolesc Dev 166:145 –189, 2019). However, there is limited empirical evidence on effective instructional practices for multilingual early grade learners who are at-risk of reading failure. The goal of our research was to examine the effect of a structured literacy intervention on literacy skills for a cohort of first grade children at-risk of reading failure as they learned to read in Kiswahili and English. Data were drawn from a larger longitudinal randomized control trial of the Primary Math and Reading Initiative in four counties in Kenya (Kiambu, Nakuru, Nairobi, and Kisumu, with 165 at-risk children identi fied (71 control; 94 treatment). Children in the treatment condition received daily structured instruction in letter knowledge, phonological awareness, decoding, word reading, and reading comprehension in Kiswahili and English. Children in the control condition continued with the business-as-usual a pproach, typically whole word instruction. Path analysis was used to examine the intervention effect of the PRIMR program through second grade. The path models further explored the within- and cross-language relationships of variables that predict oral reading fluency over time. Our analyses reveale d that ...
Source: Reading and Writing - Category: Child Development Source Type: research