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Research Brief – Learning to Read while Learning a Language: Reading and English Learners

Trish Morita-Mullaney, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Purdue University

February 2025

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The Science of Reading (SOR) is intended to benefit all children as they develop a strong foundation in reading. For a growing number of students who have proficiencies in languages other than English, how they experience SOR classroom activities differs. Students who are learning English as an additional language come from a variety of language backgrounds and enter at different levels of English proficiency, ranging from beginner to advanced. This research brief provides a linguistic landscape of Indiana’s K-12 students, followed by a review of the research on how certain components of reading (phonemic awareness, phonics, and fluency) are different for identified-English learners (ELs). 

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The linguistic landscape of Indiana’s K-12 students

Indiana is home to students who speak 296 different languages, most of whom are born in the United States and whose parents are devoted to both their home language maintenance their development in English. The current population of English learners who have a language background other than English accounts for over 148,000 students with 93,625 students requiring English language development services by certified personnel (Morita-Mullaney, 2022). Indiana requires that when a district has at least 30 identified-ELs, then a licensed English as a Second Language teacher must serve as their teacher of record (McCormick, 2019). 

Supreme Court course cases ensure that identified-ELs receive an accessible and meaningful education. Lau v. Nichols (1974) states that the “same education is not an equal education” and as such, meaningful efforts and resources must be furnished to make such education accessible. Castañeda v. Pickard (1981) goes a step further stating that identified-ELs must have an education that is 1) based on sound educational theory for ELs; 2) adequately resourced; and 3) found to be effective. Several federal statutes articulate a legal right for identified-ELs to a “meaningful and reasonable” education, including the Title VI of Civil Rights Act of 1964, Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974, and the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 (ESSA)–the federal authorization within the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Within these statutes, districts and schools commit to provisions of making instruction accessible to them while they are moving through the English language development process and holding fast to the three-pronged rule as articulated above in Castañeda. 

How reading is different for identified-ELs

Phonemic awareness, phonics, and fluency are foundational reading skills. This section reviews three key ways in which developing these skills is different for identified-ELs.  

Phonemic Awareness

Phonemic awareness is the capacity to identify sounds and manipulate them. Typical activities related to phonemic awareness include rhyming. For example, a teacher might have students say “mop” and “top” and recognize that the initial sounds are different. For identified-ELs, they are accustomed to hearing different phonemes in their home languages; thus, they draw upon those more familiar sounds to connect to English. When identified-EL students are asked if a sound is correct, they may be unsure because for them, it is not yet familiar. Because of these linguistic differences and challenges, ELs are often seen as “at risk;” yet when we look at the principles of second language acquisition, they are doing what linguists would expect – using their existing and sophisticated linguistic knowledge to receptively hear sounds and re/produce them in ways that is shaped by their language histories. There is a linguistic logic to what they hear and express. 

Phonics

Phonics involves the matching of sounds to the symbols that represent them by connecting sounds to individual or groups of letters. More specifically, how students move from simple phonemes; to the graphemes they see in text and how they make such correspondences is at the core of phonics instruction (Ehri, 2020). As with phonemic awareness, ELs may not be able to discriminate between similar sounds. For example, for the letter ‘a’ in the word ‘cat’ and ‘had’ sound similar, but the word ‘rare’ and ‘care’ have a different sound production. While these differences are noticeable to an English majority speaker, such sounds may not be discriminated as well by an EL student at the earlier stages of their English language development.  Further, English does not have an exact sound to symbol correspondence, often complicating English phonics learning when ELs are at the earliest stages of their English language development (e.g. level 1 newcomer). 

Fluency

Reading fluency is described by three key characteristics:1) accuracy; 2) pace; and 3) prosody/expression. In practice this often requires students to read passages accurately, at a decent pace and that they do so with voice modulation and expression. For identified-ELs, their understanding of particular letters and sounds is mediated by their first or other languages and students draw upon these resources, impacting how accurate they may sound when reading. For example, if a Spanish-speaking reads the word “jam” as “ham”, this is mediated by the letter “j” having an /h/ sound in Spanish, so for them, this is an accurate production. Yet, in practice, this reading is rendered as inaccurate and instructional placements are made without this linguistic understanding of their first language. 

For pace, if a child reads too slowly it will impede comprehension; so a relatively quick cadence is needed to facilitate understanding (Rasinski & Padak, 2013). Yet, research of identified-ELs shows that while they do read more slowly, this does not necessarily hamper comprehension (Ramirez, 2000). ELs engage in the sophisticated metalinguistic process of making connections in their other languages to English, often impacting the pace and rhythm of their reading. 

Expression or prosody within second language acquisition comes at a later stage in English language development process. How language is used in different contexts and social situations, includes using and adapting language, as well as the ability to pick up on nuances that convey a particular voice to a reading (Lightbown & Spada, 2013). Social expectations and understandings vary across languages and cultures, so even if you are quite proficient in another language, understanding the social cues of expression come much later in the language development process. Thus, when ELs have a monotone narration as they read, they can be identified as lacking fluency in reading, when it is really an indicator of where they are in the English language development process.

Conclusion

Many decisions are made about ELs’ performances within SOR related activities that do not consider their level of English proficiency. Furthermore, much SOR content is not typically a part of teacher preparation, providing teachers with one set of tools for interpreting ELs’ performances. For researchers and practitioners considering ELs within SOR related activities, careful attention should be paid to the principles of second language development, understanding their systems of their first language (e.g. what sounds differ or are absent in their first language) and recognizing that English language development does not always keep pace with the linguistic demands of reading.  

References

Castañeda v. Pickard, 648 F. 2d 989 (5th Cir. 1981).  

Civil Rights Act of 1964, Pub. L. No. 88-352, 78 Stat. 241 (1964)  

Ehri, L. C. (2020). The Science of Learning to Read Words: A Case for Systematic Phonics Instruction. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1), S45–S60.  

Every Student Succeeds Act, Pub. L. No. Public Law 114-95, (2015).  

Lau v. Nichols, 414 U.S. 563 (1974). (1974).  

Lightbown, P., & Spada, N. M. (2013). How languages are learned (4th ed.). Oxford University Press. 

McCormick, J. (2019). English Learner Teacher of Record Frequently Asked Questions. Indiana Department of Education, Indianapolis, IN. 

Morita-Mullaney, T. (2022). Reckoning with Hammers and Mallets: Indiana’s Approach to Licensing English Learner Teachers. Indiana Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, 19(1), 76-101. https://doi.org/10.18060/26562  

Ramirez, J. D. (2000). Bilingualism and Literacy: Problem or Opportunity? A Synthesis of Reading Research on Bilingual Students. Office of Bilingual Education and Minority Languages Affairs (OBEMLA), Washington, DC. 

Rasinski, T. V., & Padak, N. (2013). From fluency to comprehension : powerful instruction through authentic reading (1st ed.). Guilford Press.