Accurately Predicting Future Reading Difficulty for Bilingual Latino Children at Risk for Language Impairment

Sixty-three bilingual Latino children who were at risk for language impairment were administered reading-related measures in English and Spanish (letter identification, phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, and sentence repetition) and descriptive measures including English language proficiency (ELP), language ability (LA), socioeconomic status, and preschool attendance at kindergarten. At the end of first grade, English word-level reading and reading comprehension (RC) were measured. Results indicated that the Spanish predictor measures did not account for significant variance over and above the English predictor measures for any of the first-grade outcome measures. Of the descriptive predictor measures, only ELP and LA were significantly predictive, accounting for unique variance in first-grade RC. Sensitivity ranged from .67 to .86 and specificity ranged from .82 to .93 across the four first-grade outcome measures.