Effects of instructional conversations and literature logs on limited- and fluent-English-proficient students' story comprehension and thematic understanding

This article reports an experiment that tests the effects of 2 instructional components used to study literature with upper-elementary-grade limited-English-proficient and English-proficient students. The study is part of an ongoing "component-building" program of research designed to estimate the effects of several individual components of a Spanish-to-English language arts transition program. Literature logs and instructional conversations were the program components identified for intensive study. 5 teachers and 116 fourth and fifth graders participated in the study. Slightly more than half the students were English learners completing their first or second year of English language arts. Teachers had completed I year of literature log and instructional conversation training. Students were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 treatment conditions: Literature logs only, instructional conversation only, literature log + instructional conversation, and control. Posttests showed significant differences among treatment groups. Students in the instructional conversation and literature log + instructional conversation groups scored significantly higher on story comprehension than the control group. Moreover, students in all 3 experimental groups were significantly more likely to demonstrate an understanding of the story themes than the control group. The combined effects of Literature logs and instructional conversations on students' essays about a story's theme varied by language proficiency: limited-English-proficient students' essays benefited from the combined effects of literature logs and instructional conversations; fully English-proficient students' essays, in contrast, showed no such effect.