LEARNING TO READ AND WRITE IN ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE: A LITERATURE REVIEW IN CANADA AND THE UNITED STATES

The goal of this paper is to publish the results of a research conducted among kids that learn to read and write in English a second language. This research was focused on Spanish-speaking children that live in Canada and the United States, since the increase in Hispanic immigration in these countries has awakened an increasing interest in the subject. This article presents the main explanatory theories on learning to read and write in a second language and, at the same time, it analyzes the fundamental skills needed for that purpose. At this point, we have tried to sum up the contributions made by previous research on learning to read and write in a second language. Then we approach one of the most debated issues in this field of study: the relation between learning a second language and learning problems, with an emphasis on the importance of finding mechanisms of early identification, in order to offer special support that can prevent the before mentioned problems, always bearing in mind the high proportion of non English-speaking children that present problems in this field.