Improving Literacy Skills of Students From Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Backgrounds

Changes to legal language related to identification of students with learning disabilities underscore issues relevant to students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds and minority students overrepresented in special education. In this article, the authors focus on research and research-based reading interventions, highlighted by changes in identification practices, which might help to increase reading opportunities and achievement gains of students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. Interventions related to improving the following basic literacy skills are included: phonological awareness, or the ability to hear and manipulate sound structure of language; alphabetic understanding, or the mapping of print to speech and the phonological decoding of letter strings into corresponding sounds while blending sounds into words; accuracy and fluency with connected text, or the facile and seemingly effortless recognition of words in connected text; and reading comprehension, or using experiences and prior knowledge of vocabulary and language construction along with awareness of strategies to connect and make sense of the text. Use of these direct and explicit scientifically based reading interventions can support reading achievement of students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.