Corinne Urbas's List: Reading

Study after study has demonstrated that there is a strong and positive  correlation between literacy in the native language and learning English (New  York State Education Department, 2000; Clay, 1993) and that the degree of  children's native language proficiency is a strong predictor of their English  language development (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998). Literacy in a child's  native language establishes a knowledge, concept and skills base that transfers  from native language reading to reading in a second language (Collier &  Thomas, 1992; Cummins, 1989; Escamilla, 1987; Rodríguez, 1988).