THE RELATIONSHIP OF NATIVE LANGUAGE READING ACHIEVEMENT AND ORAL ENGLISH PROFICIENCY TO FUTURE ACHIEVEMENT IN READING ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE (ARIZONA)

he purpose of this study was to test the relationship between Spanish reading achievement and oral proficiency in English to actual reading achievement in the test performance of a representative sample of 200 3rd and 4th grade children in bilingual programs in southern Arizona.;Study subjects were all Spanish speaking students who began their schooling speaking little or no English. Their school program consisted of learning to read initially in Spanish while learning oral English as a Second Language. All subjects transferred to English reading during the third grade.;Subjects in the study were given the following achievement or assessment tests: (1) the Home Language Inventory (HLI); (2) the Artes de Lenguaje (ADL) Spanish reading test; (3) the Language Proficiency Measure (LPM) oral English test; and (4) the California Achievement Test (CAT) English reading test.;Results of the study revealed that: (1) There is a strong positive relationship between Spanish reading achievement and English reading achievement (r =.50); (2) There is no significant relationship between oral English skills and English reading achievement (r =.16); (3) Reading comprehension skills in Spanish are the strongest predictors of English reading achievement; and (4) Receptive skills in English are better predictors of English reading achievement than are oral English skills.;The study investigated the following six research questions: (1) Is there a positive correlation between reading achievement in Spanish and reading achievement in English? (2) Is there a positive correlation between English language proficiency and reading achievement in English for ;All analyses concluded that the best predictor of English reading achievement, for students in the study, was Spanish reading achievement. Further, oral English skills are not strong predictors of English reading achievement for...