Effects of a family literacy program for latino parents: Evidence from a single-subject design

Purpose: This study investigated the effects of a family literacy program on Latino parents’ language practices at home and their children’s oral language skills. The study examined the extent to which (a) the program called Family Reading Intervention for Language and Literacy in Spanish was effective at teaching low-income, low-education Latino parents 3 language strategies (i.e., comments, high-level questions, and recasts) for reading aloud and (b) parent implementation of the target strategies influenced children’s language skills. Method: Five Latino mothers and their Spanish-speaking preschool children participated in a multiple-baseline, single-subject design across participants. Program initiation was staggered across the mothers after obtaining a stable baseline. Data on parent and child outcomes were collected across 3 experimental conditions: baseline, intervention, and follow-up. This study employed visual data analysis (e.g., level, trend, variability) to examine the program effects on parent and child outcomes. Results: The program had an important effect on parental use of comments and high-level questions, but less impact on recasts. In addition, the program had a notable effect on the children’s use of different words and conversational turns, less effect on inferences, and no effect on the mean length of utterance in words. Conclusion: Family Reading Intervention for Language and Literacy in Spanish is an effective program to extend and enrich the reading practices that low-income children from a culturally and linguistically diverse background experience at home. The results have implications for family literacy programs aimed at minority Spanish-speaking families.