Literacy Skill Differences between Adult Native English and Native Spanish Speakers

The goal of this study was to compare the literacy skills of adult native English and native Spanish ABE speakers. Participants were 169 native English speakers and 124 native Spanish speakers recruited from five prior research projects. The results showed that the native Spanish speakers were less skilled on morphology and passage comprehension tasks but were equally skilled on the phonology and vocabulary tasks. Morphology, coupled with phonology, was a stronger predictor of vocabulary and comprehension abilities for the native Spanish speakers, which suggests that instruction focused on morphology is likely to have a greater impact on this group.