Preface

Deidra Darst

11/22/07

I began this semester not knowing what to expect from this course.   When I learned that I was expected to choose a research topic regarding literacy, I thought, “What comes to mind when I hear the word ‘literacy’?”  I automatically think of reading literacy skills, so I knew that I wanted to incorporate reading literacy into my research question.  I then asked myself, “can I complete research in this course that will benefit my other course work?”  My diagnostics class had just discussed culturally and lingustically diverse children, so I wanted to learn more about this particular population.  Last semester I wrote a literature review for an education course, and I focused on bilingual education in the United States.  I learned a great deal about the cirricula associated with bilingual education, but I realized that I could benefit from learning even more.  I worked with several different versions of a research question, but narrowed it down after speaking with Mrs. McComas.  She helped me tweak my question in order to create a specific question for my project.  The final version of the question is as follows: 

How can speech-language pathologists help facilitate the development of literacy skills necessary for reading in the second language of bilingual first grade children?