Biliteracy in Bilingual Programs: Understanding how Children Read Dual‐Language Books

Because dual‐language books (DLBs) print the entire text in two languages nearby on the page, they have great potential for supporting children's biliteracy development by providing contexts to compare/contrast languages. However, little is known about how children read DLBs independently and how they may/may not use such characteristics to support learning. This article reports on a study of the think‐alouds/verbal protocols of 63 Spanish‐English bilingual third and fifth graders and the strategies they used to translate words and retell pages as they read DLBs. Children often took up their identities as language learners and chose to read the language with which they were less familiar. They were also strategic readers, but their strategies were not always accurate. Findings indicate that children would benefit from using DLBs in bi‐/multilingual classrooms and participating in activities such as strategic, analytic translation to build their linguistic knowledge and their biliteracy skills.