Spanish-Language Home Visitation to Disadvantaged Latino Preschoolers: A Means of Promoting Language Development and English School Readiness

Abstract

This study reports five years of a school readiness intervention called " HABLA " (Home Based Ac-tivities Building Language Acquisition), designed to increase and enrich speech and literacy activi-ties in the homes of economically and educationally disadvantaged Latino families with children between the age of 2 and 4. A team of trained home visitors provided two years of a 23-week pro-gram of visitation in which they met with parent(s) and child twice weekly. Both years presented a Spanish language adaptation of the parent-child home program model; home visitors provide in-tensive modeling and coaching of non-directive Spanish language use, conversation, and literacy activities. Administration of the PLS-3 in Spanish at the onset and culmination of each year of the program indicates significant increases in receptive and expressive language for each year of visi-tation (7.8 standard points for the first year, 4.4 for the second) with effect-size r ranging from .24 to 42. Participants had significantly improved their levels of oral Spanish skill and scored much higher than a comparison group of non-treated. A subset of graduates of the two-year program was tested as kindergarteners; they showed a continued advantage over a comparison group of 18 peers who had not received the intervention. For the graduates, both their Spanish PLS-3 scores and English PLS-4 scores were significantly higher, and their parents reported a continued effort to provide literacy experiences at home. The HABLA participants also showed a clear advantage for an English language test of phonological awareness, one of the strongest predictors of school success.