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Literacy and English-Language Learners: A Shifting Landscape for Students, Teachers, Researchers,
and Policy Makers
Jim Cummins
EDUCATIONAL RESEARCHER 2009 38: 382
DOI: 10.3102/0013189X038005382

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Literacy and English-Language Learners:
What Researchers and Policy Makers Should Know
Developing Reading and Writing in Second-
Language Learners: Lessons From the
Report of the National Literacy Panel on
Language-Minority Children and Youth.
Diane August and Timothy Shanahan (Eds.).
New York: Routledge, 2008. 320 pp., $140.00
(hardcover), ISBN 978-0-8058-6208-9; $25.95
(paper), ISBN 978-0-8058-6209-6.
Developing Literacy in
Second-Language Learners
A Review by
Lisa Pray and
Robert T. Jiménez
This coedited work is a condensed version
of a recently published compilation of
research titled Developing Literacy in Second-
Language Learners: Report of the National
Literacy Panel on Language-Minority
Children and Youth (August & Shanahan,
2006). The National Literacy Panel on
Language-Minority Children and Youth,
funded by the Institute of Education
Sciences, Department of Education Office
of English Language Acquisition, and the
National Institute of Child Health and
Human Development, was given the charge
to “identify, assess, and synthesize research
on the education of language-minority
children and youth with respect to their
attainment of literacy, and to produce a
comprehensive report evaluating and syn-
thesizing this literature” (p. x). The report
purports to represent “the state of knowl-
edge” on this topic in a 669-page volume
that sets forth questions, methods, and
summaries of empirical findings and pro-
vides recommendations for future research.
Educational Researcher,Vol. 38, No. 5, pp. 380–385
DOI: 10.3102/0013189X09339353
© 2009 AERA. http://er.aera.net
380 educational Researcher
Its authors and editors then wrote the book
under review (August & Shanahan, 2008) to
make the findings of the larger report “some-
what more accessible to the general reader.”
The book’s intended audience includes
researchers, those involved in teacher educa-
tion, teachers, and other school practitioners.
The organization of the book is similar
to that of the larger report. The book’s
introductory chapter, which is pretty much
identical to that in the report, sets forth the
methods in the report and a summary of
the report’s findings. In the body of the
book, each section condenses findings
from two or more report chapters, covering
English-language learners’ (ELL) literacy
development and cross-linguistic relation-
ships and the sociocultural context of lit-
eracy, instructional approaches, and student
assessment. The book’s final chapter is
nearly identical to that of the report.
Our review centers on three major topics:
the accessibility of the book for its intended
audience, the potential uses of the book in a
teacher education program, and alternative
perspectives on the methodology and major
findings of the report and book.
Dissemination of the report’s findings is
a critical component of the charge assigned
to the National Literacy Panel. Given the
complexity of the report, condensing it
must have been a daunting task. In our
opinion, however, this goal was only par-
tially achieved. The authors did not alter
the style, construction, flow, or in some
cases, text of the book to accommodate a
“general reader.” The authors’ understand-
ing of a general audience may have been
too broad, including a range of potential
readers, from researchers to teachers and
other school practitioners. Researchers
would be well advised to refer directly to
the larger report rather than rely on this
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Book
Reviews
condensed version. Teachers and other
school practitioners will have difficulty
wading through discussions of multivari-
ate and regression research designs in their
quest to understand the main findings. It
seems to us that it would be beneficial to
synthesize across all the chapters and put
together a text that is truly more accessible,
such as Becoming a Nation of Readers
(Anderson, Hiebert, & Scott, 1985). For
example, the book could flesh out the
more important findings from Lesaux and
Geva. These authors show us that second-
language learners perform as well or better
than monolinguals on phonological tasks,
that bilingual learners perform better than
monolinguals on measures of print aware-
ness, and that with sufficient exposure to
second-language reading, language-minority
students develop word-reading skills equiva-
lent to those of monolingual students. It is
only when reading comprehension is the
focus that language-minority students
encounter problems. These research find-
ings need to be presented in an integrated
fashion to avoid giving the impression that
the authors endorse a reductionist version
of literacy. Elaborating on each of these
points with examples, explaining how
instruction influences outcomes, and pro-
viding portraits of the students undoubt-
edly would be of more value to teachers
and other educators. Doing so would make
the book unique rather than just a reduced
version of the larger report.
Despite the above critique, general
themes that appeared across the chapters
are important to reinforce in teacher edu-
cation programs and in the development
of programs that serve second-language
learners. For example, Garcia, McKoon,
and August remind us that language profi-
ciency is a multidimensional construct
difficult to measure, that assessments of
language proficiency do not predict how
well students will perform on standardized
reading or content area assessments, that
test bias remains a significant concern, and
that standardized tests of reading and
assessments used to identify students with
disabilities provide a “limited view of stu-
dents’ language development” (p. 263).
The disturbing and continuing problems,
which Snow aptly describes as the “sorry
state of assessment” (p. 280), provide evi-
dence of the critical need for assessment
research and development. We really liked
the discussion on transfer by Genesee,
Geva, Dressler, and Kamil, and the fasci-
nating further discussion of the topic
picked up on by Snow in the final chapter.
Genesee and his colleagues argue that we
should rethink transfer as “preparedness
for future learning” and that “use of knowl-
edge from the first language is evidence
of resourcefulness” (p. 68). In addition,
strong support for native-language instruc-
tion and its beneficial effects on the literacy
development of second-language learners
were noted in the chapters by August
et al. and Genesee et al., who stated that
there exists “strong evidence of relation-
ships and influences between English lan-
guage learners’ first and second languages
in second-language literacy” (p. 83). These
authors describe the benefits of teaching
ELL students in a language the children
understand—acknowledging that instruc-
tion in the children’s first language (L1)
does not inhibit their ability to develop lit-
eracy skills in their second language (L2)—
and explain the positive effects of literacy
transfer from L1 to L2. The implications
of these findings are discussed in more
detail by Slavin and Cheung (2005) and by
Genesee, Lindholm-Leary, Saunders, and
Christian (2006). With such solid evidence
for native-language instruction, it seems a
bit odd that assertions concerning the prom-
ise of all-English instruction are recognized
as having promise, yet corroborating evi-
dence is not provided (p. 171).
Of concern to us was that some perspec-
tives and research approaches were privileged
over others. This privileging may be related
to the selection of authors, who appeared to
be overrepresented by the fields of special
education and mainstream monolingual lit-
eracy researchers. Perhaps because of the pref-
erences of their funding agencies, the research
questions tended to be driven by a singular,
mostly cognitive theoretical framework. For
example, randomized controlled trials and
quasi-experimental designs were overrepre-
sented, and qualitative methods and findings
were often presented secondarily, almost
inconsequentially. In addition, there was lit-
tle attempt to acknowledge the positivist
paradigm prevalent throughout the text. This
is illustrated by the following quote:
Ethnographies and case studies, like
experiments, vary in quality. The best of
these studies are based on theory and use
rigorous measures aligned with the goals
of the study. Ultimately, these studies can
generate only hypotheses about the influ-
ence instruction may have on learning
(because they make no systematic manip-
ulation of the instruction, they have no
control group), but they can help identify
subtle factors that may affect learning,
they can be a useful basis for establishing
hypotheses for future inquiry, or when
joined with experimental studies, they
can help explain why certain experimen-
tal results are obtained. (p. 133)
Randomized controlled trials are partic-
ularly ill suited to the investigation of the
multiple dimensions of language learning
and literacy, including sociocultural vari-
ables. This bias had significant conse-
quences for one of the report’s findings:
“There is surprisingly little evidence for the
impact of sociocultural variables on literacy
learning” (p. 8). Would quantitative meth-
ods have made these impacts more convinc-
ing? Our suggestions are consistent with the
Grant, Wong, and Osterling (2007) cri-
tique of the report, which questioned using
a cognitive theoretical framework to
describe complex phenomena related to the
intersection of sociocultural characteristics
and literacy development. To be fair, we
applaud the authors of the report for having
included qualitative and ethnographic work
throughout the report. We only wish the
findings from these studies had been pre-
sented in a more substantive manner, as the
studies were often cited but not discussed.
Evaluating literacy research produced
in the past 25 years pertaining to second-
language learners is an enormous and
ambitious undertaking. Given the narrow
theoretical framework and methodology
used, the National Literacy Panel has
successfully synthesized the research and
identified future research needs according
to this perspective. Despite the identified
gaps in the research, August et al. tell us that
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“efforts to improve the literacy instruction
of language-minority children have a good
chance at success” (p. 150) and also that
“future efforts to improve reading achieve-
ment . . . need to put much greater empha-
sis on building background knowledge,
language development, and cognitive
tools” (p. 150). We agree, and we look for-
ward to research and theoretical develop-
ment that provide better support for
developing readers and writers who are
second-language learners.
REFERENCES
Anderson, R., Hiebert, E. H., & Scott, J. A.
(1985). Becoming a nation of readers: The report
of the commission on reading. Washington, DC:
National Academy of Education.
August, D., & Shanahan, T. (Eds.). (2006).
Developing literacy in second-language learn-
ers: Report of the National Literacy Panel
on Language-Minority Children and Youth.
Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Genesee, F., Lindholm-Leary, K., Saunders, B.,
& Christian, D. (2006). Educating English
language learners: A synthesis of research evi-
dence. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press.
Grant, R. A., Wong, S. D., & Osterling, J. P.
(2007). Developing literacy in second-
language learners: Critique from a hetero-
glossic, sociocultural, and multidimensional
framework. Reading Research Quarterly, 42,
598–609.
Slavin, R. E. & Cheung, A. (2005). A synthesis
of research on language of reading instruc-
tion for English language learners. Review of
Educational Research, 75, 247–284.
AUTHORS
LISA PRAY is an associate professor of the
Practice of Teaching English Language Learners
at Vanderbilt University, Peabody College,
Department of Teaching and Learning, Box
230 GPC, N230 Appleton Place, Nashville,
TN 37203–5721; lisa.pray@vanderbilt.edu.
Her work focuses on development and evalua-
tion of ELL teacher education programs and
examination of language assessments used to
assess English-language learners.
ROBERT T. JIMÉNEZ is a professor of lan-
guage, literacy, and culture at Vanderbilt
University, Peabody College, Language, Literacy,
and Culture Program, Box 330, Nashville, TN
37203; robert.jimenez@vanderbilt.edu. His
research focuses on the language and literacy
practices of Latino students.
Manuscript received December 15, 2008
Accepted December 17, 2008
June/July 2009 381
Literacy and English-Language
Learners: A Shifting Landscape
for Students,Teachers,
Researchers, and Policy Makers
A Review by
Jim Cummins
This volume is a condensed version of
the much longer report of the National
Literacy Panel on Language-Minority
Children and Youth titled Developing
Literacy in Second-Language Learners:
Report of the National Literacy Panel on
Language-Minority Children and Youth
(August & Shanahan, 2006). In the original
report, the panel identified five domains to
investigate: (a) the development of literacy
in language-minority children and youth,
(b) cross-linguistic relationships, (c) socio-
cultural contexts and literacy development,
(d) instruction and professional develop-
ment, and (e) student assessment. The
shorter version of the report is intended
to make the findings more accessible for
researchers, teachers, and other school
practitioners.
Although in both works August and
Shanahan (and their colleagues who authored
individual chapters) present balanced and
useful syntheses of research, I was left with a
sense of dissatisfaction with their conclu-
sions, or lack thereof. I believe that much
more definitive, policy-relevant conclusions
can be reached on the basis of a critical review
of the empirical data than those articulated
by the authors. Part of the problem derives
from the methodology employed in carrying
out the review of research in the original
report. Because the panel decided to review
(with some exceptions) “only research pub-
lished in peer-reviewed journals dating back
to 1980” (p. 3), it omitted several highly sig-
nificant studies (e.g., Oller and Eilers’s [2002]
book Language and Literacy in Bilingual
Children, which involved almost 1,000 stu-
dents in dual-language or monolingual pro-
grams in Florida; and Portes and Rumbaut’s
[2001] Legacies, a book that documents
sociocultural influences on second-genera-
tion minority group students’ English aca-
demic development). Other relevant studies
reported in sociology journals were also
omitted from consideration (e.g., Bankston
& Zhou, 1995; Rumberger & Larson,
1998).
382 educational Researcher
In the sections that follow, I review and
critique the major findings of the National
Literacy Panel.
Development of Literacy
According to the panel, the research points
to very different developmental trends in
word-level aspects of literacy (e.g., decod-
ing, spelling) as compared with text-level
skills such as reading comprehension.
Language-minority students frequently
develop word-level skills to the same degree
as their monolingual peers, but significant
differences tend to remain in text-level
skills. The panel also concluded that what
they term “oral language proficiency”
explained minimal amounts of variance in
word-level skills but played a much greater
role in reading comprehension in English
for second-language students. The panel
points out, for example, that oral vocabu-
lary knowledge plays a “crucial role” (p. 46)
in reading comprehension.
With respect to factors that influence
second-language reading comprehension,
the panel highlighted the role of a number
of individual variables (e.g., readiness
skills, motivation) and contextual variables
(e.g., socioeconomic status, text attri-
butes). However, the panel also claimed
that “although length of time in the coun-
try and instruction are likely to have an
influence on reading comprehension for
language-minority students, there is little
evidence available to examine their influ-
ence” (p. 43).
This statement is inaccurate in the
extreme. Many studies have documented
that at least 5 years is typically required for
second-language students to catch up in
English academic skills such as vocabulary
knowledge and reading comprehension
(e.g., Collier, 1987, Cummins, 1981;
Hakuta, Butler, & Witt, 2000; Klesmer,
1994). Thus one of the reasons that differ-
ences between native speakers and language-
minority students persist longer in text-level
skills than in word-level skills is that the
“catch-up” trajectories for these two compo-
nents of literacy are very different (5 or
more years for text-level skills compared
with 1–2 years for word-level skills).
Again, contrary to the claims of the
panel, there is powerful evidence regarding
the role of certain instructional factors in
promoting English reading comprehension
among ELL students. Elley and Mangubhai
(1983), for example, demonstrated that
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4th- and 5th-grade students in Fiji exposed
to a “book flood” program during their
30-minute daily English (L2) class in
which they simply read books either alone
or with the guidance of their teacher, per-
formed significantly better after 2 years
than students taught through more tradi-
tional methods. Elley (1991) similarly
documented the superiority of book-based
English-language teaching programs
among primary school students in a variety
of other contexts. These findings reflect
the growing evidence that reading engage-
ment is a powerful predictor of reading
achievement (Guthrie, 2004; Organisation
for Economic Co-operation and Develop­
ment [OECD], 2006). For example, the
OECD concluded on the basis of large-
scale research into the reading achievement
of 15-year-olds in 27 countries that “the
level of a student’s reading engagement is a
better predictor of literacy performance
than his or her socioeconomic background,
indicating that cultivating a student’s
interest in reading can help overcome
home disadvantages” (p. 8).
Cross-Linguistic Relationships
According to the panel, strong evidence for
interdependence across languages emerged
in the areas of phonological awareness,
reading comprehension, cognate-vocabulary
knowledge, and use of reading strategies.
Studies involving aspects of oral language
other than vocabulary knowledge tended
to be inconclusive.
Interpretation of these data is rendered
difficult because of the absence of any the-
oretical consideration of the nature of “lan-
guage proficiency” and its relationship to
“literacy” in the panel’s report. In particu-
lar, the way in which the panel conceptual-
ized the construct of oral language
proficiency is highly problematic. The
construct is defined as follows: “For pur-
poses of this review, oral language profi-
ciency denotes knowledge or use of specific
aspects of oral language, including phonol-
ogy, vocabulary, morphology, grammar,
and discourse domains. It encompasses
skills in both comprehension and expres-
sion” (p. 1).
No empirical data or theoretical ratio-
nale are provided to support the coherence
of this construct, and inconsistencies
quickly emerge. For example, despite the
fact that the definition of oral language pro-
ficiency includes knowledge of and use of
phonology, later chapters frequently treat
them as separate constructs. For example,
the report points out that “phonological
processing skills are better than oral lan-
guage proficiency as predictors of word
reading skills” (p. 50). More fundamen-
tally, vocabulary knowledge and phono-
logical processing clearly follow different
developmental trajectories after the initial
grades, which raises the question of why
they should be considered components of
a construct called oral language proficiency.
Furthermore, it is unclear to what extent
oral vocabulary knowledge can be sepa-
rated either logically or empirically from
written vocabulary knowledge; for exam-
ple, is there any fundamental difference in
comprehension requirements between lis-
tening to a lecture on photosynthesis and
reading the same lecture on photosynthe-
sis? Certainly, oral vocabulary knowledge
and written vocabulary knowledge in this
instance are likely to have more in com-
mon with each other than either has with
the ability to pronounce or decode the
word photosynthesis.
Although the panel documents consid-
erable research evidence supporting cross-
lingual relationships, it also ignores some
of the most persuasive research that sup-
ports such relationships. For example, an
almost universal finding that emerges from
a vast amount of research on bilingual pro-
grams around the world is that spending
part of the day teaching in a minority lan-
guage entails no long-term adverse effects
on students’ academic development in the
majority language (see Cummins, 2000,
for a review). These findings can only be
explained with reference to some form of
common underlying proficiency reflecting
interdependence of academic skills and
knowledge across languages (or what Riches
and Genesee, 2006, describe as a reservoir
of knowledge, skills, and abilities that
underlie academic performance in both
languages).
Sociocultural Relationships
The panel concluded that “there is surpris-
ingly little evidence for the impact of
sociocultural variables on literacy learning”
(p. 8). The panel notes that a significant
number of ethnographic and case studies
provide examples of teachers’ giving legiti-
macy to students’ personal, communal, or
cultural backgrounds in the classroom,
but in the view of the panel, few of these
studies demonstrated relationships
between sociocultural validation in the
school and students’ literacy outcomes.
Many sociologists and anthropologists
would take issue with this dismissal of the
research relating sociocultural factors to
students’ literacy development and academic
achievement. They might point to the sig-
nificant variation across immigrant and
minority group students in patterns of aca-
demic achievement, which is not accounted
for by socioeconomic status, as evidence
for the influence of sociocultural and socio-
political factors (e.g., Ogbu, 1992; Stanat
& Christensen, 2006). They might also
point to Portes and Rumbaut’s (2001) con-
clusion on the basis of their large-scale
study of second-generation immigrant stu-
dents that maintaining links to the home
culture and language is associated with
higher educational achievement:
The findings from our longitudinal study
consistently point to the benefits of selec-
tive acculturation. This path is closely
intertwined with preservation of fluent
bilingualism and linked, in turn, with
higher self-esteem, higher educational
and occupational expectations, and
higher academic achievement. (p. 274)
Bankston and Zhou (1995) similarly point
out that “identification with Vietnamese
ethnicity, Vietnamese reading and writing
abilities, attitudes toward future educa-
tion, and current study habits all have sig-
nificant [positive] effects on current
educational outcome” (p. 14).
Classroom and School Factors
The panel concluded that “language-
minority students instructed in their native
language . . . and English perform, on aver-
age, better on English reading measures
than language-minority students instructed
only in English” (p. 11).
This is clearly an important finding that
is consistent with other credible reviews of
the impact of bilingual education (e.g.,
Genesee, Lindholm-Leary, Saunders, &
Christian, 2006). However, the panel
ignores the more significant and generaliz-
able finding that across a wide range of
sociolinguistic and sociopolitical contexts,
spending time teaching in a minority lan-
guage entails no adverse effects on students’
literacy development in the majority lan-
guage (see Cummins, 2000, for a review).
In other words, bilingual education is a
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legitimate and empirically supported option
for developing language-minority students’
reading and writing skills both in English
and in their home languages.
Assessment
The panel concluded that major problems
of cultural and linguistic bias characterize
the assessment of language-minority stu-
dents. Few could argue with this conclu-
sion. However, the panel fails to link what
Catherine Snow, in the final chapter of the
summary book, calls “the sorry state of
assessment” with problems of construct
definition related to the notion of “English
language proficiency.” If the constructs of
(oral) language proficiency and literacy are
incoherent, as argued earlier, then assess-
ments of these constructs will inevitably
reflect that incoherence. Also, the panel
failed to address perhaps the major current
policy issue related to the assessment of
ELL students, namely, the fact that, in the
context of the No Child Left Behind legis-
lation, ELL students are required to take
high-stakes standardized tests after just 1
year of English instruction. If students have
not attained grade expectations after 1 year,
their performance is interpreted as being
due to inadequate instruction. As noted
above, ELL students typically require at
least 5 years to catch up academically, and
thus the attribution of ELL students’ lower
reading achievement to inadequate instruc-
tion not only ignores the empirical evi-
dence but has devastating impacts on
teacher and student morale in schools with
large numbers of ELL students.
In conclusion, the report is useful but
flawed. Much more definitive conclusions
are warranted on the basis of the research
data in relation to the trajectories of ELL stu-
dents’ language and literacy development,
the role of L1 in learning L2, the impact of
sociocultural variables and societal power
relations in determining ELL students’
academic outcomes, and the potential of
reading engagement to promote reading
comprehension among ELL students.
REFERENCES
August, D., & Shanahan, T. (Eds.). (2006).
Developing literacy in second-language learn-
ers: Report of the National Literacy Panel on
Language-Minority Children and Youth.
Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Bankston, C. L., & Zhou, M. (1995). Effects of
minority-language literacy on the academic
June/July 2009 383
 achievement of Vietnamese youths in New
Orleans. Sociology of Education, 68, 1–17.
Collier, V. P. (1987). Age and rate of acquisition of
second language for academic purposes. TESOL
Quarterly, 21, 617–641.
Cummins, J. (1981). Age on arrival and immi-
grant second language learning in Canada: A
reassessment. Applied Linguistics, 1, 132–149.
Cummins, J. (2000). Language, power and ped-
agogy: Bilingual children in the crossfire.
Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.
Elley, W. B. (1991). Acquiring literacy in a sec-
ond language: The effect of book-based pro-
grams. Language Learning, 41, 375–411.
Elley, W. B., & Mangubhai, F. (1983). The
impact of reading on second language learn-
ing. Reading Research Quarterly, 19, 53–67.
Genesee, F., Lindholm-Leary, K., Saunders, W., &
Christian, D. (Eds.). (2006). Educating English
language learners: A synthesis of research evidence.
New York: Cambridge University Press.
Guthrie, J. T. (2004). Teaching for literacy engage-
ment. Journal of Literacy Research, 36, 1–30.
Hakuta, K., Butler, Y. G., & Witt, D. (2000). How
long does it take English learners to attain profi-
ciency? Santa Barbara: University of California
Linguistic Minority Research Institute.
Klesmer, H. (1994). Assessment and teacher
perceptions of ESL student achievement.
English Quarterly, 26(3), 8–11.
Ogbu, J. U. (1992). Understanding cultural
diversity and learning. Educational
Researcher, 21(8), 5–14, 24.
Oller, D. K., & Eilers, R. E. (Eds.). (2002).
Language and literacy in bilingual children.
Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development. (2006). Where immigrant stu-
dents succeed: A comparative review of perfor-
mance and engagement in PISA 2003. OECD
briefing note for Germany. Retrieved December
20, 2007, from www.oecd.org/dataoecd/52/
55/36702054.pdf
Portes, A., & Rumbaut, R. G. (2001). Legacies:
The story of the immigrant second generation.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Riches, C., & Genesee, F. (2006). Literacy:
Crosslinguistic and crossmodal issues. In
F. Genesee, K. Lindholm-Leary, W. M.
Saunders, & D. Christian (Eds.), Educating
English language learners: A synthesis of
research evidence (pp. 64–108). New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Rumberger, R., & Larson, K. (1998). Toward
explaining differences in educational achieve-
ment among Mexican-American language
minority students. Sociology of Education,
71(1), 68–93.
Stanat, P., & Christensen, G. (2006). Where
immigrant students succeed: A comparative
review of performance and engagement in PISA
2003. Paris: Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development.
384 educational Researcher
AUTHOR
JIM CUMMINS is the Canada Research Chair
in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching
and Learning of the Ontario Institute for
Studies in Education, University of Toronto,
252 Bloor Street West, Toronto, Canada M5S
1V6; jcummins@oise.utoronto.ca. His research
focuses on literacy development in multilingual
school contexts.
Manuscript received March 17, 2009
Accepted March, 18, 2009
A Response to “Literacy and
English-Language Learners:
A Shifting Landscape for
Students,Teachers,
Researchers, and Policy
Makers,” by Jim Cummins
Response by
Lisa Pray and
Robert T. Jiménez
We heartily agree with Cummins and his
critique of Lessons From the Report of the
National Literacy Panel on Language-
Minority Children and Youth. In particular,
within the full report, the panel failed to
meaningfully conceptualize oral language
proficiency, too easily dismissed the impact
of sociocultural variables on literacy learn-
ing, and questioned the legitimacy of bilin-
gual education by endorsing English-only
instruction without evidence. Although we
may take exception to some of Cummins’s
statements—such as that “it is unclear to
what extent oral vocabulary knowledge can
be separated either logically or empirically
from written vocabulary knowledge” or
that evidence supporting cross-lingual
relationships “can only be explained with
reference to some form of common under-
lying proficiency reflecting interdepen-
dence of academic skills and knowledge
across languages”—we feel that his conclu-
sions are relevant and well articulated.
The greater issue we wish to address is
the relative consequence of using the report
to define future research. The stated pur-
pose is to provide a “comprehensive” report
synthesizing education research on the topic
of ELL literacy attainment. Yet we believe
that this report omitted critical research
regarding bilingual literacy because such
work did not fit the narrow perspective
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taken by the panel (see also Cummins’s
review; Grant, Wong, & Osterling, 2007;
Slavin & Cheung, 2005). Given the condi-
tions under which the report was commis-
sioned and created, we believe it would be a
mistake if future research were limited to its
findings and recommendations.
We are confident that the field is on the
brink of new understandings of how to help
ELL students become more literate. This is
true because the field is maturing and also
because we have a new administration in
Washington that places a much higher
emphasis on examining the multiple vari-
ables affecting the academic achievement of
ELL students. In our view, the topics
addressed by this report were shaped by
political influences that have shifted in sub-
stantive ways, as evidenced by the report
Recommendations for Addressing the Needs of
English Language Learners (ELL Working
Group, 2009). The contributors to this
report encourage researchers to capitalize on
the linguistic capital of ELL students. If
these new directions do indeed reflect a
change in political direction, and we think
they do, we sincerely hope that researchers
will again seriously examine ELL literacy
learning from a sociocultural and linguistic
framework rather than exclusively through
a monolingual and mainstream lens.
Given the lack of political will, support,
and funding for bilingual education in the
past 25 to 30 years, it was no small accom-
plishment to compile the findings con-
tained in the report. In that sense, we are
convinced that many of the contributors to
this report must have gone to heroic
lengths to make their voices heard. We
hope that the education research commu-
nity can now turn to the investigation of
the full range of student strengths and of
all possible instructional responses to the
needs of students learning English. This
work will also require the creation of pro-
fessional development models for ELL
teachers, the development of true measures
of language proficiency, and the investiga-
tion of strategies that support students’
ability to leverage their first language to
develop understandings of their second.
REFERENCES
ELL Working Group. (2009, March). The
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act:
Recommendations for addressing the needs of
English language learners. Retrieved March
30, 2009, from http://www.stanford.edu/
 ∼hakuta/ARRA/ELL%20Stimulus%20
Recommendations.pdf
Grant, R. A., Wong, S. D., & Osterling, J. P.
(2007). Developing literacy in second-language
learners: Critique from a heteroglossic, socio-
cultural, and multidimensional framework.
Reading Research Quarterly, 42, 598–609.
Slavin, R. E., & Cheung, A. (2005). A synthesis
of research on language of reading instruc-
tion for English language learners. Review of
Educational Research, 75, 247–284.
Manuscript received April 8, 2009
Accepted April 19, 2009
A Response to “Developing
Literacy in Second-Language
Learners,” by Lisa Pray and
Robert T. Jiménez
Response by
Jim Cummins
I find myself in strong agreement with the
overall assessment made by Lisa Pray and
Robert T. Jiménez in their review of
the August and Shanahan volume. With
respect to the accessibility of the book for
its intended audience, I agree that researchers
will rely more on the detailed analyses of the
original report, whereas teachers, teacher
educators, school practitioners, and policy
makers will look for research syntheses
that focus more directly and extensively on
instructional or policy implications. The
primary use of the book will probably be as
a supplementary text in graduate courses
related to language learning and bilingual
education.
The major issue that I would like to
address is the observation by Pray and
Jiménez regarding “the positivist paradigm
prevalent throughout the text” and the fail-
ure by the panel to give due weight to the
contributions that qualitative research can
make to scientific knowledge generation.
The following quote from the text exem-
plifies this orientation: “Ultimately, [quali-
tative] studies can generate only hypotheses
about the influence instruction may have
on learning (because they make no system-
atic manipulation of the instruction, they
have no control group)” (p. 133). I agree
with Pray and Jiménez that this perspective
is particularly problematic in assessing the
relationships between literacy develop-
ment and sociocultural variables. However,
it also fundamentally misrepresents the
relationship between theory and research
and the potential contributions of various
kinds of qualitative (and quantitative) data
to knowledge generation.
Ethnographic and case study data con-
tribute to theory (and knowledge genera-
tion) primarily by establishing phenomena
that require explanation. Across a range of
scientific disciplines, knowledge is gener-
ated by establishing a set of observed phe-
nomena, forming hypotheses to account
for these phenomena, testing these
hypotheses against additional data, and
gradually refining the hypotheses into
more comprehensive theories that have
broader explanatory and predictive power
(Cummins, 1999). As one example, this is
how we discovered the nature of our plan-
etary system. Any phenomenon estab-
lished credibly by observation (qualitative
or quantitative) can refute theoretical
propositions or policy-related claims. Thus
Reyes’s (2001) study of biliteracy acquisi-
tion by English-dominant and Spanish-
dominant primary-grade students in a
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dual-language program that strongly pro-
moted writing for authentic purposes
established the phenomenon (which is also
supported by many other studies) that
under appropriate conditions students can
spontaneously develop reading and writ-
ing skills in their second language without
overt literacy instruction in that language.
Not only is this phenomenon consistent
with claims of cross-linguistic transfer of
academic skills, but it also refutes the theo-
retical claim that systematic phonics
instruction is necessary to develop literacy
skills in a language.
Thus, contrary to the claims in the
August and Shanahan volume, ethno-
graphic and case study research is in the
mainstream of scientific inquiry, capable
not just of generating hypotheses but also
of testing and refuting hypotheses. Had
the panel adopted this broader and more
mainstream perspective on scientific inquiry,
it would have employed a much greater
range of data in evaluating the state of sci-
entific knowledge on the literacy develop-
ment of ELL students, and the panel’s
conclusions would have been more defini-
tive and policy relevant.
REFERENCES
Cummins, J. (1999). Alternative paradigms in
bilingual education research: Does theory
have a place? Educational Researcher, 28(7),
26–41.
Reyes, M. L. (2001). Unleashing possibilities:
Biliteracy in the primary grades. In M. L.
Reyes & J. Halcón (Eds.), The best for our
children: Critical perspectives on literacy for
Latino students (pp. 96–121). New York:
Teachers College Press.
Manuscript received March 19, 2009
Accepted April 19, 2009
June/July 2009 385