Team profile by Sofia Cava, Abigail Eun, Rohan Guddanti, Sofia Guerrero, Joshua Lopez, Ana Martinez, Joseph Raza, Calista Ringas and Cara Shield

One out of five people in the United States speaks a language other than English at home, with Spanish as the most commonly spoken non-English language. In the U.S., a “heritage language” is any language other than English that is spoken by an individual, family or community.

Many American school systems are built around the monolingual paradigm, where one language is taught and utilized in the classroom setting. Linguistic diversity is not the norm, and as a result the unique needs of Spanish heritage language learners are neglected and viewed from a deficit perspective – lacking in English, Spanish or both.

The ¡Celebra mi herencia! project aims to develop an enriching reading program that promotes interactive reading sessions, enhances reading motivation and supports Spanish heritage speakers in maintaining their heritage language. The program connects local children, aged 8-11, and their families with Duke students, who serve as weekly peer tutors, providing the opportunity for them to support each other in their development as multilingual speakers and readers.

How The Program Works

To recruit families for our program, our team employed two main recruitment methods. The first was to create a video, which used a combination of skit-style comedy and informational segments to explain to parents the program’s overall goal of making reading a positive learning experience for children while also explaining some of the core tenants (i.e. helping children build an affinity for their heritage).

We distributed this video in local spaces, such as the church Iglesia Emmanuel, where there are programs that address educational gaps. The team also recruited families at the local Mexican grocery store La Superior in Durham. Over the course of a week, multiple team members went to the supermarket, set up a table outside the store and engaged families who identified with the cause of the program and expressed interest in participating.

The families we recruited were randomly assigned to two groups. The first group was “treatment” families who received a selection of seven books and participated in seven one-on-one weekly reading sessions with a Duke reading buddy. The second group was “control” families who only received the books. Families received books that were based on both the child’s interest and heritage (e.g. a Mexican child interested in outer space may have read El niño que alcanzó las estrellas, a book about José M. Hernández, the first Mexican American NASA astronaut). These books were sent to families in a box that also had weekly challenges the families could participate in to enrich their time in the program (e.g. watching a movie in Spanish).

Additionally, the parents and children in both groups took two surveys, one before participating in the program and one after. These surveys tracked key metrics, such as their affect and attitude towards their heritage, their confidence reading in Spanish and the frequency with which they read at home, as they progressed throughout the course of approximately seven weeks.

Our Findings

Our research found that interactive reading sessions positively influenced reading motivation among children in the treatment group. We evaluated three key factors affecting reading motivation through pre- and post-study surveys: self-perception of reading skills, social reading experiences (literacy out loud) and the individual value attributed to reading.

The treatment group exhibited improvements in all three areas, while there were no significant changes in the control group. On a scale from 1 to 3 (with 1 representing low motivation and 3 representing high motivation), treatment group responses increased from 1.89 to 2.01 for self-perception of reading skills; from 1.77 to 1.82 for social reading experiences; and from 2.14 to 2.23 for individual value of reading.

Control group responses exhibited downward trends, with self-perception of reading skills falling from 1.90 to 1.86, and social reading experiences falling from 2.00 to 1.86. While none of these statistics can be interpreted as causal, they do show the difference between treatment and control groups, and ultimately support our efforts to enhance reading motivation in different ways through our planning and execution of reading sessions.

Our study also revealed a correlation between the implementation of structured reading sessions and an increased self-reported affect toward reading in Spanish. Within the treatment group, there was a 28.57 percentage point increase in children who expressed feeling that they read in Spanish “very well” or “fairly well” between the pre- and post- survey.

“My tutee and I would read Spanish books on space, biology and archaeology, and he would be full of questions! It’s incredibly inspiring to watch my tutee not only develop his Spanish reading and comprehension skills but discover his interests.”                       - Abigail Eun, Undergraduate Team Member

In contrast, the control group experienced only a modest increase of 9.09 percentage points between pre- and post- surveys. These findings underscore the tangible benefits of reading sessions on the participants’ attitudes toward Spanish reading within the treatment group.

Another notable discovery from the post-survey of the treatment group is that none of the participants reported that they read Spanish “not at all” well. Conversely, participants in both the control group and the treatment group pre-survey reported reading Spanish “not at all” well around 18-19% of the time. These findings underscore how the reading sessions not only enhanced enthusiasm for Spanish reading but also mitigated participants’ own negative perceptions of their abilities.

Our preliminary results also suggest that children who participated in the program, regardless if they were in the control or treatment group, demonstrated improvements in their understanding, affect and belonging towards their ethnic identity. The treatment group, in all three facets of ethnic identity, had a greater relative growth in these areas than the control group, although the difference was not statistically significant.

The children’s affect towards their ethnic identity was the factor that showed the greatest difference in growth between the control and treatment families. However, it’s important to note that our preliminary data analysis only included the data from the 2021-2022 cohort of reading buddies, for a total sample size of 19 families.

“Hey, Reading in Spanish is Kind of Fun Now!”

This quote came from one of the children who participated in the program. The Duke student he was working with had originally expressed concerns that the child was rather uninterested in reading in Spanish because he was intimidated by reading in a new language. However, after about the third reading session, this child suddenly expressed a new interest in reading in Spanish because it seemed so much more enjoyable.

We chose to include this quote because it is a strong testament to the mission of our program. Through one-on-one reading sessions that have interactive elements – such as activities the child can do to creatively make their own personal connections to the book, or tying the book back to a child’s heritage culture and even working with students to help them express Spanish in a way that is authentic to themselves – we help make reading in a second language (something that may have always been seen as embarrassing or difficult for the kids we work with) fun and exciting. We hope this program inspires kids to not just keep reading, but to keep using their second language and building pride in their heritage.

“Oh, This is Actually Fun!”: Impact of a Reading Program on Latino/a Children’s Ethnic Identity Formation and Reading Motivation

Poster by Sofia Cava, Joan Clifford, Stephanie Contreras, Abigail Eun, Rohan Guddanti, Sofia Guerrero, Joshua Lopez, Ana Martinez, Joseph Raza, Calista Ringas, Riley Selig-Addiss, Silvia Serrano, Cara Shield and Maia Szulik