After many months preparing, the Read Lab has just launched the second half of our story book project for dual-language learners! Last year, with the imaginative, hard-working and phenomenal alumnae Bianca Zardetto and Anisha Agarwal, we finished a version of this study that looked at how beginner Spanish learners pick up new vocabulary differently from books written all in Spanish vs. code-switching books that just pepper in the Spanish words. We won’t give away the findings here just yet, but they were pretty remarkable 😉

Now we’re finally ready with four new books  to test beginner English learners in the same way. With our newest student researcher, Jessica Jara, doing both the outreach and reading, the study launched today at Hillview Library in San Jose.

In a few weeks we should have some findings that we can share, so stay tuned. And, in the meantime if you have or know a 2- to 5-year-old Spanish speaker who would like to hear a couple new animal stories, let us know!