SHL Literacy Skills The Search for Hidden Treasure

Abstract

For SHL learners in U.S. schools, formal exposure to reading is more frequently experienced in English rather than Spanish. Consequently, research in SHL literacy focuses more on writing development and presumes SHL/SNS learners possess little to no reading skills in Spanish. We assert that SHL reading abilities are not inexistent, rather, that texts used in traditional classroom
reading activities do not provide adequate measures of such skills (Brantmeier, 2005). Our efforts in designing an innovative reading task as part of a placement measure (MacGregor-Mendoza & Moreno, 2020a), provided an opportunity to investigate how diverse literary forms aid in identifying the literacy skills that SHL learners already do possess. The present study demonstrates that shedding the perspective of reading from an L2 standpoint and instead, modeling texts after those used by SHL learners in their own daily literacy practices provides greater opportunities to discern their reading abilities for the purposes of placement and beyond.