Jimenez-Garcia-Pearson-1996-5b3440ca1f564This article was submitted by Joey (Georgia) Garcia to accompany the 1994 publication entitled “Assessment and Diversity.” David was Bob’s Ph.D. adviser, and Joey was his thesis director. The actual publication was derived from Bob’s dissertation. The findings were from qualitative think-alouds in which Bob, as a bilingual researcher, interacted with the students in Spanish and English to document how they approached and comprehended narrative and informational texts in each language. The findings revealed that bilingual, middle-school, Latina/o students who were successful readers in English, utilized a uniform view of reading to comprehend in Spanish and English. They also utilized effective reading strategies to comprehend texts in both languages, including strategies unique to bilinguals as compared to monolinguals, such as translating. A very limited use of cognates was observed. The less successful bilingual readers thought that thinking about reading in both languages would be confusing and did not make use of what they knew about reading in one language to approach reading in the other language.
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