Advancing Elementary-Level Students' Linguistic/Cultural Proficiencies Through Children's Literature

Abstract

This chapter outlines a research study designed to document and understand the relevancy of children's literature in Spanish to elementary-level university students' linguistic and cultural competencies. Participants in the study were enrolled in three second-semester Spanish courses at a large land-grant university in the southwestern United States. During the study, students read two children's books and participated in a series of class activities designed to deepen their understanding and appreciation of various grammatical structures and cultural phenomena in the books. Data for the study were obtained and triangulated through journal entries, surveys, and focus-group interviews. Findings from the study demonstrated that, from the students' perspectives, the children's books contributed to their linguistic proficiency by providing them with multiple opportunities to access input and produce output in Spanish in meaningful ways while also promoting their cultural proficiency by immersing them in the cultural story worlds of the books.