Education professor gets $1.4 million to study kids’ Spanish-English language transfer skills

Young-Suk Kim, UCI professor of education, has been awarded a $1.4 million, four-year grant from the Institute of Education Sciences to explore children’s Spanish-English language transfer skills. “In kindergarten through 12th grade, English learners are the fastest-growing student population,” Kim said. “This study will systematically investigate how children’s first-language skills are related to their second-language abilities.” The goal of the project is to compare the development of language, cognitive and literary skills in Spanish to their development in English and identify factors promoting success.