Thirty-three preschool children who were learning English as a second language participated in 16 weeks of either comprehension-oriented or letter/rhyme-focused small group instruction. Pretests and posttests of book vocabulary, story comprehension, print concepts, letter naming, writing, rhyming, and English oral proficiency were given. Children who participated in comprehension instruction outperformed letter/rhyme children on vocabulary and print concepts. Letter/rhyme instruction children outperformed comprehension children on letter naming and letter writing. English oral proficiency was more strongly correlated with the linguistic comprehension domain of early literacy than with the decoding-related domain. There was clear evidence that children at the very initial stages of English acquisition could learn both linguistic comprehension and decoding-related components of early literacy from explicit small group instruction.