Exploring sources of poor reading comprehension in English language learners

Abstract

This study examined the sources of reading comprehension difficulties in English language learners (ELLs). The characteristics of ELL poor comprehenders were compared to their English as a first language (EL1) peers. Participants included 124 ELLs who spoke Chinese as an L1 and 79 EL1 students. Using a regression technique based on age, non-verbal reasoning, word reading accuracy, and word reading fluency, three types of comprehenders (poor, average, and good) were identified within each language group. The groups were then compared on measures of oral language skills (vocabulary breadth, vocabulary depth, and listening comprehension), metalinguistic skills (morphological awareness and syntactic awareness), working memory, and higher-level processing skills (inference, conjunction use, and comprehension monitoring). ELL poor comprehenders had significantly lower scores than ELL average and good comprehenders on vocabulary breadth, listening comprehension, and morphological awareness, whereas there were no significant differences between the average and good comprehender groups on these skills. Additionally, both ELL poor and average comprehenders had lower scores than ELL good comprehenders on all three higher-level skills. Finally, results showed that ELL poor comprehenders scored lower than EL1 poor comprehenders on vocabulary breadth, listening comprehension, and morphological awareness, but the two groups did not differ on higher-level skills. Theoretical and educational implications for the identification and instruction of ELL poor comprehenders are discussed.

Reading Comprehension in Both Spanish and English as a Foreign Language by High School Spanish Students

“…As previously stated, morphological awareness is a skill that continues to develop throughout the school years ( Casalis and Louis-Alexandre, 2000 ), along with reading expertise ( Rastle, 2019 ). In addition, several studies demonstrated its relationship with reading comprehension, since it contributes significantly to knowing the meaning of words, thus favoring the understanding of the text (e.g., Deacon and Kirby, 2004 ; Cain and Oakhill, 2006 ; D’Alessio et al, 2019 ; Zhang et al, 2020 ; Li et al, 2021 ). However, the study of Zhang et al (2020) supports that the contribution of morphological awareness depends on language proficiency.…”

“…Morphological awareness is defined as the ability to manipulate morphemes and the structure of words ( Kuo and Anderson, 2006 ). This metalinguistic consciousness, especially considering derivational morphology, continues to develop throughout schooling ( Casalis and Louis-Alexandre, 2000 ), and it is important to achieve word meanings, in turn then favoring reading comprehension ( McBride-Chang et al, 2003 ; Deacon and Kirby, 2004 ; Cain and Oakhill, 2006 ; Guo et al, 2011 ; Jeon and Yamashita, 2014 ; Tong et al, 2014 ; D’Alessio et al, 2019 ; Zhang et al, 2020 ; Kotzer et al, 2021 ; Li et al, 2021 ).…”

The Effects of Syntactic Awareness to L2 Chinese Passage-Level Reading Comprehension

“…Thus, it is logical to operationalize syntactic awareness as word order knowledge using a word order knowledge test. In addition to word order knowledge, previous research in L1 Chinese and L2 English reading has also shown that the ability to detect and correct grammatical errors accounted for a significant amount of unique variance in L1 Chinese (e.g., Chik et al, 2012) and L2 English reading comprehension (e.g., Li et al, 2021). Grammatical judgment and correction test could tap into different aspects of Chinese syntactic knowledge such as function words, conjunctions, tense markers, classifiers, particles, prepositions, and copula words.…”

Introduction to the special issue on advances in the understanding of reading comprehension deficits

“…They find that for college students with discrepant levels of reading comprehension and decoding, vocabulary and morphological awareness appear to be protective factors, thus enabling adequate comprehension of text despite relatively weak decoding skills. Previous studies have shown that morphological awareness is generally weak in poor comprehenders (e.g., Tong et al, 2014) and Li et al (2021) found that morphological awareness is lower in ELL poor comprehenders than in English as a first language (EL1) poor comprehenders; conversely, the findings of Farris et al indicate that morphological awareness may play a role in mitigating word-level deficits for those readers who have effectively bypassed developing strong decoding skills and still attained relatively strong reading comprehension. Farris and Odegard's findings indicate that further understanding what allows for unexpectedly proficient comprehension may provide both theoretically and practically informative insights about reading comprehension.…”

“…The third set of papers explores the influence of readers' English language learner (ELL) status (Li et al, 2021;Martinez-Lincoln et al, 2021). ELL status in particular, versus other categories of students, is linked to reading comprehension because ELLs often show an S-RCD-like profile (Farnia & Geva, 2013;Lesaux et al, 2006), with stronger word-level processes than their reading comprehension proficiency would suggest.…”