First and Second Language Reading Difficulty Among Chinese–English Bilingual Children: The Prevalence and Influences From Demographic Characteristics

Abstract

Learning to read a second language (L2) can pose a great challenge for children who have already been struggling to read in their first language (L1). Moreover, it is not clear whether, to what extent, and under what circumstances L1 reading difficulty increases the risk of L2 reading difficulty. This study investigated Chinese (L1) and English (L2) reading skills in a large representative sample of 1,824 Chinese–English bilingual children in Grades 4 and 5 from both urban and rural schools in Beijing. We examined the prevalence of reading difficulty in Chinese only (poor Chinese readers, PC), English only (poor English readers, PE), and both Chinese and English (poor bilingual readers, PB) and calculated the co-occurrence, that is, the chances of becoming a poor reader in English given that the child was already a poor reader in Chinese. We then conducted a multinomial logistic regression analysis and compared the prevalence of PC, PE, and PB between children in Grade 4 versus Grade 5, in urban versus rural areas, and in boys versus girls. Results showed that compared to girls, boys demonstrated significantly higher risk of PC, PE, and PB. Meanwhile, compared to the 5th graders, the 4th graders demonstrated significantly higher risk of PC and PB. In addition, children enrolled in the urban schools were more likely to become better second language readers, thus leading to a concerning rural–urban gap in the prevalence of L2 reading difficulty. Finally, among these Chinese–English bilingual children, regardless of sex and school location, poor reading skill in Chinese significantly increased the risk of also being a poor English reader, with a considerable and stable co-occurrence of approximately 36%. In sum, this study suggests that despite striking differences between alphabetic and logographic writing systems, L1 reading difficulty still significantly increases the risk of L2 reading difficulty. This indicates the shared meta-linguistic skills in reading different writing systems and the importance of understanding the universality and the interdependent relationship of reading between different writing systems. Furthermore, the male disadvantage (in both L1 and L2) and the urban–rural gap (in L2) found in the prevalence of reading difficulty calls for special attention to disadvantaged populations in educational practice.

Profiles of Poor Decoders, Poor Comprehenders, and Typically Developing Readers in Adolescents Learning English as a Second Language

“…Our results support the view that the associations of difficulties in two languages are moderate even though Chinese is quite different from English. Our overlap rate for poor decoders is higher than those of Gao et al (2019), who reported a 36% overlap across Chinese and English reading difficulties in Grade 4, and McBride-Chang et al (2013) with 40% overlap for 8-year olds, but similar to those of Tong et al (2015), who found a 42% overlap in Grade 2 and a 57% overlap in Grade 5. Overall, these results suggest that age is a critical factor: as age increases, so does overlap.…”

“…Research about the overlap of reading difficulty groups of bilingual children has mostly been limited to children in one reading difficulty category, that is, poor decoding or poor reading comprehension (e.g., Gao et al, 2019; McBride-Chang et al, 2012; Tong et al, 2018). Although a few studies have compared groups of children learning English as an L2—for example, poor decoders, poor comprehenders, and typically developing readers—L1 reading skills were not considered (Geva & Massey-Garrison, 2013; Lesaux et al, 2006; Lipka & Siegel, 2012).…”

“…They found that Chinese L1 poor readers also performed more poorly than the average and good readers on English reading performance and Chinese L1 reading performance was predictive of English L2 reading performance. Furthermore, Gao et al (2019) found that approximately 36% of poor readers in Chinese word reading were also poor in English word reading in their Grades 4 and 5 samples in Mainland China.…”

Left and Right Arcuate Fasciculi Are Uniquely Related to Word Reading Skills in Chinese-English Bilingual Children

“…The participants' home language and social language was Chinese, but all participants were Chinese-English bilinguals who started learning to read both Chinese and English at approximately 6 years old and received about four English classes and four Chinese classes per week (45 minutes per class). In our study, Chinese-English bilinguals refers to children who learned Chinese as their first language (L1) and English as their second language (L2) and began to receive formal Chinese and English literacy instruction at around age 6 (Chow, 2014;Gao et al, 2019). The children's L1 Chinese was more dominant than their L2 English because exposure to their L1 was more frequent compared to their L2 (Siu & Ho, 2020).…”

Dyscalculia and dyslexia in Chinese children with idiopathic epilepsy: Different patterns of prevalence, comorbidity, and gender differences

“…11 Similarly, studies of Chinese children have shown that boys were more likely than girls to experience reading difficulty. 12 However, the results on gender differences in math fluency are mixed. Some studies showed no significant gender differences, [13][14][15] whereas others found a higher rate of arithmetic disorder among females than among males 16 or the opposite.…”