Second Language Reading Disability

Gunderson, Lee; D’Silva, Reginald Arthur; Chen, Louis

doi:10.4324/9780203853016.ch2

Cited by 4 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…However, for some children, despite having normal intelligence and adequate education, reading is a struggle rather than an enjoyment (Stevenson et al, 1982; Chan et al, 2007). An additional challenge is that children may have to learn to read a second language (L2) at the same time due to political, social, educational, or personal reasons (Gunderson et al, 2011), regardless of whether or not they are struggling with L1 reading. In light of these difficulties, both the prevalence of reading difficulty in L1 and L2 and how varying levels of L1 reading ability affect L2 reading success become important concerns for parents, educators, and researchers.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

et al. 2019

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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.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

et al. 2019

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“…The United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and other English-speaking countries are also well-known for their advanced civilizations. Gunderson and Chen (2011) claimed that "English is a language associated with the most powerful country in the world and it is also a major feature associated with access to knowledge, technology, and the internet" (p.17). Anyone who wants better access to the rapidly growing knowledge base in these fields must attain sufficient English ability to read academic literature and understand speeches which are mainly carried by English language media.…”

Section: Backgr Ound Statementmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…3) Reading materials are comparatively easy for Chinese people to access, and no matter whether in urban or rural areas it is convenient for students to be exposed to English. 4) Reading is an important skill for students to gain knowledge in English for their future learning (Charrell, Devine, & Eskey, 1988;Gunderson, D'Silva, & Chen, 2011). Based on these four reasons, reading is crucial to solving struggling Chinese EFL students' learning problems.…”

Section: Pr Oblem Statementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tutoring Chinese EFL Learners to Read: An Exploratory Research of Customized Reading Scaffolding Instruction

Hua¹

2019

Proceedings of the 2019 AERA Annual Meeting

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“…In this acquisition process, mapping lexical representation to spoken words creates a foundation for lexical and phonological processing and the subsequent acquisition of new words (Perfetti and Harris, 2013). Strong associations between orthography and phonology contribute to literacy in L1 (first language) Chinese (Guan et al, 2011(Guan et al, , 2020 and in an L2 (Gunderson et al, 2011). However, we know little about the pattern of cross-linguistic word recognition development in both L1 Chinese and L2 English among Chinese children.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cross-Linguistic Word Recognition Development Among Chinese Children: A Multilevel Linear Mixed-Effects Modeling Approach

Guan

Fraundorf

2020

Front. Psychol.

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The effects of psycholinguistic variables on reading development are critical to the evaluation of theories about the reading system. Although we know that the development of reading depends on both individual differences (endogenous) and itemlevel effects (exogenous), developmental research has focused mostly on average-level performance, ignoring individual differences. We investigated how the development of word recognition in Chinese children in both Chinese and English is affected by (a) item-level, exogenous effects (word frequency, radical consistency, and curricular grade level); (b) subject-level, endogenous individual differences (orthographic awareness and phonological awareness); and (c) their interactive effect. We tested native Chinese (Putonghua)-speaking children (n = 763) in grades 1 to 6 with both Chinese character and English word identification (lexical) decision tasks. Our findings show that (a) there were effects of both word frequency and age of acquisition in both Chinese and English, but these item-level effects generally weakened with increasing age; (b) individual differences in phonological and orthographic awareness each contributed to successful performance; and (c) in Chinese, item-level effects were weaker for more proficient readers. We contend that our findings can be explained by theoretical models that incorporate cumulative learning as the basis for development of item-level effects in the reading system.

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Second Language Reading Disability

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

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

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

Tutoring Chinese EFL Learners to Read: An Exploratory Research of Customized Reading Scaffolding Instruction

Cross-Linguistic Word Recognition Development Among Chinese Children: A Multilevel Linear Mixed-Effects Modeling Approach

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