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

This study examined (a) the identification of various reading groups across languages in Chinese (L1) adolescents learning English as a second language (ESL), in terms of their word-reading and reading comprehension skills, (b) overlap in reading group membership across languages, and (c) the performance of the various reading groups on reading-related language comprehension measures in English. The participants were 246 eighth-grade students from an English-immersion program in a middle school in China. Latent profile analysis identified three reading groups in each language: (a) a typically developing reader group with average or above-average word-reading and reading comprehension, (b) a group with poor decoding/word-reading skills and weak reading comprehension, and (c) a group with poor reading comprehension in the absence of poor decoding/word reading. The overlap in profile characteristics across languages for typically developing readers and poor decoders was high (about 68% for typically developing readers and 54% for poor decoders), whereas the overlap for being poor comprehenders in each language was moderate (about 37%). Furthermore, poor decoders in either language performed more poorly than the typically developing and poor comprehender groups on word reading in the other language, while poor comprehenders in either language performed more poorly than the typically developing and poor decoder groups on reading comprehension in the other language. The comparison of the reading groups' performance on English reading-related language comprehension measures showed that poor comprehenders and poor decoders performed worse than typically developing readers. Implications for identification and instruction of ESL children with reading difficulties are discussed.

Exploring sources of poor reading comprehension in English language learners.

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.

Examining Reading Comprehension Profiles of Grade 5 Monolinguals and English Language Learners Through the Lexical Quality Hypothesis Lens.

This study set out to compare patterns of relationships among phonological skills, orthographic skills, semantic knowledge, listening comprehension, and reading comprehension in English as a first language (EL1) and English language learners (ELL) students and to test the applicability of the lexical quality hypothesis framework. Participants included 94 EL1 and 178 ELL Grade 5 students from diverse home-language backgrounds. Latent profile analyses conducted separately for ELLs and EL1s provided support for the lexical quality hypothesis in both groups, with the emergence of two profiles: A poor comprehenders profile was associated with poor word-reading-related skills (phonological awareness and orthographic processing) and with poor language-related skills (semantic knowledge and, to a lesser extent, listening comprehension). The good comprehenders profile was associated with average or above-average performance across the component skills, demonstrating that good reading comprehension is the result of strong phonological and orthographic processing skills as well as strong semantic and listening comprehension skills. The good and poor comprehenders profiles were highly similar for ELL and EL1 groups. Conversely, poor comprehenders struggled with these same component skills. Implications for assessment and future research are discussed.

Morphology and Spelling in French: A Comparison of At-Risk Readers and Typically Developing Children.

We present two studies that examine the role of morphology in French spelling. In Study 1, we examined the concurrent and longitudinal relationships between inflectional awareness and derivational awareness and spelling within a sample of 77 children in a French immersion programme in Canada. Children completed a non-verbal reasoning measure and French measures of phonological awareness, word reading, vocabulary, morphological awareness, and spelling. Results showed that inflectional morphological awareness in Grade 3 was a predictor of spelling in the same grade. Inflectional awareness in Grade 2 predicted Grade 3 spelling, controlling for reading-related skills and spelling at Grade 2. These analyses support the role of inflectional morphological awareness in the development of spelling of children of a range of reading and spelling abilities. In contrast, derivational awareness in Grades 2 and 3 did not predict spelling concurrently in both grades respectively. Study 2 contrasted the morphological errors in the spellings of six children at risk for reading difficulties with those of six chronological age-matched and six reading level-matched children. Analyses showed that at-risk children exhibited more difficulties with spelling roots and suffixes in words as compared with their age-matched peers, although they performed similarly to children matched on reading level. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.