Numerous studies on reading comprehension with monolingual children have shown that oral language, such as vocabulary, is an important factor in predicting reading comprehension success. However, few studies have looked at the reading comprehension performance of bilinguals, and less is known about the contributors to its success, linguistic or…

Purpose: This study examined language group differences in English syntactic knowledge based on performance on a sentence repetition task. Method: Fourth and sixth grade students who were monolinguals (n = 30), early bilinguals (i.e., simultaneous; n = 27), or late bilinguals (i.e., sequential; n = 29) completed an English sentence repetition…

In this paper, I explore Discourses [Gee 1996. "Social Linguistics and Literacies: Ideology in Discourses." 2nd Edition, 1996; 3rd Edition, 2008; 5th Edition. 2015. London: Taylor & Francis] on language, and how they influenced plurilingual students' subject positioning during classroom interactions. I analyse documents published by…

Background: Complex syntax is affected by developmental language disorder (DLD) during the school years. Targeting areas of syntactic difficulty for children with DLD may yield useful assessment techniques. Aims: To determine whether wh-movement can be measured in language samples from typically developing mono- and bilingual school-aged children,…

This article draws on data generated through a multi-site collaborative inquiry with students across five English and French schools in Canada and France to investigate children's social representations of plurilingualism. Children were asked to draw a sequence of reflexive drawings of a monolingual, a bilingual and a plurilingual individual, as…

In English-majority contexts such as British Columbia, French second language (FSL) teachers are increasingly encountering students who are also learning French in addition to English and their home languages. Research findings show that dual language learners are successfully supported through multilingual pedagogies that acknowledge and…

Differences between monolingual and multilingual vocabulary development have been observed but few studies provide a longitudinal perspective on vocabulary development before and following school entry. This study compares vocabulary growth profiles of 106 multilingual children to 211 monolingual peers before and after school entry to examine…

Research involving monolinguals has demonstrated that language impairment can be noticed in the early years and tends to persist into adolescence. More recently, research has begun to address the challenges of identifying and treating Developmental Language Disorders (DLD) in English Language Learners (ELLs). Developmental patterns of DLD are not…

In this paper, we present excerpts from ethnographic data collected when a diverse classroom of children, some of whom were multilingual and others monolingual in English, used iPads to make videos. We discuss the practices, social relations, objects and material conditions that emerged as the children engaged in this production, with special…

In order to examine the effect of the home language on the spelling development in English in children who are learning English as a second language (ESL learners), it is best to directly compare groups of ESL learners from various home language backgrounds. This study compared the oral language, phonological awareness, reading, and spelling…

The study examined differences in reading achievement and mastery skill development among Grade-6 students with different language background profiles, using cognitive diagnosis modeling applied to large-scale provincial reading test performance data. Our analyses revealed that students residing in various home language environments show different…

The relationship between first language (L1) typology, defined as the classification of languages according to their structural characteristics (e.g. phonological systems and writing systems), and the development of second (L2) and third (L3) language skills and literacy proficiency in multilingual children was investigated in this study. The…

Children who are native speakers of minority languages often experience stagnation or decline in that language when exposed to a majority language in a school or community situation. This paper examines such a situation among the Inuit of arctic Quebec. All 18 participants in the study were native speakers of Inuktitut, living in home environments…