Purpose: The purpose of this pilot study was to determine whether parallel measures of narrative-based listening comprehension and reading comprehension reflected the same construct and yielded comparable scores from a diverse sample of second- and third-grade students. One hundred ten students participated in this study. Method: Three listening…

We report results from children learning to read in one of four different languages: Croatian, English, Estonian and Swedish. The languages all have an alphabetical script but vary greatly on the dimension deep-shallow (or complexity-simplicity, or opacity-transparency), i.e., how close orthography and phonology are related. These languages also…

The present study examined the mediating role of text reading fluency in reading comprehension in English and Kiswahili utilizing longitudinal data from 628 first- and second-grade children from multilingual contexts in Kenya. We employed path analysis to explore the mediating role of text reading fluency on decoding and reading comprehension in…

Many children living in linguistically diverse low- and middle-income countries learn to read and write in multiple languages. Recent research provides implications for effective reading instruction with multilingual learners (e.g., Hall et al. in New Dir Child Adolesc Dev 166:145-189, 2019). However, there is limited empirical evidence on…

Purpose: This study examines the narrative language and reading outcomes of monolingual and bilingual students who received instruction with the Supporting Knowledge in Language and Literacy (SKILL) program, a narrative language intervention. Method: The main effects of the SKILL program were evaluated in a randomized controlled trial in which…

This study examined whether, and if so how, L1 and L2 segmental and suprasegmental phonological awareness is longitudinally related to L1 and L2 reading comprehension difficulties among Hong Kong Chinese-English bilingual children. Using a regression approach, we identified five types of comprehenders, i.e., 11 poor-Chinese/average-English…

Understanding text in a second language can be particularly challenging. The authors explored the contribution of morphological awareness in children's first and second languages to development in second-language reading comprehension. Critically, the authors examined the role of a skill that might be at the heart of these cross-linguistic…

We examined the language and reading progress of 336 young DHH children in kindergarten, first and second grades. Trained assessors tested children's language, reading, and spoken and fingerspelled phonological awareness in the fall and spring of the school year. Children were divided into groups based on their auditory access and classroom…

In the present study, we examined the role of morphological awareness in reading and spelling performance across three languages varying in orthographic consistency (English, French, and Greek), after controlling for the effects of phonological awareness and rapid automatized naming (RAN). One hundred fifty-nine English-speaking Canadian, 238…

This study investigated an emergent interaction between word reading fluency and vocabulary knowledge in the prediction of reading comprehension among French immersion students in Grades 2 and 3. A group of 66 students were tested on measures of phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, word reading accuracy, vocabulary, word reading…

The present study investigated the moderating role of orthographic consistency on the development of reading comprehension in four language groups (English, n = 179; Spanish, n = 188; Czech, n = 135; Slovak, n = 194) from kindergarten to Grade 2. In all languages, early variations in phoneme awareness/letter knowledge, rapid automatised naming,…

A primary objective of development is to build a knowledge base. To accumulate knowledge over time and experiences, learners must engage in productive processes, going beyond what is explicitly given to generate new knowledge. Though important to accumulating knowledge, these processes are also easily disrupted. Individuals often depend on surface…

We examined the direction of the relation between morphological awareness and reading/spelling skills in 2 languages varying in orthographic consistency (English and Greek) and whether word reading fluency and vocabulary mediate the relation between morphological awareness and reading comprehension. One-hundred and 59 English-speaking Canadian and…

We examined theoretical issues concerning the development of reading fluency and language proficiency in 390 English Language Learners (ELLs,) and 149 monolingual, English-as-a-first language (EL1) students. The extent to which performance on these constructs in Grade 5 (i.e., concurrent predictors) contributes to reading comprehension in the…

The present study investigated the role of vocabulary depth in reading comprehension among a diverse sample of monolingual and bilingual children in grades 2-4. Vocabulary depth was defined as including morphological awareness, awareness of semantic relations, and syntactic awareness. Two hundred ninety-four children from 3 schools in a…