This report presents findings from a follow-up exploratory study of the development of writing ability in an attempt to identify key component skills and competencies for elementary school literacy learners, grades 2nd, 4th and 6th. The first evaluation consisted in scoring first draft narrative texts for coherence, the second, an assessment of…

This study seeks to examine the success of voluntary immigrants in Grade 6 French immersion with a double comparison to Canadian-born (a) Anglophones and (b) multilingual students (children of voluntary immigrants). The findings, that show the immigrant students to outperform the other two groups in French and English, are explored through a…

The task of writing arguments requires a linguistic and cognitive sophistication that eludes many adults, but students in the US are expected to produce texts that articulate and support a claim--simple written arguments--starting in the fourth grade. Students from language-minority homes likewise must learn to produce such writing, despite their…

This study examines the intra-and inter-lingual relationships between first and second language morphological awareness and reading comprehension among grade 6 Chinese learners of English as a foreign language in China. Morphological awareness measures covered compounding as well as derivation. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that within…