A Cross-Linguistic Investigation of English Language Learners' Reading Comprehension in English and Spanish

Abstract

This study investigated the associations of oral language and reading skills with a sampleof282Spanish-speakingEnglishlanguagelearnersacross3yearsofelementaryschool.Inthe3rdgrade,theEnglishandSpanishdecodingmeasuresformedtwo distinct but highly related factors, and the English and Spanish oral language measuresformedtwofactorsthatshowedasmallpositivecorrelationbetweenthem.The decoding and oral language factors were used to predict the sample’s English and Spanish reading comprehension in the 6th grade. The decoding and oral language factorswerebothsignificantpredictorsofreadingcomprehensioninbothlanguages. The within-language effects were larger than the cross-language effects and the cross-language effects were not significant after accounting for the within-language effects.