Reading comprehension and component reading skills: A comparison between children who speak English as an additional language and their English speaking monolingual peers
Abstract
Educational inequality amongst children who speak English as an additional language (EAL) has been identified in the context of Northern Ireland.
The present study investigated whether EAL children in their fifth to seventh year of education in
an English speaking school differed in reading comprehension and component reading skills relative to their monolingual peers. It compared a group of EAL and monolingual English speaking children (n = 102, mean age = 10 years 1 month) on reading comprehension and a range of reading and language measures. Multivariate analysis of variance and multiple regression techniques were employed.
Results indicated a significant disadvantage in reading comprehension, receptive vocabulary, syntax and oral passage fluency for the EAL children but not in phonemic decoding efficiency and sight word reading efficiency. Fluency was the strongest predictor of reading comprehension for both groups. Implications for policy makers, schools and educational psychologists are proposed.
There is a need for further research to establish whether a gap in reading comprehension will remain, or diminish over time and to evaluate possible interventions to boost reading comprehension skills amongst EAL learners.
