The role of prosodic reading in English reading comprehension among Cantonese-English bilingual children

Poster Session 4: no. p4.07bWe examine the role of prosodic reading in English reading comprehension among Cantonese-English bilingual children by characterizing the acoustic characteristics of bilingual children’s English prosodic production and relating them to their English reading comprehension. Spectrographic analysis was performed on six types of syntactically complex structures from an English passage orally produced by the participants, with a focus on pitch pattern and pause structure. Pitch patterns produced by our bilingual children were found to show similar patterns to those produced by English-speaking adults as reported in previous studies. However, pause structures produced by the bilingual children were different from the native English speakers. Furthermore, only pitch pattern was significantly associated with English reading comprehension. These results suggest that pitch pattern is a critical factor in determining English reading comprehension among Cantonese-English bilingual children. We discuss these findings in terms of automaticity theory in second language reading acquisition.postprin

Increasing fluency in L2 writing with singing

Fluency is an essential part of a language learner’s skills. Despite various studies on fluency, little is known about the effects of different pedagogical methods on the development of written fluency. In this paper, we examine how different pedagogical methods affect the development of second language learners’ written fluency. Participants in this study were 51 language learners enrolled in two intensive Finnish courses. The pedagogical methods investigated in the study were singing, listening to songs, and reciting lyrics of songs. Written stories based on cartoon strips were used as a pretest and a posttest. The fluency of written stories was analyzed based on the number of words used in the texts. Differences between the groups taught by different pedagogical methods were analyzed. The results seem to indicate that fluency increased the most in the singing groups compared to the other groups. There was also a statistically significant difference between the singing group and the group reciting lyrics, as well as between the group listening to songs and the group reciting lyrics

Adult ESL Oral Reading Fluency and Silent Reading Comprehension

A descriptive study of second language adults studying ESL at the beginning, intermediate, and advanced levels in a post-secondary academic program revealed that their oral reading fluency had a significant, low-to-moderate correlation with scores on a measure of silent reading comprehension. The correlation was slightly stronger for measures of accuracy than speed, and strongest for miscue ratio. The correlation increased as proficiency level increased. Among different first language groups, the correlation was highest for Hispanic learners, and lowest for Chinese. Furthermore, all fluency measures correlated better with a listening measure than with the silent reading comprehension measure. When a system of using words correct per minute was contrasted with a fluency rubric using descriptive measures of expressive reading, the correlation with silent reading was found to be almost the same, but the system of words correct per minute had higher reliability. A miscue analysis of seven intermediate learners\u27 oral reading indicated that speed does not necessarily increase as silent reading proficiency increases, but accuracy does; Chinese students are a special case who do not fit the profile of the other language groups; and the value of miscue analysis with this population is somewhat limited because of the foreign accent problem. It was also found that the fluency tools mirrored overall progress in proficiency level, and listening comprehension predicted silent reading comprehension better than any fluency measure or combination of measures, with little increase in predictive power by adding fluency measures

Second language development and guided reading

Elementary teachers are being challenged to teach literacy to second language learners. In order to best serve ELL\u27s, teachers must understand how these students acquire English and how to meet their varying literacy needs in the classroom. This project describes best practices in teaching guided reading to ELL\u27s. The study will describe the implementation of the ELL guided reading program and how instruction was informed by knowledge of language learning

Bicultural identity and emergent/developmental reading strategies in English as a foreign language in Taiwan

This project demonstrates teaching strategies designed to illustrate bicultural identity development and reading skills in an English as a Foreign Language program for the elementary school level.

Reading in Arabic Script: A Cross-Linguistic and Cross-National Study

The current study examined within- and cross-language predictors of word reading and reading comprehension among groups of Arabic-English bilingual children in different language learning environments. A total of 80 children were tested, forty Arabic-English bilingual children recruited from Saudi Arabia and forty Arabic-English bilingual children were recruited from Canada. Both groups completed parallel measures of word-level reading, reading comprehension and vocabulary in Arabic and English. Results indicated that the underlying components related to within- and cross-language word reading and reading comprehension varied across groups. Within-language results demonstrate that English morphological awareness was significantly related to English word reading in both the Saudi and the Canadian groups. Vocabulary knowledge and word reading were significantly related to English reading comprehension across groups. Vocabulary knowledge was the only variable explaining unique variance in Arabic reading comprehension literary form for the Canadian group, as well as explaining unique variance in Arabic reading comprehension of the spoken form for both groups. Cross-language results demonstrate that Arabic un-vowelized word reading explained unique variance in English word reading for both groups. English phonological awareness explained a unique variance in Arabic vowelized word reading for both groups

Poor written and oral text comprehension in third grade children. A multiple case study

In this multiple case study we analyzed oral text comprehension, reading profiles and underlying cognitive abilities (attention, executive functions, working memory, narrative memory, rapid automatized naming and vocabulary) of 9 children identified as poor written text comprehenders after a school screening on 75 third grade children. Four out of the 9 children were named Language-Minority (L-M) children, since they had immigrant parents. The remaining 5 children were born in Italy from Italian parents. The comparisons of the two subgroups suggested that the lexical route of reading was particularly impaired in the L-M subgroup and that written text comprehension was weakened by restricted vocabulary which, in turn, was not supported by efficient phonological short-term memory. In a second type of data analysis we examined the individual profiles of the 9 children, irrespective of their belonging to the L-M or Italian subgroups, and identified different patterns of associations among reading performance, written text comprehension and oral text comprehension. The findings showed that poor text comprehension always co-occurred with word and/or text reading difficulties which, in turn, were associated to slow naming and weak verbal working memory. Moreover, when children had both written and oral text comprehension difficulties, not only verbal working memory was impaired but also narrative memory, suggesting a weakness in the episodic buffer (Baddeley 2000; 2010). The implications of poor working memory associated to slow naming and/or weak episodic buffer for text comprehension are discusse