The role of comprehension monitoring in predicting reading comprehension among French immersion children

Abstract

Purpose. This one-year longitudinal study investigated the extent to which comprehension monitoring in children’s first (L1) and second (L2) language predicts reading comprehension. Method. Children’s ability to detect inconsistencies in orally presented stories was measured by children’s response to a judgement question about whether the story made sense, after each one, and by the identification of the inconsistency within the story. The participants included 115 children (MageGrade2 = 7.8 years, SD = 0.3) recruited from an early French immersion program in Canada. Results. We computed a series of linear regression models, two in English and two in French. The concurrent results revealed that, in Grade 3, children’s comprehension monitoring was a unique predictor of reading comprehension in English and French, over and above the contribution of word reading and vocabulary. This relationship was not observed in Grade 2. Notably, the longitudinal analyses indicated that Grade 2 children’s comprehension monitoring in English made a significant contribution to English reading comprehension in Grade 3, over and above key control variables. However, this relationship was not established in French. Conclusions. These results promote a call to include support for higher-level oral language skills during the early stages of bilingual reading instruction