The Reading Comprehension Skills of Children Learning English as an Additional Language

This thesis examines the language and literacy skills of children learning English as an Additional or only Language (EAL/EL1). Children, recruited from Year 2 and Year 4, participated in three phases of data collection. The results from time 1 (t1) demonstrated that the children learning EAL had weaker language and reading comprehension skills overall when compared to their EL1 peers, though their word reading skills were comparable.
The second phase of data collection examined children’s morphological awareness as well as their knowledge of multi-word phrases (MWPs). Awareness of both inflectional and derivational morphemes was weaker for the EAL children, and all children had a weaker awareness of derived morphemes relative to inflected morphemes. Notably, regression analyses revealed that morphological awareness predicted unique variance in reading comprehension outcomes, above and beyond word reading and oral language skills, for the EAL children but not the EL1 children. Further, differences between the two language groups emerged on the task of MWP knowledge, as well as additional measures of vocabulary depth, including polysemous word knowledge and word associations, which were carried out at t3.
The longitudinal analyses revealed that the EAL children made greater gains than the EL1 children in their oral language skills from t1 to t3. However, despite the observed gains, the EAL children continued to lag behind their EL1 peers on measures of oral language and reading comprehension. Moreover, language group status (EAL/EL1) did not significantly add to the prediction of t3 reading comprehension, once word reading and oral language was accounted for. Thus, suggesting that the key predictors of reading comprehension are similar for both groups of learners. The findings are discussed with a focus on EAL children’s language and literacy profiles, and the implications for educational practice are considered.