This study examined the crosslinguistic sharing of morphological awareness (MA) in biliteracy development. The analysis included 34 correlational studies with 41 independent samples (N = 4,104). Correlational coefficients were meta‐analyzed, yielding four main findings: (a) the correlation between first language (L1) and second language (L2) MA was small (r = .30); (b) the interlingual correlations between L1 MA and L2 word decoding and between L1 MA and L2 reading comprehension were both small (r = .35, .39, respectively); (c) the intralingual correlations between L2 MA and L2 word decoding and between L2 MA and L2 reading comprehension were both moderate (r = .46, .52, respectively); and (d) MA measurement type and age were significant moderators. Our review suggests that there is a need for future research to align the definition and measurement of MA.

Drawing on data from a 4-year longitudinal study of literacy development at an English-medium university in Qatar, this paper aims to document the challenges and development of multilingual students' literacy skills in their transition to college. Interviews reveal students' challenges during the first semester in terms of reading comprehension difficulties stemming from limited vocabulary knowledge, background knowledge, and reading stamina; in addition, students describe difficulties understanding the genre expectations and style of English academic writing. Despite these challenges, interviews also reveal development in students' academic reading and writing as their understanding of college writing expectations and their use of learning strategies and resources increase. In addition, analysis of student writing using corpus-based text analysis software reveals indicators of academic writing development such as increase in the use of academic register, elaboration, and reasoning. Together, these findings contribute to an understanding of challenges and academic development of students in English-medium universities.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

The authors examine the challenges students faced in trying to write organized texts using effective thesis statements and topic sentences by analyzing argumentative history essays written by multilingual students enrolled in an undergraduate history course. They use the notions of macro-Theme (i.e., thesis statement) and hyper-Theme (i.e., topic sentence) from systemic functional linguistics to categorize students' challenges constructing effective macro-Themes and hyper-Themes. They compare higher graded essays and lower graded essays at six time points during one semester. Both higher and lower graded essays showed challenges with the fronting, specificity, and consistency of their macro-Themes and hyper-Themes. However, there was improvement over the course of the semester. By identifying these challenges, the authors aim to help teachers and students develop a meta-language to talk about these textual features of academic writing and thus enhance the teaching and writing of academic writing. They call for the need for explicit instruction to enhance students' organization of their ideas.