Poor comprehenders have reading comprehension difficulties but normal word recognition ability. Here, we report the first study, which investigated (i) the dissociation and (ii) the prevalence of L1-L2 reading comprehension difficulties, and (iii) the levels of key metalinguistic skills in poor comprehenders among Chinese-English bilingual children. From a sample of 124 Chinese-English second graders, we identified 18 poor comprehenders (six Chinese, six English, and six in both Chinese and English). We matched these with six average comprehenders of comparable age and word reading abilities. Multivariate analysis of covariance and univariate F tests revealed that poor Chinese comprehenders and poor English comprehenders had significantly lower levels of Chinese lexical tone awareness than average readers even after controlling for nonverbal intelligence. No significant differences emerged on scores for segmental phonological awareness and vocabulary knowledge, either in Chinese and English or on English lexical stress sensitivity. These findings were discussed in relation to the universal view of reading, cross language prosodic transfer and the simple view of reading. HighlightsWhat is already known about this topic • First language Chinese word reading difficulty can be dissociable from second language English word reading difficulty among Chinese-English bilingual children. • Some skills in first language, for example, phonological awareness, may underlie second language word reading difficulties in alphabetical orthographies. • First language poor Chinese comprehenders aged eight and nine exhibit poor lexical tone awareness, and first language poor English comprehenders have poor English vocabulary knowledge.

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This 1-year longitudinal study examined the role of Cantonese lexical tone sensitivity in predicting English reading comprehension and the pathways underlying their relation. Multiple measures of Cantonese lexical tone sensitivity, English lexical stress sensitivity, Cantonese segmental phonological awareness, general auditory sensitivity, English word reading, and English reading comprehension were administered to 133 Cantonese-English unbalanced bilingual second graders. Structural equation modeling analysis identified transfer of Cantonese lexical tone sensitivity to English reading comprehension. This transfer was realized through a direct pathway via English stress sensitivity and also an indirect pathway via English word reading. These results suggest that prosodic sensitivity is an important factor influencing English reading comprehension and that it needs to be incorporated into theoretical accounts of reading comprehension across languages.

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