How Many U.S. High School Students Have a Foreign Language Reading “Disability”? Reading Without Meaning and the Simple View

Abstract

Conventional wisdom suggests that students classified as learning disabled will exhibit difficulties with foreign language (FL) learning, but evidence has not supported a relationship between FL learning problems and learning disabilities. The simple view of reading model posits that reading comprehension is the product of word decoding and language comprehension and that there are good readers and 3 types of poor readers-dyslexic, hyperlexic, and garden variety-who exhibit different profiles of strengths and/or deficits in word decoding and language comprehension. In this study, a random sample of U.S. high school students completing first-, second-, and third-year Spanish courses were administered standardized measures of Spanish word decoding and reading comprehension, compared with monolingual Spanish readers from first to eleventh grades, and classified into reader types according to the simple view of reading. The majority of students fit the hyperlexic profile, and no participants fit the good reader profile until they were compared with first- and second-grade monolingual Spanish readers. Findings call into question the practice of diagnosing an FL "disability" before a student engages in FL study.

Individual differences in L2 achievement mirror individual differences in L1 skills and L2 aptitude: Crosslinguistic transfer of L1 to L2 skills

“…In these studies, U.S. high school students’ Spanish vocabulary and listening comprehension skills were found to be similar to the average native Spanish speaker at a 2½‐ to 3‐year‐old level, even after 3 years of Spanish courses (Sparks & Luebbers, ; Sparks et al, b). Other studies have shown that despite IDs in L1 achievement, U.S. high school students learned to decode an alphabetic L2 (Spanish) well but still met criteria for a L2 reading “disability” because they exhibited extraordinarily poor reading comprehension and listening comprehension skills, largely because of extremely limited L2 vocabulary acquisition (Sparks, ; Sparks & Luebbers, ; Sparks et al, ). The constraint on L2 learning, in particular vocabulary learning, for U.S. students in high school is the social context in which the learning takes place—that is, most live in a home and a community where the target language is not spoken.…”

“…Two instruments were used to assess L2 skills. Both instruments—the MLAT (Carroll & Sapon, ) to measure L2 aptitude and an informal measure of L2 (Spanish) phoneme awareness—were described in previous studies (see Sparks et al, ; Sparks & Luebbers, ).…”

“…Six subtests from this standardized test were used to measure Spanish achievement. The instruments were described in detail in previous studies (see Sparks et al, ; Sparks & Luebbers, ) but are summarized briefly in the following six sections.…”

How Well Do U.S. High School Students Achieve in Spanish When Compared to Native Spanish Speakers?

“…As summarized above, most formal studies of students’ learning outcomes in an FL have used mostly criterion‐referenced measures to compare speakers’ skills to specific criteria or domains of performance; however, studies have not compared monolingual native English–speaker learners’ skills with those of native speakers of the target language of the same age or grade level using a standardized measure. In three recent studies, Sparks and colleagues (Sparks, ; Sparks & Luebbers, ; Sparks & Patton, ) used a standardized measure of Spanish to assess the Spanish reading skills of monolingual English students in U.S. high schools and classified them according to reader types proposed by the simple view of reading model, a well‐researched model that explains how students acquire literacy skills (Gough & Tunmer, ; Hoover & Gough, ). The primary purposes of the present study were to (1) compare the achievement of monolingual English high school students in oral and written Spanish with that of native Spanish speakers on a standardized testing measure, and (2) propose appropriate expectations for monolingual English learners of Spanish after their completion of first‐, second‐, and third‐year high school Spanish courses.…”

Why reading is a challenge for U.S. L2 learners: The impact of cognitive, ecological, and psychological factors in L2 comprehension

“…In several recent studies of L2 reading development, Sparks et al have proposed that the SVR model can also be used to explain the reading skills of monolingual U.S. high school students who are learning an L2 that also makes use of an alphabetic orthography (Sparks, ; Sparks & Luebbers, ; Sparks, Patton, & Luebbers, ). These studies have supported the SVR model by showing that L2 word decoding and L2 oral language (listening) comprehension make independent contributions to L2 reading comprehension.…”