Reading Comprehension Difficulties in Chinese–English Bilingual Children

Abstract

The co-occurrence of reading comprehension difficulties for first language (L1) Chinese and second language (L2) English and associated longitudinal cognitive-linguistic correlates in each language were investigated. Sixteen poor comprehenders in English and 16 poor comprehenders in Chinese, 18 poor readers in both, and 18 children with normal performance in both were identified at age 10. The prevalence rate for being poor in both was 52.94%, suggesting that approximately half of children who are at risk for Chinese reading comprehension difficulty are also at risk for English reading comprehension difficulty. Chinese word reading, phonological, and morphological awareness were longitudinal correlates of poor comprehension in Chinese. English word reading and vocabulary were longitudinal correlates of poor comprehension in English. Chinese phonological awareness was an additional correlate of poor comprehension in English. Moreover, poor comprehenders in both Chinese and English showed slower rapid automatized naming scores than the other groups. Findings highlight some factors that might be critical for reading comprehension in L1 Chinese and L2 English; fluency is likely to be a critical part of reading comprehension across languages. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The Overlap of Poor Reading Comprehension in English and French

“…We found that 41.7% of children classified as poor comprehenders in grade 3 were poor comprehenders of both English and French. As expected, this overlap is less than reported in previous studies (e.g., Tong et al, 2017) in part due to differences in the approach to defining poor comprehender groups. More specifically, whereas most previous studies have defined poor comprehender groups based on a cut-off score on word reading, reading comprehension, or both, the present study utilized a regression method to identify poor comprehenders based on the relative discrepancy between wording reading, word reading fluency, and reading comprehension, while controlling for age and non-verbal reasoning, therefore, avoiding overidentification and narrowing the sample of children who qualify for poor comprehender status.…”

“…Only one known study at this time has explored the overlap between L1 and L2 reading comprehension difficulties. Tong et al (2017) examined the co-occurrence of reading comprehension difficulties and associated longitudinal correlates in 10-year-old children with poor reading comprehension (defined as those at or below the 25 th percentile on reading comprehension tasks) in Chinese L1 and English L2. The authors found that approximately half (53%) of children with poor reading comprehension in Chinese L1 also experienced poor reading comprehension in English L2.…”

Cognitive and Affective Correlates of Chinese Children’s Mathematical Word Problem Solving

“…During the task (Zhang et al, 2014), children were asked to read each of the given sentences silently and then choose one picture that best fits the sentence in meaning. There were 30 items, and their difficulty levels were appropriate for third-grade primary children in China.…”

Cognitive-Linguistic Skills Underlying Word Reading and Spelling Difficulties in Chinese Adolescents With Dyslexia

“…Students with dyslexia who are required to learn L2 may face greater challenges than their peer group (e.g., Bonifacci, Canducci, Gravagna, & Palladino, 2017; Tong, McBride, Shu, & Ho, 2018). This is particularly apparent for those students who have to learn two different writing systems.…”

“…According to cross-linguistic hypotheses (Cummins, 1979; Geva & Siegel, 2000; Sparks & Ganschow, 1995), phonological deficit might relate more to literacy problems in English than in Chinese, whereas rapid naming deficit might be a common cause of literacy difficulties in both languages. We also expected that morphological awareness would contribute to word reading and spelling in the dyslexic and typical group based on prior studies examining the role of morphological awareness on word reading and spelling in Chinese and English (e.g., Apel, Diehm, & Apel, 2013; Kalindi & Chung, 2018; Tong et al, 2018).…”