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Language skills and reading comprehension in English monolingual and Spanish–English bilingual children in grades 2–5

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Abstract

The present study investigated language skills and reading comprehension with English monolingual and Spanish–English bilingual children in grades 2–5. Of the 377 children in the sample, 207 were English monolingual and 170 were Spanish–English bilingual. Data were collected within a cohort-sequential design for two academic years in the fall and spring of each year. Growth modeling was used to estimate initial status on measures of vocabulary breadth, vocabulary depth, morphological awareness, and syntactic skill. A latent variable was created to capture the construct of reading comprehension, and growth modeling was used to estimate growth and ending status in latent reading comprehension. Analyses controlling for initial status in word recognition investigated relationships between initial status in language skills and growth and ending status in reading comprehension. Results showed that initial status on vocabulary breadth was related to growth in reading comprehension and initial status in vocabulary depth and syntactic skill were related to ending status in reading comprehension. Limitations and implications for future research are discussed.

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Notes

  1. These students are variously referred to as English language learners (ELLs), English learners (ELs), and Language Minority (LM) students throughout the research base.

  2. The cohort sequential design we employed allowed us to connect data across cohorts and use that data to estimate, through growth modeling, initial status in language skills and ending status and growth in reading comprehension for each student based on the data available for that student. To estimate initial status in language skills for students who we did not assess in second grade (C2 and C3), we first developed growth trajectories for each variable of interest using all of the data we had available, and then we used data on each student to estimate what that students’ second grade score would have been. To estimate ending status in comprehension for students who we did not assess in fifth grade (C1 and C2), we developed a growth trajectory for reading comprehension using all of the data we had available and used data on each student to estimate what that students’ fifth grade score would have been. Growth analysis on the reading comprehension outcome yielded growth estimates for each student based on the data available for that student.

  3. The decision to equate factor scores for the latent reading comprehension variable to the W-scale allowed for an interpretable growth metric for the major outcome of the study. The W score is a transformation of the Rasch scale with equal intervals. The W scale is centered on a value of 500 for the average performance at grade 5.0. On the PC measure, the following W scores are equivalent to grade 2.1, 3.3, 4.4, and 5.2, respectively: 472, 490, 499, 504.

  4. We modeled a latent variable for language skills, and the model did not converge. We also investigated growth in word recognition and language skills and how growth in these skills was related to reading comprehension. There were large standard errors for each of the growth estimates, suggesting that our model may have been underpowered to detect relationships between growth in these variables and reading comprehension.

  5. We also simultaneously tested for interactions between language skill variables and monolingual-bilingual status. None of the interactions were statistically significantly.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

    Rebecca D. Silverman, Jeffrey R. Harring, Anna M. Hartranft, Brie Doyle & Sarah B. Zelinke

  2. Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, USA

    C. Patrick Proctor

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  1. Rebecca D. Silverman
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  2. C. Patrick Proctor
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  3. Jeffrey R. Harring
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Correspondence to Rebecca D. Silverman.

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Silverman, R.D., Proctor, C.P., Harring, J.R. et al. Language skills and reading comprehension in English monolingual and Spanish–English bilingual children in grades 2–5. Read Writ 28, 1381–1405 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-015-9575-y

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