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Measures of reading comprehension: do they measure different skills for children learning English as a second language?

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Abstract

The validity of two measures of English reading comprehension was examined across three different groups of English language learners (ELLs; 64 Portuguese, 66 Spanish and 65 Cantonese). All three groups were achieving within the average range in second grade. An exploratory principal components analysis of reading skills was carried out to determine which skills were related to two commonly used tests of reading comprehension, the Woodcock Language Proficiency Battery’s test of Passage Comprehension (WLPB-PC; Woodcock, 1991) and the Gray Oral Reading Test-4 (GORT-4; Wiederholt & Bryant, 2001). The factor solutions were different for the three language groups but showed many similarities in that the GORT-4 and WLPB-R tests of reading comprehension fell on the same factor within each group. Hierarchical regression analyses examining relationships among vocabulary, decoding and reading comprehension showed that language group membership did not significantly predict performance on either measure of reading comprehension. Differences that arose are likely due to issues with task validity and not ELL status. Limitations and future research are discussed.

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Notes

  1. No significant differences were found for the Spanish speaking students (ps > .14) across location. There were two significant differences between the Portuguese speakers in two areas, where the students from the smaller metropolitan area outperformed the students from the larger area on rapid naming of letters, F (1, 62) = 5.34, p < .05, and on the GORT comprehension measure, F (1, 62) = 6.34, p < .05. Due to the differences in sample size across these two locations (N = 10–56), it is difficult to determine whether these effects would persist with larger, and more equal samples. Similarly, due to the large number of schools (N = 28) and the small number of participants per school (range 1–17, median = 5) school effects could not be statistically controlled (see “Appendix” for a discussion of school effects).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, ON, N2L 3C5, Canada

    Amy Grant & Alexandra Gottardo

  2. Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Esther Geva

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Correspondence to Amy Grant.

Appendix

Appendix

In order to determine if there were school effects, separate analyses were carried out for each language group. There were 28 different schools involved in the current study with the number of students in each school ranging from 1 to 17 students. The Portuguese students were located at nine schools (N = 1–13 per school). A series of one-way ANOVAs revealed differences across schools on all measures (all ps < .03) except phonological awareness, rapid naming, and matrix analogies. Similarly, differences were found on all measures (all ps < .04) except receptive vocabulary, rapid naming of letters, and GORT comprehension in the Cantonese group over 11 schools (N = 1–17 per school). No differences were found between the eight schools in the Spanish group (N = 1–12 per school; all ps > .17). Because many schools had such a low sample size, post hoc analyses could not be carried out to determine what specific school differences there were. Thus, although there were significant differences between schools overall, these effects are largely participant level effects due to the small sample size for each school. There were no overall outliers, and data were collapsed within language groups. Although it is possible that if given sufficient samples, the cause of these effects (e.g., SES, maternal education, neighbourhood cohesion) could be analyzed, the current study was not designed to explore these specific influences. As such, the data may be interpreted to represent a diverse group of ELLs, who are more likely to be representative of the overall population for each language group than children who are recruited from one small geographic area, and from within the same school.

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Grant, A., Gottardo, A. & Geva, E. Measures of reading comprehension: do they measure different skills for children learning English as a second language?. Read Writ 25, 1899–1928 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-012-9370-y

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