Impact of Home Language Environment on Young Students' Reading Comprehension Skill Mastery Profile

• In Event: Poster Session 5
  In Poster Session: Vocabulary Research and Instruction

Abstract

Increasing linguistic diversity in today’s classrooms calls for careful attention to the role of home language environments (HLEs) on children’s reading comprehension skill development. The present study compared reading comprehension skill mastery profiles (SMPs) among 1,600 Grade 6 students with different HLEs in schools in Canada. Students who mostly speak English at home while exposed to multilingual HLE were significantly more likely to master both vocabulary and inferencing. Vocabulary has continuously been a strong predictor of reading comprehension, while inferencing is a higher-order processing skill dependent on both prior knowledge and text comprehension. The results highlight the importance of examining students’ HLEs for tracking and supporting the development of reading comprehension skills, especially of higher-order processing skills.

Author

• Yehbeen Yang, University of Toronto