Reading Profiles of Normal Readers, Poor Decoders, and Poor Comprehenders in Bilingual Children

• In Event: 25.071 - Research in Reading Comprehension

Abstract

The study is to examine reading profiles in bilingual learners, and the extent of similarities and differences between L1 and L2 in three reading subgroups: normal readers, poor decoders, and poor comprehenders. 246 English-immersion students in Grade 8 in China were investigated. The results found that English and Chinese normal readers outperformed poor decoders and poor comprehenders on almost all English measures. There is no significant difference between poor decoders and poor comprehenders, except decoding. Another finding suggested that word reading ability in L1 is highly correlated with word reading ability in L2. The students who have decoding difficulties in L1 is primarily due to limited word reading ability in L1.

Authors

• Huan Zhang, University of Houston

• Miao Li, University of Houston