Lorinda Mak | University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
Esther Geva | University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
This study examines the bidirectional, cross-linguistic associations between language and word-level reading skills and reading comprehension for 51 students in grades 4 to 6 who speak Spanish as first language (L1) and English as second language (L2). Within-language predictors of reading comprehension were consistent with the simple view of reading. We found unidirectional cross-linguistic associations between Spanish word reading and English reading comprehension. However, the results do not support a cross-linguistic association between English word reading and Spanish reading comprehension. Specifically, results indicate that although L1 and L2 language and reading constructs correlate, L2 skills do not strongly contribute to L1 reading comprehension. Findings are discussed in terms of possible factors that might influence potential cross-language relations among Spanish and English measures. Keywords: reading comprehension; bilingualism; cross-linguistic relations
(2011) August B. Hollingshead’s ‘Four factor index of social status’: From unpublished paper to citation classic. Yale Journal of Sociology 81: 11–51.
Bialystok, Ellen
(1999) Cognitive complexity and attentional control in the bilingual mind. Child Development 70(3): 636–644.
Bialystok, Ellen
(2001) Bilingualism in development: Language, literacy, and cognition. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Bloomfield, Leonard
(1933) Language. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Braze, David, Whitney Tabor, Donald P. Shankweiler & W. Einar Mencl
(2007) Speaking up for vocabulary: Reading skill differences in young adults. Journal of Learning Disabilities 401: 226–243.
Brutt-Griffler, Janina & Manka Varghese
(2004) Bilingualism and language pedagogy. Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters.
Cain, Kate, Jane Oakhill & Peter Bryant
(2004) Children’s reading comprehension ability: concurrent prediction by working memory, verbal ability, and component skills. Journal of Educational Psychology 96(1): 31–42.
Carlo, Maria S., Diane August, Barry McLaughlin, Catherine E. Snow, Cheryl Dressler, David N. Lippman, Teresa J. Lively & Claire E. White
(2004) Closing the gap: Addressing the vocabulary needs of English language learners in bilingual classrooms. Reading Research Quarterly 391: 188–215.
Catts, Hugh W., Tiffany P. Hogan & Suzanne M. Adlof
(2005) Developmental changes in reading and reading disabilities. In Hugh W. Catts & Alan G. Kamhi (eds.), The connections between language and reading disabilities, 25–40. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Chall, Jeanne S
(1996) Stages of reading development (2nd edition). Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt-Brace.
Cook, Vivian J
(2003) The changing L1 in the L2 user’s mind. In Vivian J. Cook (ed.), Effects of the second language on the first, 1–18. Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters.
Cummins, Jim
(1984) Bilingual education and special education: Issues in assessment and pedagogy. San Diego, CA: College Hill Press.
Cummins, Jim
(1991) Interdependence of first- and second-language proficiency in bilingual children. In Ellen Bialystok (ed.), Language processing in bilingual children, 70–89. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Da Fontoura, Helena A. & Linda S. Siegel
(1995) Reading, syntactic, and working memory skills of bilingual Portuguese-English Canadian children. Reading and Writing 7(1): 139–153.
Dunn, Lloyd M. & Leota M. Dunn
(1981) Peabody picture vocabulary test (revised edition). Circle Pines, MN: American Guidance Service.
Dunn, Lloyd M. & Leota M. Dunn
(1997) Peabody picture vocabulary test (3rd edition). Circle Pines, MN: American Guidance Service.
Dunn, Lloyd M., Delia E. Lugo, Eligio R. Padilla & Leota M. Dunn
(1986) Test de Vocabulario en Imagenes Peabody. Circle Pines, MN: American Guidance Service.
Durgunoğlu, Aydin Y
(2002) Cross-linguistic transfer in literacy development and implications for language learners. Annals of Dyslexia 521: 189–204.
Durgunoğlu, Aydin Y., William E. Nagy & Barbara J. Hancin-Bhatt
(1993) Cross-linguistic transfer of phonological awareness. Journal of Educational Psychology 85(3): 452–465.
Farnia, Fataneh & Esther Geva
(2013) Growth and predictors of change in English language learners’ reading comprehension. Journal of Research in Reading 361: 389–421.
Geva, Esther & Linda S. Siegel
(2000) Orthographic and cognitive factors in the concurrent development of basic reading skills in two languages. Reading and Writing 121: 1–30.
Geva, Esther & Min Wang
(2001) The development of basic reading skills in children: A cross-language perspective. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 211: 182–204.
Gottardo, Alexandra
(2002) The relationship between language and reading skills in Spanish-English speakers. Topics in Language Disorders 221: 46–70.
Gottardo, Alexandra & Amy Grant
(2008) Defining bilingualism. Retrieved from [URL]
Gottardo, Alexandra, Christine Javier & Fataneh Farnia
(2013) Reading comprehension in Spanish-English learners: Unpacking listening comprehension. Talk presented at the
Pacific Coast Research Conference
. San Diego, CA, February 2013.
Gottardo, Alexandra & Julie Mueller
(2009) Are first- and second-language factors related in predicting second-language reading comprehension? A study of Spanish-speaking children acquiring English as a second language from first to second grade. Journal of Educational Psychology 1011: 330–344.
Gottardo, Alexandra, Bernice Yan, Linda S. Siegel & Lesly Wade-Woolley
(2001) Factors related to English reading performance in children with Chinese as a first language: More evidence of cross- language transfer of phonological processing. Journal of Educational Psychology 931: 530–542.
Gough, Philip B. & William E. Tunmer
(1986) Decoding, reading, and reading disability. RASE: Remedial and Special Education 7(1): 6–10.
Grosjean, François
(1982) Life with two languages. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Grosjean, François
(1998) Studying bilinguals: Methodological and conceptual issues. Bilingualism: Language & Cognition 11: 131–149.
Grosjean, François & Ping Li
(2012) The psycholinguistics of bilingualism. London, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.
Guardado, Martin
(2002) Loss and maintenance of first language skills: Case studies of Hispanic families in Vancouver. Canadian Modern Language Review 581: 341–364.
Hakuta, Kenji
(1988) A worldly look at language acquisition. PsycCRITIQUES 33(7): 576–578.
Hernandez, Arturo, Ping Li & Brian MacWhinney
(2005) The emergence of competing modules in bilingualism. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 9(5): 220–225.
Hollingshead, August B
(1975) Four factor index of social status. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Jared, Debra & Judith F. Kroll
(2001) Do bilinguals activate phonological representations in one or both of their languages when naming words?Journal of Memory and Language 441: 2–31.
Jarvis, Scott
(2003) Probing the effects of the L2 on the L1: A case study. In Vivian J. Cook (ed.), Effects of the second language on the first, 81–102. Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters.
Jenkins, Joseph R., Lynn S. Fuchs, Paul van den Broek, Christine Espin & Stanley L. Deno
(2003) Sources of individual differences in reading comprehension and reading fluency. Journal of Educational Psychology 95(4): 719–729.
Jiang, Nan
(2004) Semantic transfer and its implications for vocabulary teaching in a second language. The Modern Language Journal 881: 416–432.
Kendeou, Panayiota, Robert Savage & Paul van den Broek
(2009) Revisiting the simple view of reading. British Journal of Educational Psychology 791: 353–370.
Kirby, John R. & Robert S. Savage
(2008) Can the simple view deal with the complexities of reading?Literacy 421: 75–82.
Kroll, Judith F. & Annette M.B. de Groot
(1997) Lexical and conceptual memory in the bilingual: Mapping form to meaning in two languages. In Annette M.B. de Groot & Judith F. Kroll (eds.), Tutorials in bilingualism: Psycholinguistic perspectives, 169–199. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Laufer, Batia
(2003) The influence of L2 on L1 collocational knowledge and on L1 lexical diversity in free written expression. In Vivian J. Cook (ed.), Effects of the second language on the first, 18–31. Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters.
Lesaux, Nonie K., Keiko Koda, Linda S. Siegel & Timothy Shanahan
(2006) Development of literacy. In Diane August & Timothy Shanahan (eds.), Developing literacy in second-language learners: Report of the national literacy panel on language-minority children and youth, 75–122. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Li, Ping, Igor Farkas & Brian MacWhinney
(2004) Early lexical development in a self-organizing neural network. Neural Network 17(8–9): 1345–1362.
Lindsey, Kim A., Franklin R. Manis & Caroline E. Bailey
(2003) Prediction of first-grade reading in Spanish-speaking English-language learners. Journal of Educational Psychology 95(3): 482–494.
Luk, Gigi, Eric De Sa & Ellen Bialystok
(2011) Is there a relation between onset age of bilingualism and enhancement of cognitive control?Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 14(4): 588–595.
MacWhinney, Brian
(2004) A unified model of language acquisition. In Judith F. Kroll & Annette M.B. de Groot (eds.), Handbook of bilingualism: Psycholinguistic approaches, 49–67. Oxford University Press.
Mood, Alexander M
(1971) Partitioning variance in multiple regression analyses as a tool for developing learning models. American Educational Research Journal 81: 191–202.
Naglieri, Jack A
(1985) The matrix analogies test. New York, NY: The Psychological Corporation.
Nakamoto, Jonathan, Kim A. Lindsey & Franklin R. Manis
(2007) A longitudinal analysis of English language learners’ word decoding and reading comprehension. Reading and Writing 20(7): 691–719.
Nation, Kate & Margaret J. Snowling
(1997) Assessing reading difficulties: The validity and utility of current measures of reading skill. British Journal of Educational Psychology 671: 359–370.
(2011) Regression commonality analysis: A technique for quantitative theory building. Human Resource Development Review 10(3): 329–340.
Oller, D. Kimbrough, Linda Jarmulowicz, Barbara Z. Pearson & Alan B. Cobo-Lewis
(2011) Rapid spoken language shift in early second-language learning: The role of peers and effects on the first language. In Aydin Yucesan Durgunoğlu & Claude Goldenberg (eds.), Language and literacy development in bilingual setting, 94–120. New York: Guilford Press.
Ouellette, Gene & Ashley Beers
(2010) A not-so-simple view of reading: How oral vocabulary and visual-word recognition complicate the story. Reading and Writing 23(2): 189–208.
Paradis, Johanne, Fred Genesee & Martha B. Crago
(2011) Dual language development and disorders: A handbook on bilingualism and second language learning (2nd edition). Baltimore, MD: Brookes.
Pasquarella, Adrian, Xi Chen, Katie Lam, Yang C. Luo & Gloria Ramirez
(2011) Cross-language transfer of morphological awareness in Chinese-English bilinguals. Journal of Research in Reading 34(1): 23–42.
Pavlenko, Aneta
(2003) I feel clumsy speaking Russian: L2 influence on L1 narratives of Russian L2 users of English. In Vivian J. Cook (ed.), Effects of the second language on the first, 32–61. Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters.
Plaut, David C., James L. McClelland, Mark S. Seidenberg & Karalyn Patterson
(1996) Understanding normal and impaired word reading: Computational principles in quasi-regular domains. Psychological Review 1031: 56–115.
Porte, Graeme
(2003) English from a distance: Code-mixing and blending in the L1 output of long-term resident overseas EFL teachers. In Vivian J. Cook (ed.), Effects of the second language on the first, 103–119. Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters.
Proctor, C. Patrick, Diane August, Maria S. Carlo & Catherine Snow
(2006) The intriguing role of Spanish language vocabulary knowledge in predicting English reading comprehension. Journal of Educational Psychology 98(1): 159–169.
Proctor, C. Patrick, Maria S. Carlo, Diane August & Catherine Snow
(2005) Native Spanish-speaking children reading in English: Toward a model of comprehension. Journal of Educational Psychology 97(2): 246–256.
Ramirez, Gloria, Xi Chen, Esther Geva & Heidi Kiefer
(2010) Morphological awareness in Spanish-speaking English language learners: Within and cross-language effects on word reading. Reading and Writing 23(3–4): 337–358.
Savage, Robert S
(2001) The ‘simple view’ of reading: Some evidence and possible implications. Educational Psychology in Practice 17(1): 17–33.
Semel, Eleanor, Elisabeth H. Wiig & Wayne A. Secord
(2003) Clinical evaluation of language fundamentals. San Antonio, TX: The Psychological Corporation.
Snow, Catherine E., M. Susan Burns & Peg Griffin
(eds.) (1998) Preventing reading difficulties in young children: A report of the National Research Council. Washington, DC: Academy Press.
van den Broek, Paul, Julie S. Lynch, Jan Naslund, Carolyn E. Invers-Landis & Kees Verduin
(2003) The development of comprehension of main ideas in narratives: Evidence from the selection of titles. Journal of Educational Psychology 95(4): 707.
van Gelderen, Amos, Rob Schoonen, Reinoud Stoel, Kees de Glopper & Jan Hulstijn
(2007) Development of adolescent reading comprehension in language 1 and language 2: A longitudinal analysis of constituent components. Journal of Educational Psychology 99(3): 477–491.
2020. Toward Biliteracy: Unpacking the Contribution of Mid‐adolescent Dual Language Learners’ Spanish and English Academic Language Skills to English Reading Comprehension. TESOL Quarterly 54:4 ► pp. 1010 ff.
Bérubé, Daniel, Yuuko Uchikoshi & Stefka H. Marinova-Todd
2022. A longitudinal examination of French and English reading comprehension in French immersion programs in Canada. Applied Psycholinguistics 43:3 ► pp. 607 ff.
Friesen, Deanna C. & Bailey Frid
2021. Predictors of Successful Reading Comprehension in Bilingual Adults: The Role of Reading Strategies and Language Proficiency. Languages 6:1 ► pp. 18 ff.
Gottardo, Alexandra, Xi Chen & Michelle Ru Yun Huo
2021. Understanding Within‐ and Cross‐Language Relations Among Language, Preliteracy Skills, and Word Reading in Bilingual Learners: Evidence From the Science of Reading. Reading Research Quarterly 56:S1
Vibeke Grøver, Paola Uccelli, Meredith Rowe & Elena Lieven
2019. Learning through Language,
Kim, Young-Suk Grace & Benjamin Piper
2019. Cross-language transfer of reading skills: an empirical investigation of bidirectionality and the influence of instructional environments. Reading and Writing 32:4 ► pp. 839 ff.
Carol Mesa & Gloria Yeomans-Maldonado
2021. English and Spanish Predictors of Grade 3 Reading Comprehension in Bilingual Children. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 64:3 ► pp. 889 ff.
Mirza, Amna & Alexandra Gottardo
2019. Learning to Read in Their Heritage Language: Hindi-English Speaking Children Reading Two Different Orthographies. In Handbook of Literacy in Akshara Orthography [Literacy Studies, 17], ► pp. 329 ff.
Nakamura, Pooja R.
2023. When Transfer Transfers: Applying Cross-Linguistic Reading Transfer Theory to Language of Instruction Policies in Low- and Middle-Income Countries. In Crossing Boundaries in Researching, Understanding, and Improving Language Education [Educational Linguistics, 58], ► pp. 341 ff.
Swanson, H. Lee, Michael J. Orosco & Milagros Fatima Kudo
2017. Do Specific Classroom Reading Activities Predict English Language Learners’ Later Reading Achievement?. Reading & Writing Quarterly 33:3 ► pp. 199 ff.
Taboada Barber, Ana, Kelly B. Cartwright, Gregory R. Hancock & Susan Lutz Klauda
2021. Beyond the Simple View of Reading: The Role of Executive Functions in Emergent Bilinguals’ and English Monolinguals’ Reading Comprehension. Reading Research Quarterly 56:S1
Taboada Barber, Ana, Susan Lutz Klauda & Weimeng Wang
2022. Reading Anxiety, Engagement, and Achievement: A Comparison of Emergent Bilinguals and English Monolinguals in the Elementary Grades. Reading Research Quarterly 57:1 ► pp. 353 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 15 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.