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Part of
Developmental Perspectives in Written Language and Literacy: In honor of Ludo Verhoeven
Edited by Eliane Segers and Paul van den Broek
[Not in series 206] 2017
► pp. 199–217

Multilingual learners

Vocabulary and beyond

| | Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
|

The simple view of reading (SVR; Gough & Tunmer, 1986) proposes that decoding and language comprehension are pivotal for reading comprehension. Vocabulary breadth is a frequently used measure of language comprehension in studies of second language (L2) and multilingual children including those carried out within the SVR framework. The general objective of this chapter is discuss complementary perspectives on vocabulary skills in second language (L2) and multilingual children. These include the notion of inter-lingual transfer and a distinction between vocabulary breadth and depth, lexical inferencing, and attending to conjunctions – a special category of vocabulary that deals with higher-order language. The chapter highlights some of the ways that vocabulary can be challenging to multilingual learners. The chapter concludes with some suggestions for future directions for research.

Keywords: multilingual learners, reading comprehension, language comprehension, vocabulary, inferencing, conjunctions, language comprehension difficulties
Article outline
  • 1.The simple view of reading – A spotlight on vocabulary
  • 2.Vocabulary development in multilingual learners
  • 3.Inter-lingual transfer of vocabulary
  • 4.Vocabulary breadth and depth
  • 5.Inferencing
  • 6.Conjunctions – A special category of vocabulary knowledge
  • 7.Command of conjunctions among atypical learners
  • 8.Conclusions and future directions
  • Acknowledgments
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 21 December 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/z.206.13gev
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