reading comprehsnion in adolescent bilinguals learning … · two studies examined reading...
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READING COMPREHSNION IN ADOLESCENT BILINGUALS LEARNING ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE
by
Adrian Dominic Kenneth Pasquarella
A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Graduate Department of Applied Psychology and Human Development Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
University of Toronto
© Copyright by Adrian Dominic Kenneth Pasquarella (2014)
READING COMPREHSNION IN ADOLESCENT BILINGUALS LEARNING ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE
Adrian Dominic Kenneth Pasquarella Doctor of Philosophy
Department of Applied Psychology and Human Development University of Toronto
2014
Abstract
Two studies examined reading comprehension (RC) among adolescent bilinguals
learning English as a second language (L2). The first study examined predictors of RC
among Chinese-English and Spanish-English bilinguals. The primary objective was to
identify universal and language specific aspects of RC in both the first language (L1) and
L2, across different groups of bilinguals. Measures of RC, vocabulary, multiple measure
of morphological awareness (e.g., derivational, compound), syntactic awareness, and
word-level reading were administered in the L1 and L2 to 117 Chinese-English and 71
Spanish-English bilinguals. Measures of non-verbal reasoning and working memory
were administered in English. Results indicated that vocabulary and morphological
awareness were direct predictors of RC across all models, suggesting these components
are universal aspects of RC. Indirect relationships between morphological awareness and
RC were mediated through vocabulary for all models. Interestingly, the patterns of
which measure of morphological awareness acted as a predictor of RC varied
systematically across languages, suggesting some language specific aspects between finer
grain morphological awareness skills and comprehension. An interesting interplay
between universal and language specific aspects of comprehension for diverse groups of
bilingual adolescents is discussed. The second study examined within- and cross-
ii
language predictors of RC among groups of Chinese-English bilinguals in different
language learning environments. Fifty seven bilinguals learning English as a Foreign
Language (EFL) in China, 60 recent immigrants, and 57 long-term immigrants to Canada
completed parallel measure of word-level reading, vocabulary and RC in Chinese and
English. Results demonstrated that patterns of within- and cross-language predictors of
comprehension varied across groups, and for L1 or L2 comprehension. L1 and L2 RC
was uniquely associated across languages for the EFL bilinguals and recent immigrants,
but was not related for the long-term immigrants. Furthermore, L1 vocabulary was
uniquely associated with L2 comprehension for the EFL bilinguals only. Finally, only
within-language vocabulary was related to RC, in either Chinese or English, for the long-
term immigrants. The results demonstrate overlap between L1 and L2 reading skills in
the early stages of L2 acquisition. The influence of the language learning environment
on changing patterns of within- and cross-language relationships is discussed.
iii
Acknowledgements
First and foremost, I would like to thank my wonderful family for their love and support
over the years. To my wife, Courtney, you are my best friend and soul mate. You have always
shown me immense support, encouragement, and helped me enjoy life to the fullest. I know
together we can accomplish anything. To Eve, my beautiful daughter, you have brought so much
joy and happiness into my life. Your smile and laughter are sources of inspiration and
motivation. I am excited to watch you grow and experience all of life’s pleasures with you.
Thank you for making my life so rich and full of joy. To my Mom, Dad and brother, Anton, you
have given me so much support and helped me grow into the person I am today. I am thankful
for all your love, help, and a lifetime of great memories. I love you all more than words can
express.
I would also like to thank my advisor, Becky Chen-Bumgardner. You have given me
amazing opportunities and helped me grow as a researcher and scholar. My current and future
success is due to the effort, time, and hard work you have put in to help me develop and perfect
my skills. Most importantly, your friendship has made working with you an absolute pleasure. I
am so grateful to have met you and to be able to continue to collaborate. To my past advisor and
mentor, Alexandra Gottardo, you have been a constant source of support and motivation to help
me excel as a scholar but also as a person. You prepared me to be an independent researcher,
instilled a love for literacy, and the knowledge about how to help people through my passion. I
will be forever grateful for everything you have done, and continue to do, for me. To Esther
Geva, another excellent mentor, I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to get to know you
and to gain the valuable experience of collaborating with you. You have helped me create many
important opportunities that have greatly expanded the depth and breadth of my research skills
and potential. Most importantly, all my mentors have instilled the confidence to explore new
and exciting ideas.
Additionally, there were a number of fantastic collaborators who were instrumental in the
development and execution of my dissertation research. Jie Zhang, Vedran Dronjic, Gloria
Ramirez, Karen Ay-Yueng, and Jin Xue, I owe all of you a great deal of thanks and admiration
for your support throughout the project in terms of measurement development, logistics, and data
collection. You were all a fantastic team to work with. Most importantly, thanks for being a
sounding board and providing excellent advice to help refine and specify the goals and intentions
of my dissertation research. Without you, I would not have been able to complete such an
intricate and multi-facetted study.
There were also a number of graduate and undergraduate students who helped with
recruitment, data collection, and data entry. A lot of hard work was done by an excellent group
of immerging scholars. I am very grateful for your help throughout the project. Furthermore, I
give thanks to all the schools in the Toronto Catholic District School board and the Toronto
District School Board for helping me promote the project and providing resources to complete it.
Finally, thank you to all the participants who devoted many hours to complete the study. There
was a coordinated effort among many people to complete my dissertation research, and I am
incredibly thankful to everyone who helped me accomplish a major life goal.
v
Table of Contents
Abstract………………………………………………………………………………………. ii
Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………………... iv
Lists of Tables...…………………………………………………………………………..….. ix
Lists of Figures.………………………………………………………………………………. x
Chapter 1: Introduction……………….…………………………………………………….… 1
Chapter 2: Study 1 - Models of RC in Spanish-English and Chinese-English bilinguals: Universal and Language Specific Aspects of Comprehension in the L1 and L2.... 4
Theoretical Models of RC ……..…….……………………………..……………. 5
Typological characteristics of English, Spanish, and Chinese….……………..…. 7
Orthography and phonology………………………………………………….. 7
Morphology…………………………………………………………………... 8
Syntax……………………………..………………………………………….. 9
Oral Language Proficiency and RC………………………………………………. 10
Vocabulary……………………………………………………………………. 10
Morphological Awareness……………………………………………………. 12
Syntactic Awareness………………………………………………………….. 16
Objectives……..………………….………………………………………………. 20
Chapter 3: Method..……………………………………………………….………………….. 21
Participants..………….…………………………………….………………... 21
Procedures…………...…………………………………….………………… 22
Measures…………………………………………………………………….. 23
RC..…….……………..…….…………………………………………... 23
Vocabulary……………………………………………………………… 23
Morphological awareness……………….………..…………………….. 24
Compound awareness……………………………………..………... 24
Derivational awareness……………………………..………………. 25
Derivational production………………………………………… 25
Derivational structure………………………………………....... 25
Chinese homographic awareness………………...………………... 25
Syntactic awareness……………………..……………………………… 26
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Word reading and decoding………...…………………………………... 27
Nonverbal reasoning…………………..……………………………….. 28
Working memory……………………………………………………..... 28
Demographic questionnaire…………………………………………...... 29
Measurement comparability across languages………………………………. 29
Chapter 4: Results..……………………….……………………………………………..……. 30
Mean scores and group differences……..…………………………………… 30
Correlations…………………………………………………………….……. 31
Specification of Structural Models across Languages…………………....…. 32
Structural Equation Models in English.……………………………….. 35
Structural Equation Models in the L1……………………….………… 37
Chapter 5: Discussion………………………………………...………………………………. 40
The Universal Importance of Vocabulary and Morphological Awareness
for Comprehension.…………………………………………………………. 41
Language Specific Influences on Comprehension and Vocabulary………… 45
Limitations and Future Directions…………………………………………… 48
Conclusion and Implications………….…………………….……………….. 49
Chapter 6: Study 2 - Cross-language Relationships of L1 and L2 RC: A Cross-cultural Comparison of Learning to Read in Canada and China……………………….…. 52
Defining Different Language Learning Environments……………………… 53
Cross-language Relationships between L1 and L2 Reading Skills...……….. 53
Within- and Cross-language Relationships of Word-level Reading…….…... 54
Within- and Cross-language Relationships of Vocabulary…...……………... 57
Cross-language Relationships of RC……………………............................... 58
Objectives..…………………………………………………………….......... 60
Chapter 7: Method….………………………………………………………………………… 61
Participants...………………………………………………………………....... 61
Measures……...………………….……………………………………………. 63
RC……..………………………………………………………………. 63
Vocabulary…………………………………………………………….. 63
Word-level reading…………………………………………………….. 64
Demographic questionnaire…………………………………………… 64
Procedures……………………………….……………………………….…… 64
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Chapter 8: Results………………………………………………………………………..…… 66
Descriptive Statistics and Group Differences….……………………………… 66
Correlations……………………………………....……………………………. 67
Hierarchical Linear Regressions and Commonalities Analyses………………. 68
Chapter 9: Discussion.………………………………………………………………………... 74
The Role of Word-level Reading Within and Across languages..…….………. 76
The Role of Vocabulary Within and Across Languages………………………. 78
The Role of RC Across Languages…………………………….…………….... 79
Conditions that Support Cross-language Relationships...……………………... 81
Limitations and Future Directions………………..……………………….…… 81
Implications………………………………………………………………….… 83
Chapter 10: General Conclusions…………………………………………………………….. 85
References……………………………………………………………………………………. 87
viii
Lists of Tables
Table 1. Descriptive statistics and Analysis of Variance of age, length of residence, English and L1 variables.....…………………………………………………..……. 102
Table 2. Intercorrelations among English variables for Chinese-English bilinguals and Spanish-English bilinguals……………………………………………..…………... 103
Table 3. Intercorrelations among Spanish and control measures…………………………….. 104
Table 4. Intercorrelations among Chinese and control measures…………………………….. 105
Table 5. Coefficients for structural equation model of English RC………………………….. 107
Table 6. Coefficients of bootstrapping for indirect effects on English RC.………………….. 108
Table 7. Comparison of fit statistics by constraining parameter estimates to be equal across groups……………………………………………………………….………..…….. 109
Table 8. Coefficients for structural equation model of first language RC……...……………. 111
Table 9. Coefficients of bootstrapping for indirect effects L1 RC…………………………… 112
Table 10. Descriptive statistics and Analysis of Variance for Chinese EFL learners, Recent Immigrants, and Long-term Immigrants for age, months in Canada, English and Chinese variables…..………………..………....………………………………….. 115
Table 11. Intercorrelations among Chinese and English variables separated by group..…….. 116
Table 12. Hierarchical linear regression predicting English RC, separate for EFL, Recent Immigrant, and Long-term Immigrant groups..………………………………….. 117
Table 13. Hierarchical linear regression predicting Chinese RC, separate for EFL, Recent Immigrant, and Long-term Immigrant groups……………….…………………….. 118
Table 14. Commonality analyses beta weights, structural coefficients, proportions of total, common and unique variance for EFL, Recent Immigrant and Long-term Immigrant groups when predicting English RC…….……………………………… 119
Table 15. Summary of unique and common variance for independent variables when predicting English RC...…………..……………………….……………………….. 120
Table 16. Commonality analyses beta weights, structural coefficients, proportions of total, common and unique variance for EFL, Recent Immigrant and Long-term Immigrant groups when predicting Chinese RC………………………………….... 121
Table 17. Summary of unique and common variance for independent variables when predicting L1 RC….……………………………………………..….……………… 122
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Lists of Figures Figure 1. Theoretical structural equation model of RC in English, Spanish and Chinese…… 106
Figure 2. Structural models of English RC showing direct and indirect effects…...………… 110
Figure 3. Structural model for Spanish RC (Model 3) showing direct and indirect effects….. 113
Figure 4. Structural model for Chinese RC (Model 4) showing direct and indirect effects …. 114
x
Chapter 1: Introduction
Reading comprehension (RC) is critical for school success as it acts as a gateway to
academic and cultural knowledge. RC enables self-directed learning, and contributes to the
development of the mental lexicon (Cunningham & Stanovich, 2001). Bilingual children and
adolescents often experience delays in developing oral language and RC proficiency when
compared to native speakers of English (August, Carlo, Dressler & Snow, 2005; August &
Shanahan, 2006; Carlo, August, Snow, Dressler, Lippman, Lively, & White, 2004; Farnia &
Geva, 2011; Pasquarella, Gottardo, & Grant, 2012; Verhallen & Schoonen, 1993). Gaps in oral
language skills, especially vocabulary, do not close even after many years of schooling in
English (August et al., 2005; Farnia & Geva, 2011; Verhoeven, 2000). Researchers claim that to
close the gap in literacy skills by the beginning of post-secondary education, bilingual students
must show exponential growth in language and literacy skills throughout high school (e.g., Carlo
et al., 2004; Pasquarella et al., 2012). Thus, it is crucial to understand the underpinnings of oral
language and RC development of bilingual students, and to find ways to enhance these skills.
However, virtually no systematic research has been conducted in these areas with adolescent
bilingual learners (August & Shanahan, 2006; Pasquarella et al., 2012).
Two interrelated studies are presented here. Both studies examined the underpinning
skills of RC in adolescent bilinguals. The overall focus of the two studies was on the
interrelationships among component skills of RC, as there is a dearth of empirical research on
aspects of RC in bilinguals especially for adolescent populations (August & Shanahan, 2006;
Kirby & Savage, 2008; Pasquarella, Gottardo, & Grant, 2012). Currently, little is known about
how models of RC based on monolingual and younger bilingual children apply to adolescent
bilinguals (Pasquarella et al., 2012). This study will establish models of RC for adolescent
1
bilinguals with different first language backgrounds. These models will help us understand the
learning needs of heterogeneous groups of bilinguals. Creating a more refined understanding of
the interrelationships among predictors of RC for adolescent bilinguals can act as a foundation
for evidence-based instructional interventions.
The focus of Study 1 was to examine the within-language predictors of RC for bilinguals
who spoke Spanish and Chinese as their first language (L1), and English as their second
language (L2). These two groups of bilinguals were chosen because Spanish and Chinese are
represented by typologically different scripts, with different degrees of similarity to English.
Predictors of RC (e.g., vocabulary, morphological awareness, syntactic awareness, word reading)
were examined in English, Spanish, and Chinese to understand how the predictive patterns
varied across the three languages. A central goal of Study 1 was to establish universal and
language-specific aspects of RC in different languages and orthographies.
The focus of Study 2 was to examine the cross-language relationships between RC for
Chinese-English bilinguals. Comparisons were made across three groups: (1) Chinese-English
bilinguals learning English in China, (2) recent Chinese-English immigrants learning English in
Canada, and (3) long-term Chinese-English immigrants learning English in Canada. These
comparisons allowed for an exploration of patterns of within- and cross-language predictors of
RC in different language learning environments. Furthermore, this study examined whether
factors such as exposure to and use of English, inherent in the language learning environment,
had an impact on the cognitive-linguistic models of RC.
Together, the two studies attempted to establish comprehensive and refined models of RC
for adolescent bilinguals. An overarching goal was to outline the specific cognitive and
linguistic components necessary for L1 and L2 RC in adolescent bilinguals from various
2
backgrounds. Study 1 identified predictors of RC in English, Spanish and Chinese. As an
extension to Study 1, Study 2 demonstrated that predictors of comprehension may vary
depending on aspects of the language-learning context (i.e., L1- or L2-dominant educational
system and culture). Based on the findings, these studies discuss how literacy instruction can be
adapted to suit the needs of adolescent bilinguals from different backgrounds.
3
Chapter 2: Study 1 - Models of RC in Spanish-English and Chinese-English Bilinguals:
Universal and Language Specific Aspects of Comprehension in the L1 and L2
A fundamental aspect of learning to read is the understanding that printed symbols
represent oral language. Across the world, different scripts have been used to symbolize
meaning and to transcribe and transmit knowledge, events, and information (Olson, 1996). The
goal of reading in any language is to form coherent understandings of connected text. In order to
achieve this goal, a child must develop many cognitive and linguistic skills. Different theoretical
models have been developed to understand the cognitive and linguistic components involved in
RC, which include the ability to read words, knowledge of word meanings, and general oral
language proficiency (e.g., Cain, Oakhill & Bryant, 2004; Gough & Tunmer, 1986; Hoover &
Gough, 1990; Perfetti, 2007; Perfetti & Hart, 2001, 2002). While an increasing amount of
empirical research has been conducted in different languages, such as Spanish and Chinese (e.g.,
Chen, Hao, Geva, Zhu, & Shu, 2009; González, 1997; González & Valle, 2000; Gottardo, Yan,
Siegel, & Wade-Woolley, 2001; Shu, Chen, Anderson, Wu, & Xuan, 2006), relatively few
studies have simultaneously compared RC skills across a bilingual’s L1 and L2 (see van
Gelderen, Schoonen, Stoel, Glooper, & Hulstijn, 2007 for an exception). It would be useful to
extend previous research by identifying similarities and differences in predictors of RC across
different languages. This study addressed this research gap by comparing models of L1 and L2
RC in bilinguals who speak Spanish or Chinese as their L1 and English as their L2. I chose to
focus on adolescence as it is an age range critical for reading development for bilinguals, but is
accompanied by little empirical research (August & Shanahan, 2006; Pasquarella et al., 2012).
In terms of immigration demographics and statistics, it is important to examine Spanish-English
and Chinese-English bilinguals as they represent large percentages of the bilinguals in North
4
American schools and these populations continue to grow (Capps, Fix, Murray, Ost, Passel, &
Herwantoro, 2005; Loeffer, 2007; Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development,
2000).
The primary goal of this study was to identify similarities and differences in predictors of
RC in the L1 and the L2 for Spanish-English and Chinese-English bilinguals. Identifying
similarities in predictors across Spanish, Chinese and English may reveal universal aspects
important for comprehension in different languages. At the same time, identifying differences in
predictors of RC across the three languages will outline language-specific aspects involved in
reading in different languages. An additional purpose of the study was to compare predictors of
English RC for Spanish-English and Chinese-English bilinguals to outline similarities and
differences in the skills these groups of students use to comprehend English text. Eventually,
informed educational strategies that highlight these similarities and differences can be used to
tailor instructional practices to increase English reading proficiency in diverse groups of
adolescent bilinguals.
Theoretical Models of RC
To understand the process of comprehending written language, different, but related,
theories have been proposed. One such theory, The Simple View of Reading (SVR), has been
established as a valid and reliable model that outlines the cognitive and linguistic skills involved
in RC (Gough & Tunmer, 1986; Hoover & Gough, 1990). According to the SVR, RC can be
conceptualized as the product of skills in two areas, decoding and listening comprehension.
Decoding refers to the word-level skill that is demonstrated in word recognition and pseudoword
reading. Listening comprehension represents the more global skill of understanding spoken
language (Gough & Tunmer, 1986; Hoover & Gough, 1990). Joshi, Tao, Aaron, and Quiroz
5
(2012) validated the SVR in Spanish and Chinese, in addition to English, by examining the
contributions of decoding (operationalized as character recognition for the Chinese group) and
listening comprehension to RC across these three groups of monolinguals sampled in the primary
grades. For example, in grade 4 results indicated that measures of decoding (or character
recognition) and listening comprehension in combination explained 60% of the variance in RC
for Spanish monolinguals, 50% for English monolinguals, and 42% for Chinese monolinguals.
Overall, the results demonstrated that the SVR is useful for understanding individual differences
in children’s RC skills in English, Spanish, and Chinese. Pasquarella et al. (2012) applied the
SVR framework to understand the contributions of decoding and vocabulary to RC in adolescent
L1 and L2 speakers of English. Decoding, vocabulary and the interaction of the two were all
significant predictors of RC for the L2 learners, while only vocabulary was a significant
predictor for the L1 speakers. While the SVR has been applied to English RC for adolescent L2
speakers (Pasquarella et al., 2012), research has not examined whether the SVR can be applied to
understanding individual differences in Spanish and Chinese RC for adolescent bilinguals. To
extend previous research, Study 1 compared models of RC in Spanish, Chinese and English for
adolescent bilingual students.
While underpinnings of decoding and word reading have been extensively studied, a
major limitation of the SVR model is that the construct of listening comprehension is not clearly
defined. It has been theorized that listening comprehension (also referred to as oral language
proficiency) involves at least three main components, vocabulary, morphological awareness, and
syntactic awareness (Geva, 2006). Generally, vocabulary refers to the knowledge of word
meanings. Morphological awareness refers to the knowledge of, and the ability to manipulate
morphemes, which are the smallest units of meaning in a language. Finally, syntactic awareness
6
is the ability to recognize and reflect on the grammatical structure of a language. Each of the
three constructs has been shown to uniquely contribute to English RC in monolingual and
bilingual learners (e.g., Cain et al., 2004; Carlisle, 2000; Pasquarella et al., 2012; Savage, 2006).
However, research has not examined the three components within the same framework for L1
and L2 RC in adolescent bilinguals. Separating the influences of vocabulary, morphological and
syntactic awareness (in conjunction with other cognitive and linguistics skills) on RC will lead to
a more refined understanding of the skills necessary for successful comprehension in adolescent
bilinguals from different linguistic backgrounds. Below I will discuss the typological
characteristics of the languages under study, and then review empirical studies on the
contributions of vocabulary, morphological and syntactic awareness to RC.
Typological characteristics of English, Spanish, and Chinese
Orthography and phonology. English and Spanish are both alphabetic orthographies
employing the Roman script, in which letters encode the phonetic components of oral language.
English and Spanish differ regarding grapheme (letter) to phoneme (sound) transparency.
Spanish has a shallow orthography (DeFior, Martos, & Cary, 2002), in which grapheme-and-
phoneme correspondences are highly regular. English, however, has a deep alphabetic
orthography (Wimmer & Goswami, 1994). While there is some regularity among grapheme-
and-phoneme correspondences, there is much less consistency as graphemes are often associated
with multiple phonemes (e.g., “ch” in chord, chore, chute) and grapheme-and-phoneme
correspondences can change depending on the addition of affixes (e.g., heal vs. health). Chinese,
on the other hand, is a logographic orthography. Each Chinese character corresponds to a
morpheme and a syllable in the spoken language (i.e., the character 兵 means soldier and is
pronounced /bing1/). Most Chinese characters are semantic-phonetic compound characters,
7
which comprise a semantic radical and a phonetic radical. The semantic radical carries
information about the meaning of a compound character. The phonetic radical only accurately
represents the pronunciation of a compound character 39% of the time (Shu, Chen, Anderson,
Wu, & Xuan, 2003). Chinese characters that are not semantic-phonetic compound characters,
such as 兵, can only be read by mapping the whole character to its pronunciation. Another
unique feature of Chinese is the high level of homophone density. Tens of thousands of
morphemes are represented by fewer than 2000 syllables. For example, the tone syllable /yi4/
can correspond to characters 意，易，宜，益，亦，译，译，译，译，翼，异，译 and many
more (Duanmu, 2007). Additionally, many characters are homographs, meaning there are
multiple meanings associated with the same character. It is often the context of the sentence that
indicates the exact meaning of a homographic character.
Morphology. Morphological awareness refers to the use of word formation rules to
construct and understand morphologically complex words (Kuo & Anderson, 2006; Stahl &
Nagy, 2006). Morphologically complex words can be categorized by different morphological
elements. Three types are: (1) inflections, (2) derivations, and (3) compounds. Inflections (e.g.,
-s, -ing) are word endings added to a base (root) word that denote meanings such as verb tense,
gender, or case. Derivations involve applying affixes (i.e., prefixes and suffixes un-, sub-, -ness,
-ly) to base words to form new words that have different meanings or word classes from the base
words (e.g., friend-friendship-friendly). Derivational suffixes also specify syntactic categories
(e.g., –ion indicates a noun, while –ify indicates a verb). Finally, compounds are the
combinations of two or more words to form new words (e.g., tomb + stone = tombstone) (Kuo &
Anderson, 2006; Lam, Chen, Geva, Luo, & Li 2012; McBride-Chang, 2004). With respect to
morphological characteristics of a language, this study investigated derivational and compound
8
awareness as these types of skills are more important for understanding academic words and
sentence-level comprehension (e.g., Nagy & Anderson, 1984). Derivational and compound
morphological awareness may share different relationships with RC across English, Spanish and
Chinese. Therefore to create a parallel comparison in all three languages, I decided to focus on
both derivational and compound morphological awareness.
Within different languages the representation and frequency of morphologically complex
words differs substantially. Spanish and English both have a rich derivational morphology as
many morphologically complex words are derived. Compound words are present in Spanish and
English but they are encountered less often than derived words (Chen, Ramirez, Luo, Geva, &
Ku, 2012; Ramirez, Chen, Geva, & Luo, 2011). On the other hand, Chinese has a very rich
compound morphology as over 75% of words are formed through compounding (Kuo &
Anderson, 2006; Sun, Sun, Huang, Li & Xing, 1996). The morphological characteristics of
different languages may have important implications for how these skills are recruited during
reading.
Syntax. Syntax refers to the way words are put together to form sentences, clauses or
phrases. English and Spanish have many similar syntactic features. English and Spanish use
grammatical devices such as inflections to denote case, number, and tense. Additionally, both
languages use function words (e.g., of in English, de in Spanish) and articles (e.g., the in English
and el/la in Spanish for masculine/feminine forms, respectively). However, Spanish utilizes
inflections to a much greater degree than English. For example, Spanish includes inflections to
denote gender (e.g, common masculine nouns end in –o, common feminine nouns end in -a)
(Zagona, 2002), while English does not. Word order is similar in Spanish and English. Subject-
9
Verb-Object is the structure used in the majority of sentences (Muntendam, 2013; Zawiszewki,
Gutiérrez, Fernández, & Laka, 2011).
There are some common features shared across Chinese and English. For example,
uninflected modals are used in both English and Chinese. However, Chinese syntax differs from
English or Spanish because Chinese lacks the grammatical device of inflections, such as case
marking and tense. Additionally, function words are not used in Chinese (Li, 1996; Li &
Thompson, 1981). Instead, word compounding is used to show verb tense, number and degree.
For example, the character 猫 can denote either the singular or plural form of cat/cats.
Additional characters are added to a morpheme as quantifiers to indicate plurality, such as 一群
which means a group (Chik, Ho, Yeung, Chan, Chung, Luan, Lo & Lau, 2012). There is more
flexibility in word order in Chinese than Spanish or English. In Chinese, different word order
structures (e.g., Object-Subject-Verb or Subject-Verb-Object) can be used based on whether the
topic of the passage is an object or a subject. Given this flexibility, word order is often regarded
as the most important syntactic device necessary for RC in Chinese (Chang, 1992; Chao, 1968;
Chik et al., 2012; Huang, Li & Li, 2008; Li & Thompson, 1981; Yueng, Ho, Chan, Chung, &
Wong, 2013).
Oral Language Proficiency and RC
Vocabulary. Researchers have conceptualized vocabulary according to two dimensions:
breadth and depth. Vocabulary breadth generally refers to the number of words a person knows
in both oral (phonological) and written (orthographic) forms. Vocabulary depth refers to the
amount of knowledge about a particular word, which includes a root word’s multiple meanings
(e.g., lean meat vs. to lean against a wall), morphological derivations (e.g., leaner, leanest,
leanly), and the appropriate use of root words or morphologically complex words in different
10
syntactic contexts (e.g., -ing is used to modify a noun to a verb in a sentence, while –est creates
an adjective, and –ly creates an adverb) (Nagy & Herman, 1987; Oullette, 2006; Proctor et al.,
2012; Proctor, Uccelli, Dalton, & Snow, 2009).
English vocabulary is a robust predictor of English RC in monolingual and bilingual
children, adolescents and adults (Braze, Tabor, Shankweiler, & Menclet 2007; Kieffer & Lesaux,
2008; Proctor et al., 2009; Pasquarella et al., 2012). For example, Proctor, Carlo, August, and
Snow (2006) examined English RC in 4th grade Spanish-English bilinguals in the United States.
Results indicated that vocabulary was strongly associated with English reading and listening
comprehension. Mancilla-Martinez and Lesaux (2010) examined longitudinal predictors of
English RC in low-achieving Spanish-English bilinguals from 4.5 to 11 years of age in the
United States. Initial status and the rate of growth of vocabulary, along with word reading,
explained virtually all of the variance (88%) in RC ability at age 11. In a study of adolescent L2
learners in Canada, Pasquarella et al. (2012) also identified vocabulary as a significant predictor
of English RC, after controlling for decoding.
Only one study, to my knowledge, has examined the relationships between Spanish
vocabulary and Spanish RC. Kim and Pallante (2012) studied first grade students from high
socio-economic status families in Chile. Children were tested three times during the year on
Spanish RC, vocabulary, word reading and pseudoword reading fluency. Vocabulary was a
significant predictor of RC after controlling for the influence of word reading and pseudoword
reading fluency. Additionally, students with larger vocabularies tended to experience faster
growth in RC performance over the course of the academic year, in comparison to children with
smaller vocabularies. Currently no studies have examined predictors of Spanish RC with
11
adolescents. The current project will address this research gap by examining variables that
predict Spanish RC in adolescent Spanish-English bilinguals.
A few studies have examined the role of vocabulary in Chinese RC. For example, Zhang,
McBride-Chang, Tong, Anita, Shu, and Fong (2012) examined predictors of Chinese RC in a
one-year longitudinal study with 7-year-old Chinese children in Hong Kong. Chinese
vocabulary at time 1 was a significant predictor of RC at time 2 after controlling for age, rapid
automatized naming and phonological awareness. Wang, Cheng, and Chen (2006) also
identified Chinese vocabulary as a significant predictor of Chinese RC in a sample of Chinese-
English bilinguals in grade 2 attending education in US schools. Furthermore, Shu, McBride-
Chang, Wu, & Liu (2006) identified Chinese vocabulary as a significant predictor of Chinese RC
in Hong Kong Chinese children with and without reading difficulties in the 5th and 6th grades. In
summary, all studies reported that Chinese vocabulary was a significant predictor of Chinese RC.
Across studies of vocabulary breadth in English, Spanish and Chinese, vocabulary was
consistently a predictor of RC performance. However, previous research is almost exclusively
limited to studies involving children (see Pasquarella et al., 2012 for an exception), and the need
for research to examine adolescent populations is clear (August & Shanahan, 2006).
Considering bilinguals have shown pervasive gaps in vocabulary and RC compared with
monolingual speakers and norm referenced assessments (August et al., 2005; Carlo et al., 2004;
Pasquarella et al., 2012), disentangling the relationships of vocabulary, RC, and other cognitive
and linguistic skills may inform efforts to improve vocabulary and RC skills. In the current
study, vocabulary was measured with a multiple choice definitions task.
Morphological awareness. English morphological awareness shared strong
relationships with both English vocabulary and English RC in monolingual English speakers and
12
L2 learners (Carlisle, 2000; Kuo & Anderson, 2006; Nagy, Beringer, Abbott, 2006; Ramirez,
Chen & Pasquarella, 2013; Stahl & Nagy, 2006). English derivational awareness was a
significant predictor of English RC for Spanish-English bilinguals reading English. In a sample
of 90 Spanish-English bilinguals in grades 4 to 7 in Canada, English derivational awareness
predicted both English RC and vocabulary (Ramirez et al., 2013). Kieffer and Lesaux (2008)
examined English morphological awareness, English vocabulary, and English RC in Spanish-
English bilinguals longitudinally from the fourth through fifth grade in the US. English
derivational morphological awareness emerged as a predictor of English RC, after controlling for
phonological awareness, word reading and vocabulary in grade 5. In a recent study (Kieffer &
Di Felice Box, 2013), morphological awareness made direct and indirect contributions to RC in
native English speakers and Spanish-English bilinguals in grade six in the US. The indirect
influence of morphological awareness on RC was partially mediated through vocabulary.
Specifically, derivational morphological awareness appeared to play an important role in English
RC for Spanish-English bilinguals. The current study will examine the direct and indirect
relationships of morphological awareness and RC with Spanish-English bilingual adolescents.
For Chinese-English bilingual children, researchers have investigated the relationships
between morphological awareness and RC. Since compound morphological awareness is an
important aspect of the Chinese language, researchers examined its role in English reading for
Chinese-English bilinguals. Studies have found differences in the predictive relationships
between English compound and derivational morphological awareness with English RC for
Chinese-English bilinguals. Wang, Cheng, and Chen (2006) reported English compound
morphological awareness to be an important predictor of English RC in Chinese-English
bilinguals who were sampled across grades 1 through 5 in the US. Wang et al. (2006) did not
13
include a measure of derivational morphological awareness. Therefore, comparisons between
the relative contributions of derivational and compound morphological awareness to RC could
not be made. Pasquarella, Chen, Lam, Luo, and Ramirez (2011) included both measures of
morphological awareness in their examination of predictors of English RC in 137 Chinese-
English bilingual children in Canada. They found that both compound and derivational
morphological awareness were significant predictors of English RC after controlling for the
influences of word reading, vocabulary, phonological awareness and non-verbal reasoning. In
another study, Lam et al. (2012) examined the roles of English derivational and compound
awareness in the development of English comprehension skills in a small sample of Chinese-
English bilinguals in kindergarten and grade one. For both cohorts, derivational morphological
awareness, but not compound morphological awareness, was a significant longitudinal predictor
of RC tested one year later, after controlling for the influences of age, phonological awareness,
word reading and vocabulary. The lack of significant relationships between compound
morphological awareness and RC may be due to the sample size.
In addition to the direct relationship between morphological awareness and English RC,
morphological awareness has been found to be an indirect predictor of English RC for Chinese-
English bilinguals. Zhang and Koda (2012) examined direct and indirect effects of derivational
morphological awareness on English vocabulary and English RC with Chinese readers who were
learning English as a foreign language through graduate studies in China. Derivational
morphological awareness was only indirectly related to RC through vocabulary. Overall, the
results are somewhat inconsistent for Chinese-English bilinguals as to the role of derivational
and compound morphological awareness in English RC. Given inconsistencies across studies,
further research that compares both derivational and compound awareness is needed.
14
Substantially less research has been conducted on the role of morphological awareness in
Spanish or Chinese compared to English. Specifically, no studies have reported on the
relationship between Spanish RC and Spanish morphological awareness. The current study was
the first to investigate the links between Spanish vocabulary, morphological awareness and RC.
Alternatively, research has demonstrated compound morphological awareness to be a predictor
of Chinese RC. In a sample of Chinese children in Hong Kong, Zhang et al. (2012) showed that
morphological awareness at time 1 (age 7) was related to RC at time 2 (age 8), controlling for
age, word reading, rapid automatized naming, and phonological awareness. Additionally, Tong,
McBride-Chang, Shu, and Wong (2009) reported that morphological awareness was a
longitudinal and concurrent predictor of Chinese RC in a 1-year study of young Hong Kong
Chinese children. Furthermore, Shu et al. (2006) also demonstrated that Chinese morphological
awareness was a significant predictor of Chinese RC in 5th and 6th grade children in China.
Notably, the contribution of morphological awareness to RC was stronger than the contributions
of phonological awareness, vocabulary, and rapid digit naming. Overall, morphological
awareness appears to play a clear role in Chinese RC. However, none of the studies have
focused on the reading skills of adolescent Chinese-English bilinguals. A goal of the present
study was to extend research by addressing this issue.
In the present study, parallel tasks were created to the extent possible based on
characteristics of the languages. Comparable tasks of compound morphological awareness were
created across all languages. Additionally, derivational tasks were also parallel in Spanish and
English. However, specific to Chinese, derivational and compound morphological awareness
were also targeted through a homographic morphological awareness task. For example, 信服 is
a compound word meaning to convince and is pronounced /xin4 fu2/. Whereas, 弹性 is a derived
15
word meaning flexibility and is pronounced /tan2 xing4/. Derivational morphology is often an
overlooked area of morphological awareness in Chinese because there are fewer derived words
than compound words. Therefore, including this task in the current study presented a highly
novel opportunity to examine the contributions of derivational and compound morphology
awareness in Chinese RC.
Syntactic awareness. Syntactic awareness refers to the ability to recognize and consider
the grammatical structure of a language. Researchers measure syntactic awareness with a variety
of tasks. Often, tasks of syntactic awareness required students to determine if spoken sentences
were grammatically correct or not. Alternatively, some studies had students repair incorrect
sentences (e.g., Johnston & Newport, 1989). Other researchers have used a sentence completion
task to assess syntactic awareness (e.g., Low & Siegel, 1995). Syntactic or grammatical cues are
important for comprehension as they help individuals establish a coherent representation of the
text (Cain, 2007; Fender, 2001; Givón, 1995; Kintsch, 1998; Tunmer & Bowey, 1984; Zhang,
2012).
Cain (2007) found little support for a direct relationship between syntactic awareness
(measured through a sentence correction task) and RC in a sample of monolingual English
speaking children who were 8 and 10 years old in England. Instead, indirect relationships were
mediated by vocabulary, grammatical knowledge and working memory. In another study, Low
and Siegel (2005) reported that syntactic awareness (measured by an oral cloze task) was a
unique predictor of RC, in addition to verbal working memory and phonological processing, in
both English monolingual and bilingual sixth graders in Canada. The differences between the
results of these two studies could be due to the sensitivity of the measures used. The task used
by Cain (2007) focused specifically on syntactic awareness, while the task used by Low and
16
Siegel (2005) may have been confounded with vocabulary knowledge. Additionally, the Low
and Siegel (2005) study did not control for vocabulary in their analyses. Therefore, the
significant relationship of syntactic awareness and RC in the Low and Siegel (2005) study may
be influenced by the students’ vocabulary knowledge.
Research among Spanish-English and Chinese-English bilinguals has also demonstrated a
relationship between English syntactic awareness and English RC. Proctor, Silverman, Harring
and Montecillo (2012) examined the contributions of measures of vocabulary, morphological
awareness, syntactic awareness and a semantic relatedness task to the development of RC over
the course of one year in monolingual English-speaking and Spanish-English bilinguals children
sampled from grades 2 to 4 in the US. Results indicated that syntactic awareness was a unique
contributor to initial status, but not growth, in English RC above the contributions of vocabulary,
word identification and grade for monolingual and Spanish-English bilinguals. However, the
relationship between syntactic awareness and RC was weak for both groups. Zhang (2012)
examined predictors of English RC among Chinese young adults (mean age was approximately
24 years old) learning English as a foreign language (EFL) in China. Two measures of syntactic
awareness were used: (1) an implicit measure which required correct vs. incorrect judgment of a
sentence, and (2) an explicit measure that required students to correct grammatically incorrect
sentences. After controlling for the influence of vocabulary, syntactic awareness displayed a
significant, albeit weak, relationship with RC. Interestingly, it was the implicit measure of
syntactic awareness and not the explicit measure that was the significant predictor of RC. The
authors argue that the implicit awareness task requires more efficient and fluent processing of
syntactic information and word integration than the explicit task, which may account for its
17
stronger relationship with RC. Overall the results suggested, at best, a weak relationship
between English syntactic awareness and English RC.
Currently no studies have investigated the role of Spanish syntactic awareness on Spanish
RC. Recently, a small number of studies have investigated the role of syntactic awareness in
Chinese monolingual children. For example, Chik, Ho, Yeung, Chan, Chung, Luan, Lo, and Lau
(2012) conducted a longitudinal study that involved 272 Chinese-speaking children in Hong
Kong across grades 1 and 2. In this study, syntactic awareness was measured with a sentence
completion task. Results indicated that syntactic skills in grade 1 made an independent
contribution to sentence comprehension in grade 2, after controlling for age, non-verbal
reasoning, reading related cognitive skills (including orthographic and phonological skills), word
reading, and morphological awareness. In another study, Yeung, Ho, Chik, Lo, Luan, Chan, and
Chung (2011) reported that syntactic awareness, assessed with a sentence completion task, was a
unique predictor of comprehension at the level of the sentence and passage in grade 1 Chinese-
speaking children living in Hong Kong. Overall, the results underscored the importance of
syntactic skills as an early predictor of Chinese comprehension. The authors argued that
syntactic knowledge facilitated text-information building and text coherence.
The majority of studies did not examine the relationship of syntactic awareness to RC in
conjunction with both vocabulary and morphological awareness in English, Spanish or Chinese
(see Proctor et al., 2012 for an exception in English). Additionally, the nature of the relationship
between syntactic awareness and RC among adolescent bilinguals remains unclear, as most
previous studies have looked at different populations of learners (e.g., monolingual children,
bilingual children, EFL adults). The current study explored whether and how these findings may
be applied to adolescent Spanish-English and Chinese-English bilinguals. Additionally,
18
measures of syntactic awareness differ between studies; some measures were implicit judgment
tasks (Zhang, 2012), others explicit correction tasks (Cain, 2007) and others sentence generation
(Proctor et al., 2012) or sentence completion tasks (Chik et al., 2012; Low & Siegel, 1995;
Yueng et al., 2011). It is likely that the different formats of syntactic awareness tasks require
different cognitive and linguistic skills. The current study uses implicit judgment tasks as they
require less vocabulary knowledge than other syntactic awareness tasks. Previous research has
suggested that syntactic awareness may share a unique relationship with RC, but this relationship
was weakened once vocabulary was factored into the equation (e.g., Zhang, 2012). Research is
needed to understand how the relationships between vocabulary, morphology and syntax jointly
influence RC in adolescent bilinguals to gain a clear understanding of each component’s unique
and shared influence on comprehension. Furthermore, examining the contributions of these
skills to RC in English, Spanish, and Chinese outlined similarities and differences of predictors
of RC across languages.
The current study created comparable measures of syntactic awareness to evaluate its
contribution to RC in English, Spanish and Chinese. For each language a judgment task that
required students to determine whether an orally presented sentence was grammatically correct
was used to assess syntactic awareness. The syntactic awareness tasks contained multiple
syntactic features that were representative of the languages understudy. Some of the features
were unique to a particular language, while other features were common to either Spanish and
English or Chinese and English. The goal was to create measures that assessed the participant’s
syntactic awareness regarding multiple representative features found within that language (e.g.,
tense, number, the use of articles or function words, word order, etc.), instead of focusing on one
particular element (e.g., word order).
19
Objectives
The current investigation examined models of RC for bilingual adolescents from two
different L1 backgrounds: Spanish and Chinese. The primary objective was to examine the
relationships of vocabulary, morphological awareness and syntactic awareness with RC.
Comparisons were made across English, Spanish and Chinese to identify how the components
varied across languages. Specifically, four different models were compared: (1) English RC for
Spanish-English bilinguals, (2) English RC for Chinese-English bilinguals, (3) Spanish L1 RC,
and (4) Chinese L1 RC. Identifying relationships across Spanish, Chinese, and English can
reveal language-universal and language-specific aspects of RC.
I hypothesized that vocabulary knowledge would be consistently related to RC in English,
Spanish and Chinese, and would therefore be universally important for RC. On the other hand,
language-specific relationships may also be present. For example, derivational morphological
awareness may be related to RC in Spanish and English but not Chinese, whereas compound
morphological awareness may demonstrate a stronger relationship with Chinese RC than with
Spanish or English RC. The salience and frequency of morphologically complex words
encountered in a language may have implications for how these skills are utilized to comprehend
different languages. Considering syntactic awareness is a predictor of English and Chinese RC
(Chik et al., 2012; Proctor et al., 2012; Yeung et al., 2011; Zhang, 2012) it may also be a
significant predictor for Spanish RC.
20
Chapter 3: Method
Participants
Participants included 117 Chinese-English bilinguals (84 Females; 33 Males) with a
mean age of 17.99 years old (SD = 3.4 years) and 71 Spanish-English bilinguals (43 Females; 28
Males) with a mean age of 19.65 years (SD = 3.36 years) enrolled in high school or in
undergraduate university programs in southern Ontario, Canada. All Chinese-English bilinguals
spoke Mandarin as their L1. The majority were from mainland China (80%), 10% were from
Taiwan, and the remaining 10% did not indicate a country of origin. On average, the Chinese-
English bilinguals had been living in Canada for 6.88 years (SD = 4.34 years). All Spanish-
English bilinguals spoke Spanish as their L1. On average, this group of students had been living
in Canada for 12.04 years (SD = 6.98 years). Ten percent of Spanish-English bilinguals were
from Colombia, 10% were from Mexico, 5% were from Ecuador, and 40% of participants were
distributed among Argentina, Chile, Cuba, Peru, Philippines, Spain, or the US. Additionally,
there were approximately 20% who were born in Canada and another 15% did not provide a
country of origin.
With respect to parental education, approximately 80% of the Chinese-English
bilingual’s parents had completed college or university at the undergraduate or graduate level,
while about 20% of the participant’s parents had completed high school or less. For the Spanish-
English bilinguals, approximately 70% of the participant’s parents had completed college or
university at the undergraduate or graduate level, while about 30% completed high school or less.
For the Chinese-English bilinguals, approximately 74% of the sample reported speaking
to their parents only in Chinese. Another 26% reported speaking with their parents frequently in
Chinese and occasionally in English. The majority of Chinese-English bilinguals (83%) reported
21
conversations with their friends occurring mostly in English. The other 17% reported speaking
with their friends in both English and Chinese to a similar degree. For the Spanish-English
bilinguals, approximately 25% percent of the sample reported speaking to their parents only in
Spanish. Another 50% reported speaking with their parents frequently in Spanish and
occasionally in English. The remaining 25% reported speaking to their parents mostly in English
and rarely in Spanish. About 75% Spanish-English bilinguals reported conversations with
friends occurring mostly in English and occasionally in Spanish. The other 25% reported
speaking with their friends in English and Spanish to a similar degree.
For the Chinese-English bilinguals, 40% of the sample were enrolled in a Chinese
language class. The majority of students who were not enrolled in heritage language classes had
completed high school in China and came to Canada for the purpose of attending university. For
the Spanish-English bilinguals, only 8 students were enrolled in Spanish language classes. For
both groups, L1 languages classes lasted about three hours per week (the range was 2.5 to 3.5
hours per week).
Procedures
Participants completed measures in both their L1 and English. In total, testing took
approximately 4 hours to complete, which was 2.5 hours in English and 1.5 hours in the L1.
Generally, all the English measures were completed in one session and the L1 measures were
completed in another session, with the remainder of English or L1 measures completed in a third
session for a few participants. Tasks within each testing were administered by a trained research
assistant. Typically the English measures were administered before the L1 measures. Measures
of RC, vocabulary, morphological awareness and syntactic awareness in English and the L1 were
completed in groups. Additionally, the demographic and language use questionnaire was also
22
administered during group testing. The measures of word reading, non-verbal reasoning and
working memory were administered individually.
Measures
Reading Comprehension. The Second Canadian Edition of the Gates MacGinitie RC
test (MacGinitie, MacGinitie, Maria, Dreyer, & Hughes, 1992) was used to assess RC in English,
Chinese and Spanish. Levels E and F were used for high school and undergraduate students
respectively to ensure that students worked through the test most appropriate for their age and
ability. Form 3 of Levels E and F were translated into Spanish and Chinese. Form 4 of Levels E
and F were used for English RC. Each test consisted of a series of short passages with multiple
choice questions. In total, each test had 48 multiple choice questions each with 4 or 5 response
options. Students were given 45 minutes to complete this task in each language. Reliabilities1 in
English for Forms E and F were .84 and .93 for the Chinese-English bilinguals, and .83 and .91
for the Spanish-English bilinguals. Reliabilities, based on translated Form 3 Levels E and F,
were .89 and .93 for the Chinese RC test and.87 and .89 for the Spanish RC test
Vocabulary. The Second Canadian Edition of the Gates MacGinitie Vocabulary
(MacGinitie et al., 1992) was used to assess vocabulary knowledge in English, Spanish and
Chinese. Form 4 of Levels E and F were used for high school and undergraduate students
respectively to ensure the participants worked through the test most appropriate for their age and
ability. Form 3 of Levels E and F were translated into Spanish and Chinese. To ensure that the
difficulty of items was similar across languages, word frequencies were tabulated based on the
SUBTLex databases for English (Brysbaert & New, 2009), Spanish (Cuetos, Glez-Nosti, Barbón,
& Brysbaert, 2011) and Chinese (Cai, & Brysbaert, 2010). First, word frequencies were
1 Cronbach’s alpha reliability ratings of internal consistency were calculated based on item-level data from the participants within the current study for all measures in the L1 and L2.
23
calculated for the English tasks to be translated. Then the word frequencies for the translated
tasks were cross-referenced with the English version. For situations where differences between
frequencies were noted, the translated word was replaced with another word in the database that
had a similar frequency to the original target item. T-tests revealed non-significant differences in
the frequency ratings (using LOG frequency per million values) across languages for the
different forms, suggesting the L1 measures are comparable in difficulty to their English
counterparts (p range was .55 to .95). Each test consisted of target words with multiple choice
responses. Each test had 45 target words with 4 or 5 potential definitions. Students were given
35 minutes to complete this task in each language. Reliabilities in English for Form 4 Levels E
and F were .94 and .89 for the Chinese-English bilinguals and .90 and .91 for the Spanish-
English bilinguals. Reliabilities, based on translated Forms E and F, were .90 and .90 for
Spanish vocabulary, and .89 and .94 for Chinese vocabulary
Morphological awareness.
Compound awareness. Experimental compound awareness measures were created in
English, Spanish and Chinese following the same instructions and format. The tasks involved
the generation of the name (or label) of a novel noun based on a short description. The measures
contained non-recursive (two word compounds) and recursive compounds (more than two word
compounds) to increase the difficulty of the measures. A sample English item is: “A factory that
recycles sweaters is called a (sweater recycling factory)”. The task was administered with an
oral recording of the instructions and items. Participants followed along with a written copy and
provided a written responses for the answers. There were six practice trials for non-recursive
items followed by 15 test items. Then there were 4 practice items for recursive compounds
followed by another 10 test items for a total of 25 test items in both the English and Chinese
24
tasks. The Spanish task was the same as the English and Chinese tasks except there were 5
recursive test items (instead of 10), tabulating to 20 test items in total. Participants were
encouraged to complete all items. Cronbach’s alpha reliabilities for the English task for
Chinese-English and Spanish-English bilinguals were .80 and .81, respectively. Cronbach’s
alpha reliabilities were .86 for the Spanish task, and .86 for the Chinese task.
Derivational awareness.
Derivational production. The derivational production tasks were adapted from Carlisle
(2000) for both English and Spanish (Ramirez, Chen, Geva & Kieffer, 2010). Participants were
presented with a root word (target word) and an incomplete sentence via an audio recording, and
followed along with a written copy. The participants were asked to write a written response by
modifying the target word to correctly complete the sentence. An example in English is: “Glory
(target word). The view from the hilltop was (glorious).” There were 31 items for the English
measure and 26 items for the Spanish measure. Participants were asked to complete all items.
Reliabilities of the English task for the Chinese-English and Spanish-English bilinguals were .84
and .90, respectively. Reliability for the Spanish task was .92.
Derivational structure. The derivational structure tasks (adapted from Ramirez et al.,
2010) were created for English and Spanish. The participants were asked to identify the
morphologically complex pseudoword that correctly completed the sentence. Participants
listened to a recording of the sentences with the multiple choice options. The participants then
circled the correct response. In each item, all the choices had the same root but different suffixes.
An example item in English was: “The young baby was sleeping so… a) terbious b) terbiously c)
terbiouses d) terbiousal”. There were 21 items on the English task and 21 items on the Spanish
25
task. Reliabilities for the English task for Chinese-English and Spanish-English bilinguals
were .73 and .79, respectively. The reliability for the Spanish task was .90.
Chinese homographic awareness. An experimental homographic awareness task was
created in Chinese to examine derivational and compound awareness. In this task, participants
were shown a two-character word with a target morpheme [e.g., 商量 (discuss measure: discuss),
with 商 (discuss) as the target morpheme] followed by three two-character options containing
either the target morpheme [e.g., 商定 (discuss decide: decide)] or a morpheme that was a
homonym [e.g., 商店 (business shop: store) and 商人 (business person: businessman)]. The
participants were instructed to pick the option that contained the target morpheme. The task
contained two practice items and 40 test items. There were 20 derivational and 20 compound
items in the task. The test and practice items were recorded and read to participants as they
worked through the written test. The reliability of this task was .87.
Syntactic awareness. Experimental measures of syntactic awareness were constructed
for English, Spanish and Chinese. Participants were asked to judge sentences as being
grammatically correct or incorrect. Sentences were recorded and orally administered to keep
pronunciation and prosody consistent. Students were not shown sentences in the written form.
Students circled “T” if the sentences sounded grammatically correct or “F” if they sounded
grammatically incorrect. The task was modelled after Johnston and Newport’s (1989)
grammatical judgment task. Measures of the task in each language comprised multiple sentences
with representative grammatical features (e.g., third person singular, past tense, uninflected
modals) from that language. For each grammatical feature a short and long sentence (based upon
syllable length) was created, as well as a correct and incorrect version of each. Then all items
were randomized and counterbalanced across two alternate forms to create a balance of long vs.
26
short and incorrect vs. correct items within each form. Participants received all items from both
forms, for a total of 72 items in English, 78 items in Chinese and 56 items in Spanish, with two
practice items in each language. An example of a correct item in English was, “Ann is the one
whose husband is wearing that funny hat”, and the incorrect counterpart was, “Ann is the one
who husband is wearing that funny hat”. Reliabilities for the English task for Chinese-English
and Spanish-English bilinguals were .84 and .87 respectively. Reliability was .80 for the Spanish
task, and .85 for the Chinese task.
Word reading and decoding. For English, the Word Identification subtest of the
Woodcock Reading Mastery Test–Revised (WRMT–R; Woodcock, 1987) was used to assess the
participants’ word reading accuracy. The test involved participants reading aloud a list of words
of increasing length and difficulty. The reliabilities of the Word Identification were .91 and .92
for the Spanish-English and Chinese-English bilinguals respectively. The Word Attack subtest
of the WRMT–R was used to assess pseudoword reading. The test required the participants to
read aloud a list of pseudowords of increasing complexity. The Word Attack subtest was used to
assess proficiency with English phonological decoding. A stop rule of six consecutive words
read incorrectly was used for both tasks. The reliability ratings of the Word Attack subtest
were .79 and .78 for Chinese-English and Spanish-English bilinguals respectively.
The Identification de letras y palabras subtest of Woodcock Language Proficiency
Battery-Revised Spanish Edition (WLPB-S, Woodcock & Munoz-Sandoval, 1995) was used to
assess Spanish word identification skills. This task was analogous to the English version. The
participants were encouraged to read aloud words that increased in length and difficulty. The
same stop rule for the English tasks was used for the Spanish tasks. The reliability for the
Spanish word reading task was .86.
27
Considering that no standardized test of Chinese word reading was available, an
experimental test was created (based on the test in Luo, Chen, Deacon, Zhang, and Yin, 2013)
that included 240 items presented in order of decreasing word frequency based on the corpus
study conducted by Shu et al. (2003). The majority of items were selected from 12 volumes of
the Elementary School Textbooks (Elementary Education Teaching and Research Center, 1996)
used from grades 1 to 6 in Mainland China. Additional low frequency words were selected from
the Chinese SUBTLex database (Cai, & Brysbaert, 2010) to increase the difficulty of the task.
The test was discontinued when 10 consecutive characters were read incorrectly. The reliability
of this task was .99.
Non-verbal reasoning. The Matrix Analogies Reasoning Test (Naglieri, 1985) was
administered to measure Non-verbal reasoning. To shorten administration time, only subtests 2
and 4 were presented. Each subtest contained 16 items leading to a potential maximum score of
32. For each item, the participants were shown a pattern with one section missing and were
asked to choose one of six options that correctly completed the pattern. A stop rule of 4
consecutive incorrect items was used for each subtest. Reliabilities for the Chinese-English and
Spanish-English bilinguals were .76 and .86, respectively.
Working memory. The working memory task was adapted from Daneman and
Carpenter (1980) (see also Gottardo, Stanovich & Siegel, 1996). In this task, participants
listened to sets of pre-recorded statements containing familiar information (e.g., Cars have four
wheels; Fish swim in the sky). The participants indicated whether each sentence was true or
false. Additionally, the participants were required to recall the final word of each statement
(wheels, sky) at the end of a set. A set contained either two, three, or four statements. The
number of final words remembered was calculated, giving a possible maximum score of 42. The
28
reliabilities of this task for the Chinese-English and Spanish-English bilinguals were .90 and .91
respectively. Only an English measure of working memory was developed and administered.
Demographic questionnaire. Participants were asked to fill out a questionnaire to
collect information on their age, grade, country of origin, age of immigration, and length of
residence in Canada. Also, the questionnaire asked students to indicate their parents’ level of
education. The questionnaire also asked to students to report how often they spoke English and
their L1 with family and friends, using a 5 point Likert-type scale (never-rarely-sometimes-
often-frequently). Finally, students reported whether they were currently enrolled in L1
language class (with a yes or no response) and how many hours each week they spent in the class.
Measurement comparability across languages
Central to the design and interpretation of the current study is the comparability of
measures across languages. To create measures that were parallel across languages different
techniques were employed for the various constructs. For RC and vocabulary, an alternate form
of a standardized task was translated into Spanish and Chinese. Translation tasks of RC and
vocabulary were used to ensure that the format and the method of questioning were comparable
across languages. To ensure accurate and authentic translation of the tasks, native speakers of
Chinese or Spanish who were highly proficient in English completed the translations.
Experimental measures were created for morphological awareness and syntactic awareness. To
ensure comparability across languages, the same instructions and format were used in all
languages when possible. Finally, standardized measures of decoding and word reading were
available for Spanish and English and were therefore used. An experimental Chinese character
reading task was adapted from a previously published study (Chen et al., 2009) by adding more
difficult items to ensure it was appropriate for adolescent Chinese speakers.
29
Chapter 4: Results
Mean Scores and Group Differences
Table 1 displays minimum and maximum scores, means, and standard deviations for age,
length of time in Canada, and all measures for the Spanish-English and Chinese-English
bilinguals. Skewness and kurtosis values were also examined for all measures. If the values fell
outside the range of +/- two standard errors then transformations to improve normality were
performed (as per Tabachnick & Fidell, 2007). Transformation was performed on measures of
non-verbal reasoning, word reading in the L1 and English, English derivational production,
English derivational structure for both groups, and the Chinese homographic awareness task2 for
the Chinese-speaking bilinguals. However, subsequent analysis revealed transforming data did
not change patterns of correlations or results of structural equation models. Therefore, only raw
score analyses are reported here3.
Standardized scores were calculated for English measures when norms were available.
For English word identification and word attack, both groups performed close to the standardized
mean. For English vocabulary and RC, grade equivalent scores are presented. Vocabulary and
comprehension grade equivalent scores were between a 9th and 10th grade. On average, the
bilingual students were performing approximately 2 grade levels below on these measures.
A multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was conducted to test for differences
among the Spanish-English and Chinese-English bilinguals for age, months in Canada, and the
English variables. There was a statistically significant difference between the two groups on
2 The correlation between the derivational and compound items was .91 (p < .001). The combined score of all items was used in the current and subsequent analyses. 3 As an additional check to ensure administering both levels E and F within the same sample did not influence the results, subsequent analyses (i.e., t-tests, correlations, and structural models) were conducted using raw scores and extended scale scores. Extended scale scores are typically used to allow for different versions of the tasks to be combined for analysis (MacGinitie et al., 1992). The two methods produced identical findings. Therefore, to avoid redundancy only raw score analyses are presented below.
30
these variables, Wilks’ λ = .61, F (12, 175) = 9.17, p < .001. One-way univariate analysis of
variance (ANOVA) by group (Chinese-English vs. Spanish-English bilinguals) conducted for
English measures, age, and length of residence are reported in Table 1. Scores on L1 measures
were not compared as measures were administered in different languages and contained different
items to reflect language specific characteristics important for Spanish or Chinese. The one-way
ANOVAs revealed that age was significantly different between the two groups. On average
Chinese-English bilinguals were about 15 months younger than the Spanish-English bilinguals.
Additionally, the Chinese-English bilinguals had been in Canada a significantly shorter amount
of time than the Spanish-English bilinguals. The Chinese-English bilinguals scored significantly
higher on the MAT but significantly lower on the English word identification and vocabulary
tasks than the Spanish-English bilinguals. Scores on all other measures, including English RC,
were not significantly different between groups.
Correlations
Table 2 presents the correlations among age, length of time in Canada, and all English
measures for the Chinese-English bilinguals above the diagonal and the Spanish-English
bilinguals below the diagonal. To safeguard against Type I error correlations significant at the
level of p < .01 and lower were considered meaningful. All English measures were positively
correlated with RC for both groups. Additionally, age was negatively correlated, and length of
residence in Canada was positively correlated, with RC for the Chinese-English bilinguals only.
For both groups, measures of English word reading, vocabulary, morphological awareness,
syntactic awareness, and word reading were all correlated.
Table 3 reports correlations among age, length of time in Canada, and all Spanish
measures for the Spanish-English bilinguals. All measures except for length of time in Canada,
31
working memory, and word reading were significantly correlated with RC. Age was positively
correlated with the Spanish measures of vocabulary, morphological awareness, syntactic
awareness and RC. Length of residence in Canada was negatively related to vocabulary,
derivational production, compound awareness and syntactic awareness, but not RC, derivational
structure or word identification. Additionally, measures of vocabulary, morphological awareness
and syntactic awareness were all significantly correlated.
Table 4 displays correlations among age, length of residence in Canada, non-verbal
reasoning, English working memory and all Chinese measures for the Chinese-English bilinguals.
All variables except for non-verbal reasoning and working memory, were correlated with RC.
Length of residence in Canada was negatively correlated with RC and all other Chinese variables,
and age was positively correlated with all Chinese variables. Chinese word reading, vocabulary,
morphological awareness, and syntactic awareness were positively correlated with RC.
Additionally, measures of Chinese word reading, vocabulary, morphological awareness, and
syntactic awareness were all positively correlated with each other.
Specification of Structural Models across Languages
The relationships between RC and the underpinning constituent components were
examined with equivalent statistical models for the Spanish-English and Chinese-English
bilinguals’ L1 and L2. To this end, four models were compared to identify similarities and
differences among predictors of RC. The four models were: (1) English RC for Spanish-English
bilinguals, (2) English RC for Chinese-English bilinguals, (3) Spanish RC, and (4) Chinese RC.
Direct and indirect relationships were examined as previous research has shown that
morphological awareness was often highly associated with vocabulary, with documented
evidence of the mediation of morphological awareness on RC through vocabulary in Spanish-
32
English bilingual children (Kieffer & DiFelice Box, 2013) and adult Chinese-speaking EFL
learners (Zhang & Koda, 2012). Furthermore, syntactic awareness has been indirectly related to
RC (Cain, 2007) and directly related to RC in Geva & Farnia’s (2012) longitudinal study of
elementary school children learning English as a second language. Additionally, other known
cognitive, linguistic, and socio-cultural predictors of RC were incorporated into the statistical
models to rule out the possibility that results could be due to spurious variables. Specifically,
decoding/word reading, non-verbal reasoning and working memory were added into the models
as various studies have shown these variables to be related to RC (e.g., Cain, 2007; Daneman &
Carpenter, 1980; Gough & Tunmer, 1986; Gathercole & Baddeley, 1993). Finally, the students’
length of residence in Canada was statistically controlled to approximate the amount of exposure
and instruction they had in the L1 and English.
Structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to examine predictors of RC in the
Chinese-English and Spanish-English bilinguals. A theoretical model (see Figure 1) grounded in
existing research was created to understand the direct and indirect relationships between RC and
the other cognitive and linguistic skills in English, Spanish and Chinese. Correlations reported
for each group helped inform the precise specification of the theoretical models of RC. Paths
were added from length of residence in Canada, non-verbal reasoning and working memory to
RC to control for these relationships. These control measures were also correlated with all other
measures (or respective residuals). Age was not added into the model as preliminary analyses
showed age to be a non-significant predictor once length of residence or vocabulary was entered
into the model. A path was added from word-level reading to RC. Decoding, as opposed to
word identification, was chosen as the word-level predictor for English because it allowed for
more precise approximation of students’ mastery of phonological decoding. Additionally, initial
33
analyses indicated that English word identification was not a significant predictor of RC for
either group. Direct paths from vocabulary, morphological awareness and syntactic awareness to
RC were added. Paths from the morphological awareness measures to vocabulary were added to
examine mediation of morphological awareness on RC via vocabulary. Paths from syntactic
awareness were then added to the morphological awareness measures as an additional test for
mediation on RC. Covariances were added between measures of morphological awareness.
Additionally, covariances were added between word-level reading and vocabulary,
morphological awareness, and syntactic awareness. The theoretical structural model of RC was
then applied to the four models outlined earlier.
To compare the models of English RC for the Spanish-English and Chinese-English
bilinguals, a series of constraints was placed on the parameters to evaluate whether they were
significantly different across groups. In each step, a parameter estimate was fixed to be equal
across groups. The fit of the model with the constrained path was compared to that of the
unconstrained model. The Akaike information criterion (AIC) and the Browne-Cudeck criterion
(BCC) models were calculated to examine how constraining parameters influenced model fit.
Deviance statistics were calculated by taking the difference of the AIC, BCC, and df between the
unconstrained and constrained models. If the deviance statistic was significant, the model with
the lower values was the preferred model (Browne & Cudeck, 1993; Kenny, Kashy, & Cook,
2006). If constraining a parameter significantly reduced model fit, the parameter estimates were
significantly different across groups, and therefore should be free to vary. If constraining a
parameter improved or did not change model fit, then the parameter estimates under examination
were not statistically different across groups. Constraints were placed one at a time on each
predictor of RC, vocabulary, and the morphological awareness measures.
34
The structural models were created and assessed with AMOS 21.0, and parameters were
estimated using the maximum likelihood fitting function and bootstrapping (with 2000 samples
and a 95% Bias-corrected confidence interval) to examine both direct and indirect effects.
Scores were mean centered before the analyses to increase interpretability when comparing
parameter values. Multiple fit indices were used to assess model fit, including the chi-square test,
root-mean-square error of approximation (RMSEA), and the comparative fit index (CFI). A χ2 to
df ratio of < 3 suggested a good fit (Kline, 1998). CFI values can range from 0 to 1 with larger
numbers indicating better model fits. An acceptable model fit is indicated by a CFI value of .90
or larger. RMSEA values can range from 0 to 1 with smaller numbers indicating better model
fits. An acceptable model fit is indicated by a RMSEA value of .08 or less (Hu & Bentler, 1999).
However, concerns have been raised about the basis and generalization of setting cut-off values
for fit indices. The choice of setting cut-off values is highly sensitive to sample size, degrees of
freedom and model specification. Statisticians caution against strict reliance on using cut-off
scores to determine if a model should be accepted or rejected (Chen, Curran, Bollen, Kirby &
Paxton, 2008; Fan & Sivo, 2005; Kenny, Kaniskan & McCoach, 2011; Marsh, Hau & Wen,
2004). Thus, cut-off values should not be considered as absolute and models that do not satisfy
all fit statistics can still be informative regarding predictive relationships (Barrett, 2007).
Structural equation models in English. Table 5 presents the results for the models of
English RC (Models 1 and 2). Unstandarized coefficients, standard errors, standardized
coefficients, and associated significance levels are presented for both groups. The Spanish-
English bilinguals are on the right side of the table and the Chinese-English bilinguals on the left
side of the table. Model fit statistics for the joint analysis of the English models for Spanish-
English and Chinese-English bilinguals were: X2 (28) = 100.37, p < .001, X2/df = 3.59, RMSEA
35
= .12, CFI = .90. Model fit was satisfactory for the CFI fit statistic and less than satisfactory for
the X2/df ratio and the RMSEA statistics. Statistical power of the model was excellent at .98
based on the RMSEA, using the procedures outlined by MacCallum, Browne, and Sugawara
(1996). Overall, the model explained 66% of the variance in RC for the Spanish-English
bilinguals and 71% of the variance in RC for the Chinese-English bilinguals. For the Spanish-
English bilinguals, vocabulary was a significant predictor of RC. Additionally, measures of
English derivational production and English working memory were direct predictors of RC. No
other variables were directly related to RC for the Spanish-English bilinguals. For the Chinese-
English bilinguals, vocabulary was a significant predictor of RC. Measures of derivational
production, derivational structure, decoding and non-verbal reasoning were also significant
predictors of English RC. No other predictors were directly related to RC for the Chinese-
English bilinguals.
Table 6 displays the bootstrapping results for the indirect effects for English RC. The
estimate effects, standard errors, the 95% Bias-corrected confidence intervals (lower bound and
upper bound), and associated significance levels are reported. For both groups of bilinguals,
derivational production and syntactic awareness were significant indirect predictors of RC.
Additionally, derivational structure was a significant indirect predictor of RC for the Chinese-
English bilinguals, but not the Spanish-English bilinguals. For both groups, vocabulary
mediated the relationship between measures of morphological awareness on RC. The influence
of syntactic awareness was mediated through the derivational structure and derivational
production measures for the Chinese-English bilinguals. For the Spanish-English bilinguals, the
indirect effect of syntactic awareness on RC was mediated through derivational production.
Compound awareness was not an indirect predictor of RC for either group. Additionally, length
36
of residence was a significant indirect predictor of RC performance for both groups. The
mediation of length of residence on comprehension occurred through vocabulary. English
working memory was a significant indirect predictor of RC via vocabulary for the Spanish-
English bilinguals, but not for the Chinese-English bilinguals.
Table 7 displays the comparison of fit statistics for models with constrained parameters
against an unconstrained model. Overall, only constraining three parameters significantly
reduced model fit, strongly suggesting these parameters should be free to vary across groups.
Specifically, decoding was a significant predictor of RC for the Chinese-English but not the
Spanish-English bilinguals. Furthermore, derivational structure was a significant predictor of
RC for the Chinese-English bilinguals only. Additionally, the relationships between length of
residence in Canada and English vocabulary were significantly different between groups. While
the relationships were significant for both groups, length of residency appeared to be a stronger
predictor of vocabulary for the Chinese-English (standardized beta = .44, p < .001) than the
Spanish-English (standardized beta = .19, p < .05) bilinguals. Placing a constraint on the
relationship between working memory and RC resulted in a marginally significant reduction in
model fit. Working memory was a significant predictor of RC for the Spanish-English but not
the Chinese-English bilinguals. All other constraints placed on parameter estimates did not
significantly change model fit, suggesting all these relationships were functionally equivalent
between the two groups of bilinguals. Figure 2 summarizes the direct and indirect effects on
English RC for the Spanish-English and Chinese-English bilinguals, and identifies the parameter
estimates that differed significantly across groups.
Structural equation models in the L1. Table 8 presents the results for models of L1
(Spanish or Chinese) RC (Models 3 and 4). Unstandarized coefficients, standard errors,
37
standardized coefficients, and associated significance levels are presented for both groups. The
Spanish-English bilinguals are on the right side of the table and Chinese-English bilinguals on
the left side of the table. Model fit statistics for the Spanish RC model were: X2 (8) = 9.22, p
= .324, X2/df = 1.15, RMSEA = .05, CFI = .99. Fit statistics were acceptable for the Spanish RC
model. Statistical power of the model was excellent at .99 based on the RMSEA, using the
procedures outlined by MacCallum et al. (1996). Overall, 66% of the variance in RC was
explained by the Spanish model. For Spanish RC, vocabulary was a significant predictor.
Additionally, derivational structure was also a significant predictor of Spanish RC. Non-verbal
reasoning and English working memory were significant direct predictors of Spanish RC. No
other predictors were directly related to L1 RC performance.
Model fit statistics for the Chinese RC model were: X2 (5) = 30.71, p <.001, X2/df = 6.14,
RMSEA = .210, CFI = .97. For the Chinese model the CFI fit statistic suggested good fit, but
the X2/df ratio and the RMSEA were less than satisfactory. Statistical power of the model was
excellent at .97 based on the RMSEA, using the procedures outlined by MacCallum et al. (1996).
Overall, 82% of the variance in RC was explained by the Chinese model. For Chinese RC,
vocabulary and homographic morphological awareness were significant predictors. Additionally,
English working memory was a significant predictor of Chinese RC. No other predictors were
directly related to L1 RC performance.
Table 9 presents the bootstrapping results for the indirect effects for L1 comprehension.
The estimate effects, standard errors, the 95% Bias-corrected confidence intervals (lower bound
and upper bound), and associated significance levels are reported. For Spanish comprehension,
the significant indirect effects of derivational structure and length of residence in Canada were
mediated through vocabulary. Additionally, the significant indirect effect of Spanish syntactic
38
awareness on Spanish RC was mediated through Spanish derivational structure. For Chinese
comprehension, both measures of morphological awareness, and syntactic awareness were
significant indirect predictors of Chinese RC. Consistent with the other mediation analyses, the
indirect effects of morphological awareness were related to comprehension through vocabulary.
Also consistent with the other mediation analyses, the indirect effect of syntactic awareness was
related to comprehension through morphological awareness (specifically the derivational
structure task for the Spanish group, and the homographic morphological awareness task for the
Chinese group). Figures 3 and 4 summarize the direct and indirect effects on Spanish and
Chinese RC, respectively.
39
Chapter 5: Discussion
The purpose of the current study was to examine the direct and indirect contributions of
vocabulary, morphological awareness, syntactic awareness and word-level reading to RC for
Spanish-English and Chinese-English bilinguals. Four models were evaluated and compared: (1)
English RC for the Spanish-English bilinguals, (2) English RC for the Chinese-English
bilinguals, (3) Spanish RC and (4) Chinese RC. These relationships were examined while
controlling the influences of the students’ length of residence in Canada, non-verbal reasoning
and working memory. Comparable structural models were created for English, Spanish and
Chinese to examine similarities and differences in the component skills important for
comprehension across these three languages. Additionally, statistical comparisons were made
across the English models for the Spanish-English and Chinese-English bilinguals to identify
similarities and differences in predictors of English RC for these two groups. The comparisons
made across all models revealed both language-universal and language-specific aspects of RC.
Comparisons across models revealed consistent similarities among predictors of RC. For
all models, vocabulary emerged as a significant direct predictor of RC, suggesting that
vocabulary is a universal aspect necessary for RC in all languages. For all models, at least one
measure of morphological awareness was a significant direct predictor of RC. Additionally,
morphological awareness was an indirect predictor of RC, with the relationship consistently
mediated through vocabulary in English, Spanish and Chinese. Thus, morphological awareness
appeared to play a universal role in comprehension and vocabulary in a general sense. However,
examination of these relationships on a finer level also revealed some language-specific
relationships. Finally, syntactic awareness was only an indirect predictor of RC, and the
40
relationship between syntactic awareness and RC was mediated through morphological
awareness in all models.
Model comparisons also revealed differences between predictors of RC across the
Spanish-English and Chinese-English bilinguals. Word-level reading, measured by pseudoword
decoding, was a significant predictor of English RC for the Chinese-English bilinguals, but not
for the Spanish-English bilinguals. Word-level reading was not a significant predictor of L1 RC
for either group. Furthermore, working memory was a significant predictor of RC for the L1
models and the English model for the Spanish-English bilinguals, but not the English model for
the Chinese-English bilinguals. Another difference was noted for models of English RC. Non-
verbal reasoning was a significant predictor for the Chinese-English bilinguals but not for the
Spanish-English bilinguals. However, group comparisons revealed that this difference was not
large enough to be statistically significant between groups. Non-verbal reasoning appeared to be
a more important predictor of English comprehension for the Chinese-English than the Spanish-
English bilinguals but overall this relationship appeared to be weak.
The Universal Importance of Vocabulary and Morphological Awareness for
Comprehension
The findings of the current study showed that vocabulary shared a significant relationship
with RC in both alphabetic and logographic languages in English, Spanish and Chinese. In
addition, morphological awareness served as a direct and indirect predictor of RC in both
alphabetic and logographic languages. The indirect relationships between morphological
awareness and RC was consistently mediated through vocabulary, which replicates the work of
Kieffer and DiFelice Box (2013) and extends the findings to adolescent Spanish-English and
Chinese-English bilinguals. Interestingly, different aspects of morphological awareness were
41
related to RC in different ways. The measures of derivational awareness were significant direct
and indirect predictors of comprehension performance in English and Spanish. Compound
awareness was not a significant predictor of English RC or English vocabulary for either the
Spanish-English or Chinese-English bilinguals. This comes as somewhat of a surprise for the
Chinese-English bilinguals as several previous studies have demonstrated that compound
awareness was a predictor of RC (e.g., Pasquarella et al., 2011; Wang et al., 2009). However,
the results of the current study replicated and extended the findings of another published study
with younger Chinese-English bilinguals (Lam et al., 2012). Perhaps comprehension in English
and Spanish, especially in high school and beyond, relies more on derivational aspects of
morphology because unknown words encountered in this age range typically involve complex
derivations.
For Chinese RC, homographic and compound awareness were examined. Compound
awareness was a significant direct predictor of Chinese vocabulary and an indirect predictor of
Chinese RC. Considering Chinese vocabulary consists of many compound words, relationships
between compound awareness and vocabulary are expected. Additionally, homographic
awareness was both a direct and indirect predictor of RC. This result suggests that derivational
and compound awareness, measured through knowledge of homographs, are important
components of Chinese RC. Within this study, homographic awareness was a better predictor of
RC than compound awareness. The reasons for this may be that the homographic task focuses
on morpheme meaning whereas the compound task focuses more on the awareness of compound
structure. The results suggest that Chinese predictors that are connected with morpheme
meaning or semantics are robust predictors of Chinese RC.
42
A strong connection between knowledge of the multiple meanings of a morpheme
represented by homographic characters (whether they are in derived or compound words) and
Chinese RC is expected because the context of the compound word helps determine the precise
meaning of a character, as well as the sentence. Notably, this study is the first to report that
knowledge of derivations, in addition to knowledge of compounds, is related to Chinese RC in
an adolescent sample. Similar to the English and Spanish results, the indirect effects of
morphological awareness on Chinese RC were mediated through vocabulary.
To summarize, morphological awareness was a unique predictor of RC in English,
Spanish, and Chinese and the effect of morphological awareness on RC was also consistently
mediated through vocabulary across all languages. These results po0int to strong and stable
relationships among these constructs across alphabetic and logographic languages.
Morphological awareness taps knowledge of the semantic and syntactic forms of words (Stahl &
Nagy, 2006; Tyler & Nagy, 1989) and is thereby considered to be an aspect of vocabulary depth
(see Kieffer & Lesaux, 2008; Leider, Proctor, Silverman, & Harring, 2013; Li & Kirby, 2013;
Proctor et al., 2012). Morphological awareness relates to both RC and vocabulary through a
deeper understanding of a target morpheme and the morphologically complex variations of a
target morpheme. In addition to its relationship with vocabulary, morphological awareness
appears to also relate to comprehension through syntactic elements (Stahl & Nagy, 2006; Tyler
& Nagy, 1989). However, this relationship may be more important for English and Spanish than
Chinese, as there is considerably less syntactic information presented in compound words in
Chinese. Overall, the current study shows that morphological awareness interacts with both
vocabulary and RC in different orthographies.
43
The current study showed that syntactic awareness had an indirect effect on RC in
English, Spanish and Chinese and these indirect effects were consistently mediated by
morphological awareness in all languages. These mediation effects may result from the
grammatical knowledge carried in morphemes. In other words, the morphological awareness
measures may have assessed the ability to use morphological knowledge to analyze syntactic
information. These results replicated and extended the findings of Cain (2007) who reported
indirect relationships between syntactic awareness and RC with English monolingual children.
However, other research conducted with Spanish-English and Chinese-English bilinguals reading
English (Proctor et al., 2012; Zhang, 2012), and with Chinese monolinguals (Chik et al., 2012;
Yueng et al., 2012), reported significant direct relationships between syntactic awareness and RC.
The different results reported between studies are likely due to differences in the measurement of
syntactic awareness. All studies except for Zhang (2012) used sentence generation, sentence
completion, or sentence correction tasks to measure syntactic awareness. It is possible that
productive tasks rely more on vocabulary and oral language proficiency than an implicit
judgement task. The Zhang (2012) study used an implicit judgement task, similar to the task
used in the current study. However, Zhang (2012) did not control for morphological awareness
in his analysis which may account for the different results. Future research should use multiple
measures of syntactic awareness within a larger battery of cognitive and linguistic skills to better
understand its contribution to RC.
The results of the current study offer some valuable insights on improving theoretical
models of RC in adolescent bilinguals. Regarding specification of the SVR (Gough & Tunmer,
1986; Hoover & Gough, 1990), not all components related to listening comprehension are
equally predictive of RC performance. The role of vocabulary was central and consistent across
44
languages. While morphological awareness was a key component, the standardized betas with
comprehension were often not as large as vocabulary (except for Chinese comprehension).
Furthermore, morphological awareness also appeared to play a key role as an aspect of
vocabulary depth which affirms the importance of word-level semantics on comprehension
performance (Perfetti, 2007; Perfetti & Hart, 2001, 2002). Finally, syntactic awareness was only
indirectly related to comprehension suggesting that semantic and morphological skills may be
stronger predictors of RC in adolescent bilinguals. The reliance on word-level semantic
knowledge appears to be universally important for comprehension in alphabetic and logographic
languages, at least for bilingual adolescents, lending strong support for the assertion that a robust
lexical network is a universal aspect of RC (Perfetti, 2007; Perfetti & Hart, 2001, 2002).
Language Specific Influences on Comprehension and Vocabulary
Important differences in predictors of RC across the models were observed, suggesting
that there are language-specific aspects of comprehension. Predictors of English RC varied for
the Spanish-English and Chinese-English bilinguals. Specifically, decoding was a significant
predictor of English RC for the Chinese-English bilinguals, but not the Spanish-English
bilinguals. However, there was no significant difference in decoding between the groups. The
Spanish-English and Chinese-English bilinguals were similar in their ability to read English
pseudowords. Additionally, RC performance was also similar between these two groups. Thus,
reading proficiency may not be the reason for the differences observed. A possible explanation
in light of these results could be the level of automaticity of decoding ability between the groups.
Considering Spanish is a highly transparent orthography, the Spanish-English bilinguals likely
had some experience in decoding in their L1. By contrast, the Chinese-English bilinguals would
have no experience decoding words in their L1, which is a logographic orthography.
45
Additionally, the Spanish-English bilinguals lived in Canada longer than Chinese-English
bilinguals, and therefore received more English education and had more experience with
decoding in English than the Chinese-English bilinguals. Therefore, the Spanish-English
bilinguals may have mastered decoding to a point where it requires fewer cognitive resources
than for their Chinese-English peers. Of course, further research is warranted to replicate and
clarify this finding. Additional studies should include measures of pseudoword reading fluency,
and employ more time-sensitive tools such as reaction time measures and EEG.
As previously mentioned, morphological awareness emerged as a language-universal
aspect of RC in the L1 and L2 for the Spanish-English and Chinese-English bilinguals. However,
morphological awareness displayed different indirect relationships with L1 RC across groups.
Results indicated that compound awareness was a significant indirect predictor of Chinese RC,
but not Spanish RC. This result extended previous research on Chinese-English bilinguals by
demonstrating proximal influences of compound awareness on RC for adolescent bilinguals.
The results of the current study clarify the nature of this relationship by demonstrating that
compound awareness is an important component of vocabulary in Chinese and supports
comprehension through its association with vocabulary.
Interestingly, compound awareness was a significant predictor of Spanish vocabulary, but
not a direct or indirect predictor of Spanish comprehension. Given the relatively small number
of compounds in Spanish, perhaps this relationship demonstrates that compound morphological
awareness was positively associated with higher levels of Spanish vocabulary. Students who
have higher levels of Spanish vocabulary can reflect upon and manipulate Spanish compound
words to a greater extent than those who have lower levels of Spanish vocabulary. Given that
this is the first study to include a measure of compound awareness in Spanish, these findings
46
need to be replicated by future research before any substantial claims can be made regarding the
nature of the relationship of compound morphology with vocabulary knowledge. Overall, the
differences presented in this study point to language-specific aspects involved in reading the L1
and L2 (i.e., English) and demonstrate that bilinguals with different L1s may employ different
strategies to comprehend text.
Finally, the students’ length of residence in Canada, an approximation of their language
exposure within an English speaking society, produced some differences in predictive power for
English and L1 comprehension between the two groups. Length of residence in Canada was an
indirect predictor of English RC, for both groups. Vocabulary knowledge meditated the
relationship between length of residence in Canada and English RC. However, the strength of
the relationship was significantly stronger for the Chinese-English than the Spanish English
bilinguals. Differences were also noted for the relationships between length of residence in
Canada and L1 RC and vocabulary. For Spanish-English bilinguals, length of residence in
Canada was negatively correlated with Spanish vocabulary and was an indirect predictor of RC.
No significant relationship or mediation occurred for the Chinese-English bilinguals.
Immigration experiences and patterns of language use may account for the relationships
observed. Since Chinese-English bilinguals have spent less time in Canada differences in
English language learning due to length of residence are likely to be more pronounced.
Alternatively, Spanish-English bilinguals have had more time to experience L1 language loss.
Furthermore, proportionally more Chinese-English bilinguals were enrolled in L1 language
classes than their Spanish-English peers, and a higher proportion of Chinese-English bilinguals
reported speaking to their parents only in Chinese. Therefore, formal and informal L1 language
learning experiences were still occurring to a greater degree for the Chinese-English than the
47
Spanish-English bilinguals. Overall, the results regarding immigration experiences demonstrate
that the socio-cultural context of language learning does have an impact on the relative strength
of the associations of linguistic skills on RC. The second study reported here examined how
changes in the within- and cross-language predictors of RC varied as a function of immigration
experiences.
Language-specific aspects of comprehension also emerged for the different groups under
study. Specifically, decoding was a more important predictor of comprehension for Chinese-
English and Spanish-English bilinguals. Additionally, aspects of morphological awareness
showed specific relationships inherent to the characteristics of the scripts being read.
Specifically, compound morphological awareness was more integral to Chinese vocabulary and
comprehension than it was in English. Overall, the results suggest that while universal aspects
are inherent to comprehension, one must understand the language-specific aspects as each
language embodies specific characteristics that influence the skills necessary for comprehension.
The theoretical implications of language-universal and language-specific aspects of
comprehension have implications for instruction of bilinguals with different language
backgrounds.
Limitations and Future Directions
While the current study presented novel findings on English and L1 RC for Spanish-
English and Chinese-English bilinguals, several limitations are noteworthy. First, RC and
vocabulary were each measured with a single task. Previous research has shown that different
measures of RC tap different underpinning skills for monolingual and bilingual readers. For
example, cloze tasks rely more on decoding, while reading short passages and answering
multiple choice questions appears to involve more oral language and vocabulary knowledge (e.g.,
48
Cutting & Scarborough, 2006; Keenan, Betjemann, & Olson, 2008; Leider et al., 2013). In a
similar vein, both breadth and depth are important for understanding the multifaceted nature of
vocabulary knowledge. Therefore, future studies should incorporate multiple measures of
vocabulary and RC to identify common and task specific aspects across different orthographies.
Second, the current study only found an indirect relationship between syntactic awareness and
RC. It is unclear whether the lack of a direct relationship is related to the way syntactic
awareness was measured. One way to potentially improve the syntactic awareness task would be
to offer a multiple-point scale of possible responses instead of a dichotomous “yes” or “no”
distinction regarding grammatical judgments. The improved measure may lead to better
estimation of syntactic awareness, and potentially improve predictive relationships with RC.
Finally, the sample size was relatively small in the current study, and model fit could have been
improved for the majority of fit indices. Future research should collect larger samples to allow
for more measures to be included in the analysis, which may also help improve model fit.
Conclusion and Implications
Results of the current study have both theoretical and practical implications. From a
theoretical standpoint, global constructs such as oral language proficiency are better understood
when underlying component skills are examined. The results of the current study echo a trend
that suggests an augmented SVR that includes more nuanced or discrete skills, and additional
cognitive and linguistic processes (such as non-verbal reasoning, working memory, and fluency),
creates a more accurate picture of the factors that underlie reading comprehension (Cain, Oakhill,
& Bryant, 2004; Farnia & Geva, 2013; Geva & Farnia, 2012; Kirby & Savage, 2008; Ouellette &
Beers, 2010). Specifically within the context of the current study, different aspects related to
listening comprehension were not equally important for RC performance. Vocabulary and
49
morphological awareness emerged as consistently robust predictors, while syntactic awareness
played a more distal role in comprehension. Therefore, components of listening comprehension
should be considered separate (but interrelated) skills. Additionally, there were some language-
specific aspects found across groups, such as the importance of decoding for English RC for
Chinese-English but not Spanish-English bilinguals. Future research that investigates theoretical
models of RC should attempt to use measures that assess specific skills instead of global
proficiencies, and explore variations in predictor-outcome relationships across subgroups of
learners.
The results of the current study point towards universal aspects that are necessary for all
students to achieve proficiency in learning a language, especially a second language. Nurturing
vocabulary is an essential component of RC development. Explicit and systematic instruction is
critical for bilinguals considering the large vocabulary and achievement gap documented in
empirical research (Anglin, 1993; August et al., 2005; Verhallen & Schoonen, 1998). Increasing
morphological awareness may provide a fruitful venue to increase vocabulary and reading skills
as a growing body of research has demonstrated morphological awareness is intimately related to
vocabulary depth and comprehension performance in bilinguals (Kieffer & Lesaux, 2008; Leider
et al., 2013; Li & Kirby, 2013; Proctor et al., 2012). An instructional focus on vocabulary and
morphological awareness can occur in tandem for bilinguals from different language
backgrounds. Furthermore, the results suggest that bilingual students with different language
backgrounds may require a different balance of instructional practices to increase reading
proficiency. Regarding the differences, adolescent Chinese-English bilinguals may benefit from
explicit phonological awareness and decoding instruction to a greater extent than Spanish-
English bilinguals. Additionally, Chinese-English bilinguals may require added instruction for
50
derivational aspects of morphological awareness as these features are encountered less often in
their L1. Overall, predictors of RC across English, Chinese and Spanish appear to be highly
similar among adolescent bilinguals, suggesting that RC is largely based upon universal skills
(e.g., vocabulary and morphological awareness) across different languages. Although there are
some language-specific aspects of RC, the similarities appear more substantial than the
differences.
51
Chapter 6: Study 2 - Cross-language Relationships of L1 and L2 RC: A Cross-cultural
Comparison of Learning to Read in Canada and China
The main focus of the present study was to explore the similarities and differences of
relationships between RC, vocabulary and word-level reading in Chinese and English for three
groups of bilinguals. Participants in this study comprised three groups of adolescents: (1)
Chinese-English bilinguals learning English in China (referred to as Chinese English as a
Foreign Language (EFL) learners), (2) recent Chinese-English bilingual immigrants to Canada
(referred to as recent immigrants), and (3) long-term Chinese-English bilingual immigrants to
Canada (referred to as long-term immigrants). The current study was situated within a model of
RC that examined the influences of word-level reading and vocabulary. Previous research has
identified that word-level reading and vocabulary explained individual differences in RC
performance for adolescent bilinguals (Pasquarella et al., 2012). However, studies have not
examined how predictors of comprehension vary as a function of students’ integration into an
English educational system. The current study aimed to extend this line of research by
examining how the components of the Simple View of Reading (SVR; Gough & Tunmer, 1986;
Hoover & Gough, 1990) are related to RC both within- and across-languages. An additional
purpose of the current study was to explore how predictors of RC may change as a function of
the immigration experience and the educational context for learning Chinese and English. In the
following section, different theoretical perspectives on cross-language relationships will be
discussed. Afterwards, previous research regarding the within- and cross-language relationships
for word-level reading, vocabulary and RC will be highlighted.
52
Defining Different Language Learning Environments
The three groups involved in the current study were: (1) Chinese EFL learners, (2) recent
immigrants, and (3) long-term immigrants. These groups were primarily defined by
demographic characteristics, such as educational experiences, exposure, language use, and length
of immigration inherent in their language learning environments. The Chinese EFL learners
were native Chinese nationals who were learning English as a foreign language at a university in
Beijing, China. Chinese was the societal language and the primary language of instruction in
school. English exposure, instruction and use were largely limited to the English language
classes. Very little English exposure and language use occurred outside the classroom. The
recent immigrants arrived during high school or upon graduation to complete an undergraduate
degree at a Canadian university. These students completed most of their education in China.
Once they had immigrated, these students were immersed in an English-speaking society and
were required to learn English at a rapid pace to keep up with the demands of an English
educational system. The long-term immigrants, on the other hand, typically arrived in Canada
during early elementary school or before. These students received most, if not all, of their
education in an English-speaking system. Long-term immigrants are bilinguals because their
parents were native Chinese speakers and the language spoken at home was Chinese. For both
immigrant groups, exposure to and use of Chinese predominantly occurred at home or through
heritage language classes outside of regular school hours. English was often used to
communicate with peers in and outside the classroom.
Cross-language Relationships between L1 and L2 Reading Skills
Cross-language relationships are defined as the use of previously acquired resources in
one language, typically the L1, to develop proficiency in another language, typically the L2
53
(Odlin, 1989; Genesee, Geva, Dressler, & Kamil, 2006). Cummins (1979) posited the
developmental interdependence hypothesis, which states that L2 skills (or competence) are
partially a function of the types of skills (or competence) that are already developed in the L1.
Additionally, Cummins (1979) claimed that a “threshold” may exist where a certain (or
minimum) level of linguistic competence must be attained in the L1 and L2 to allow the potential
benefits of bilingualism to influence cognitive growth and linguistic proficiency, or to avoid
cognitive deficits in developing higher-level comprehension skills (e.g., inferencing). To extend
and refine the language interdependence hypothesis, specific underlying cognitive abilities that
support L1 and L2 literacy acquisition have been used to investigate cross-language relationships
(e.g., Geva & Ryan, 1993).
More recently, Koda (2007) proposed that cross-language relationships are influenced by
the linguistic distance between the L1 and L2. When there is a high degree of similarity between
the L1 and L2, cross-language relationships occur with little adjustment. However, when two
languages are distantly related, L1 skills do not facilitate L2 reading. By examining relationships
of L1 and L2 literacy skills with Chinese-English bilinguals, the primary objective of the current
study was examine the conditions that specify transfer for word-level reading, vocabulary and
RC. This theory posed that cross-language associations are thought to occur more easily
between languages that use the same alphabet and writing system (e.g., Spanish and English)
than between two languages that belong to two different writing systems (e.g., Chinese and
English).
Within- and Cross-language Relationships of Word-level Reading
Within this study, word-level reading is broadly defined and can refer to decoding, word
identification, and/or pseudoword reading. The orthographic representation of words varies
54
substantially across English and Chinese. As a result, the nature of word-level reading differs.
English words can be read in primarily two different ways: (1) whole word identification and (2)
decoding (Ehri, 1997; Stanovich, 1991). Since Chinese is a logographic script where a character
represents a morpheme and a syllable, word reading primarily occurs through identification of
the whole character or identifying the semantic and radicals (Shu et al., 2003). Given the
differences between reading an alphabetic versus a logographic script, word-level reading was
chosen as the term used in the current study. Word-level reading is a more inclusive term than
decoding because it can be applied to both Chinese and English reading.
Studies with monolingual and bilingual readers have shown that the strength of
relationships between word-level reading and RC changes overtime. For young readers, word-
level reading explains a large amount of variance in RC (Catts, Hogan & Adolf, 1995; Cutting &
Scarborough, 2006; Joshi et al., 2012; Hoover & Gough, 1990; Gough & Tunmer, 1986; Keenan
et al., 2008; Lesaux, Lipka, & Siegel, 2006; Perfetti & Hogaboam, 1975). The association
decreases over time as word-level reading becomes automatized and text complexity increases
(Catts et al., 1995; Joshi et al., 2012; Perfetti, 2007). Research has only recently examined
whether decoding is a predictor of RC in bilingual adolescents. Pasquarella and colleagues
(2012) demonstrated that English word-level reading was an important predictor of English RC
for a group of recently immigrated bilingual adolescents. Word-level reading was a significant
predictor because this group of readers was still in the early stages of learning English and had
not yet mastered English decoding and word identification skills. Regarding Chinese RC,
Pasquarella et al. (2011) identified Chinese word-level reading as a significant predictor of
Chinese RC in Chinese-English bilinguals sampled across the first to fourth grades of elementary
55
school. At least within languages, word-level reading skills appeared to be an important
component of Chinese and English RC for bilingual students.
Relatively few studies have reported cross-language associations of word-level reading to
RC. Furthermore, studies have predominately been conducted with children in the early stages
of learning to read, and have produced interesting results. In a study of Chinese-English
bilingual children in North America, Pasquarella et al. (2011) demonstrated a weak correlation
between English word reading and Chinese RC (r = .21, p < .05). However, English word
reading was not a significant predictor of Chinese RC, when controlling for Chinese word
reading, vocabulary and morphological skills. Furthermore, Chinese character reading was not
correlated with English RC. In another study with young Chinese-English bilinguals in North
America, Wang et al. (2006) also reported a significant correlation between English word
reading and Chinese RC (r = .38, p < .01). However, Chinese character reading and English RC
were not correlated. Finally, Li, McBride-Chang, Wong, and Shu (2012) examined longitudinal
predictors of RC in Chinese and English in 8-year-old Hong Kong Chinese-English bilinguals.
The authors report that English word reading was correlated with Chinese RC (r = .36, p <.05),
and Chinese word reading was correlated with English RC (r = .30, p <.05). However, word
reading was not a significant cross-language predictor of RC when controlling for gender,
father’s income, mother’s education, phonological skills, rapid automatized naming, Chinese
word reading or vocabulary.
Across studies, English word reading was consistently correlated with Chinese RC.
However, Chinese word reading was correlated with English RC in the Li et al. (2012) study but
not in the Pasquarella et al. (2011) and Wang et al. (2006) studies. The different patterns of
results across studies may be related to the educational context of learning English and Chinese.
56
The Pasquarella et al. (2011) and Wang et al. (2006) studies were conducted in North America
where English was the language of instruction and children were learning decoding strategies to
read English. The Li et al. (2012) study was conducted in China where Cantonese was the
medium of instruction, and children were not exposed to English phonics instruction. Therefore,
it is possible the participants in the Li et al. (2012) study were relying more on a whole word
strategy to read English, which may have heightened the cross-language connection between
Chinese word reading and English RC. Given that different patterns of cross-language
associations were found across studies, comparisons across demographically different groups of
bilinguals are warranted. A goal of the current study was to extend research by examining cross-
language relationships of word-level reading with RC with adolescent bilinguals.
Within- and Cross-language Relationships of Vocabulary
Vocabulary is a robust predictor of RC performance and a critical component in the
acquisition and development of within-language comprehension skills (e.g., Nagy & Herman,
1987; Oullette, 2006; Pearson et al., 2007; Proctor et al., 2009). Results from Study 1 confirmed
vocabulary as an essential within-language component of English and Chinese comprehension
for adolescent bilinguals. Length of residence for the group of Chinese-English bilinguals was
directly related to vocabulary and indirectly related to English RC suggesting there may not be a
uniform influence of the relationship between these variables for students with different lengths
of residency in Canada. The current study further explored the effect of length of residence on
learning by comparing the relationships between vocabulary and RC among the three groups of
Chinese-English bilinguals: those who were in China, and recent or long-term immigrants to
Canada.
57
Research regarding cross-language relationships between vocabulary and RC is limited
for Chinese-English bilinguals. In their study of Chinese-English bilingual children in Hong
Kong, Li et al. (2012) indicated that Chinese vocabulary was a significant predictor of English
RC after accounting for the influence of English word reading, vocabulary, phonological
awareness, and mother’s education. The authors suggested that their results reveal a role of L1
processes and abilities in second language reading. Considering students were in the early stages
of learning English and had very limited English word reading and vocabulary knowledge, it was
not surprising that there was no cross-language prediction of either English word reading or
vocabulary to Chinese RC. Overall, the results demonstrated that vocabulary in one language
can contribute to RC in the other language for Chinese-English bilinguals.
On the other hand, a study with Chinese-English children conducted within an English
speaking country reported non-significant relationships between vocabulary and RC across
languages (Pasquarella et al., 2011). Given the dearth of empirical research of the relationship
between vocabulary and RC across languages further research in this area is warranted. We
cannot yet determine why the existing studies are producing different findings. To help solve
this problem, the current study examined how vocabulary contributed to RC, both within- and
across-languages, for groups of adolescent bilinguals within different language learning
experiences.
Cross-language Relationships of RC
Of the relatively few studies that have examined RC in the L1 and L2, results have shown
positive associations across languages. In a longitudinal study following children from the 3rd to
6th grade, Nakamoto, Lindsay and Manis (2008) assessed Spanish-English bilinguals on
comparable measures of decoding, oral language, and RC in English and Spanish. Results
58
indicated that there were strong associations between RC factors in Spanish and English (r = .83,
p < .001), suggesting L1 and L2 comprehension skills are distinct but highly related factors. In
series of studies, Van Geledren, Schoonen, Glopper, Hulstijin, Simis, Snellings and Stevenson
(2004) examined Dutch-English bilinguals in the 8th grade who had received an average of 1.5
years of English instruction in school. Given this limited exposure to English, these students had
relatively low levels of English vocabulary. Results indicated significant relationships between
RC in the L1 and L2. In a longitudinal follow-up of the same participants, van Gelderen and
colleagues (2007) confirmed significant relationships between RC in the L1 and L2 in grade 10.
Interestingly, the relationships between L1 and L2 RC appeared to strengthen over time,
suggesting that L1 and L2 comprehension became more aligned as time progressed. The results
of these studies on Dutch-English bilinguals were consistent with the significant relationship
between Spanish and English RC reported by Nakamoto et al. (2008).
Two studies have examined the relationships between RC skills in English and Chinese.
Pasquarella et al. (2011) reported a significant correlation between Chinese and English RC
skills in their study of bilingual children in the first to fourth grades. Li et al. (2012) extended
the Pasquarella et al. (2011) study by reporting that English RC was a significant predictor of
Chinese RC, and vice versa, in a sample of Chinese-English bilingual children in Hong Kong.
The significant bi-directional relationships between L1 and L2 RC survived within-language
controls of phonological awareness, processing speed, word reading, and vocabulary in Chinese
and English.
Across all studies, a consistent pattern of significant relationships between RC in the L1
and L2 were reported. It is important to note that the Li et al. (2012) and Van Geledren and
colleagues (2004, 2007) studies were conducted within a language learning environment where
59
English exposure was confined to instruction within the classroom, and the societal language was
the L1. The Nakamoto et al. (2008) and Pasquarella et al. (2011) studies were conducted within
an English speaking society and educational system. Despite these cultural differences
significant relationships between L1 and L2 RC were reported. The extent to which these
findings apply to adolescent Chinese-English bilinguals from different language learning
environments is unknown. The current study extended previous research by examining patterns
of cross-language relationships of RC in groups of bilinguals with remarkably different L1 and
L2 learning experiences.
Objectives
The purpose of the current study was to explore the within- and cross-language
relationships between word-level reading, vocabulary, and RC for L1 and L2 reading skills of
Chinese-English bilinguals. The current study extended previous research by examining how
within- and cross-language predictors of L1 and L2 RC may vary for adolescent bilinguals in
different language learning environments. Comparisons were made across three groups that
varied in their exposure to and use of the L1 and L2. The three groups of Chinese-English
bilinguals were: (1) Chinese EFL learners, (2) recent immigrants, (3) long-term immigrants.
To examine within- and cross-language relationships, measures of word-level reading,
vocabulary and RC were administered in both English and Chinese. Hierarchical linear
regression and commonality analyses were used to identify the unique and shared aspects of RC
in the L1 and L2. The advantage of conducting a commonality analysis in addition to the linear
regressions is that it can help understand common and unique contributions of L1 and L2 skills
to RC.
60
Chapter 7: Method
Participants
Participants comprised 57 English majors in Beijing, China (Chinese EFL learners), 60
Chinese-English bilinguals who were recent immigrants to Canada (recent immigrants), and 57
Chinese-English bilinguals who were long-term immigrants to Canada (long-term immigrants).
Chinese-English bilinguals who had lived in Canada for six years or less were classified as
recent immigrants; those who had lived in Canada for more than 6 years were classified as long-
term immigrants. Previous research has indicated that, on average, it takes approximately 6
years of schooling for most immigrants to reach average levels on standardized measures of
academic achievement and to gain proficiency in academic English (Collier, 1987). Therefore, a
cut-score of 6 years was chose to help distinguish groups of immigrants. Both immigrant groups
included students enrolled in high school or in undergraduate university programs in southern
Ontario.
The Chinese EFL learners had a mean age of 20.20 years (SD = 0.66 years), and the
majority (91%) were female. All students spoke Mandarin as their first language and had been
living in a Chinese-speaking society for their entire lives. Approximately half of the sample had
parents who had completed a high school education or less, another 40% had completed college,
and the remaining 10% completed professional or post-graduate degrees. The recent immigrants
had a mean age of 19.22 years old (SD = 2.16) and 80% were females. The recent immigrants
had been living in Canada for approximately 3.42 years (SD = 1.58 years). All students spoke
Mandarin as their first language, and 86% were from China, 10% from Taiwan, and the
remainder were from Indonesia and Malaysia. Approximately 60% of the group had parents
who had completed college or university, 15% of parents had completed only high school or less,
61
and the remaining 25% of parents had completed a post-graduate or professional degree. For the
long-term immigrants, the average age was 17.36 years old (SD = 1.88 years) and 63% were
female. On average, this group had spent 10.53 years in Canada (SD = 3.12 years). All students
spoke Mandarin as their L1, and 90% were originally from China with the other 10% were from
Taiwan. Fifty-five percent of the group reported parents who had completed college or
university, 20% who had completed high school or less, and 25% who had completed a
professional or post-graduate degree.
The use of Chinese varied across the three groups. For the Chinese EFL learners,
approximately 96% of the group reported always speaking to their parents in Chinese. The other
4% reported some conversations in English, but the majority occurred in Chinese. Eighty-eight
percent of the sample reported always speaking to their friends in Chinese. The other 12%
reported speaking to their friends occasionally in English, but the majority of conversations
occurred in Chinese. For the recent immigrants, 82% of the group reporting always speaking to
their parents in Chinese. The other 18% reported frequently speaking to their parents in Chinese,
and occasionally in English. Peer interactions, on the other hand, were more balanced in this
group. The majority (60%) reported speaking to their peers in both English and Chinese. Only
20% reported always speaking with their peers in Chinese, while almost 20% reported always
speaking with their peers in English. Finally, for the long-term immigrants, 67% reported
speaking with their parents only in Chinese. Another 25% reported frequently speaking with
their parents in Chinese. The remainder of the group (8%) reported rarely speaking with their
parents in Chinese. Interactions with peers, on the other hand, occurred predominately in
English, with 72% of the sample reported speaking with their friends only in English. Another
62
23% reported frequently using English and occasionally using Chinese, while the remaining 5%
reported using both Chinese and English some of the time.
Measures
The same Chinese and English measures described in Study 1 were used in Study 2.
Reading Comprehension. The Second Canadian Edition of the Gates MacGinitie RC
(MacGinitie et al., 1992) test was used to assess RC in English, and the alternative form
translation was used for Chinese.
For this study, the Chinese EFL learners received Level F of the Chinese translation of the Gates
MacGinitie and Level E for the English test. Pilot testing revealed Level F of the English task
was too difficult as the majority of students responded at the level of chance. For the recent and
long-term immigrants, both levels E and F were used for the Chinese and English tasks to ensure
that students worked through the test most appropriate for their age and ability (Level E was used
for students in High school and Level F was used for students in University). For the English
RC measures, Cronbach’s alpha was .71 for the Chinese EFL learners, .84 for the recent
immigrants and .93 for the long-term immigrants. Cronbach’s alpha calculated for the Chinese
comprehension task was .70 for the Chinese EFL learners, .89 for the recent immigrants, and .93
for the long-term immigrants.
Vocabulary. The Second Canadian Edition of the Gates MacGinitie Vocabulary test
(MacGinitie et al., 1992) was used to assess vocabulary knowledge in English. As with the
comprehension tests, the EFL students received Level F for Chinese and Level E for English. For
the recent and long-term immigrants, both levels E and F were used to ensure that students
worked through the test most appropriate for their age and ability. For the English vocabulary
measures, Cronbach’s alpha was .77 for the Chinese EFL learners, .89 for the recent immigrants,
63
and .94 for the long-term immigrants. Cronbach’s alpha for the Chinese vocabulary task for the
EFL group was .76, and .89 for the recent immigrants, and .93 for the long-term immigrants,
respectively.
Word-level reading. To measure English decoding, the pseudoword reading subtest,
Word Attack from the WRMT-R (Woodcock, 1987), was administered. Cronbach’s alpha
was .77 for the EFL group, .72 for the recent immigrant group, and .86 for the long term
immigrant group.
To measure Chinese character reading a 240 item experimental task was used.
Cronbach’s alpha was .76 for the EFL group, and .99 for both the recent immigrant and the long-
term immigrant groups.
Demographic questionnaire. Participants were asked to fill out a questionnaire to
collect information on their age, grade, country of origin, age of immigration, and length of
residence in Canada. Also, the questionnaire asked students to indicate their parents’ level of
education. The questionnaire also asked students to report how often they spoke English and
their L1 with family and friends, using a 5 point Likert-type scale (never-rarely-sometimes-
often-frequently). Finally, students reported whether they were currently enrolled in L1
language class (with a yes or no response) and how many hours each week they spent in the class.
Procedures
The participants completed the Chinese and English measures in two or three testing
sessions. The vocabulary and RC tests and demographic questionnaire, were given as part of a
larger battery of group-administered measures. The English decoding and Chinese character
reading tasks were given as part of a larger individually-administered testing session. For the
EFL group, the Chinese measures were administered first, followed by the English measures.
64
The English measures were administered before the Chinese measures to the two immigrant
groups. The total testing time was 2 hours, including about 1 hour for English and 1 hour for
Chinese. All measures were administered by a trained research assistant.
65
Chapter 8: Results
Descriptive Statistics and Group Differences
Table 10 displays minimum and maximum scores, raw means and standard deviations for
age, length of residence in Canada, English and Chinese word-level reading, vocabulary and RC.
Skewness and kurtosis values were examined for all measures. Chinese word reading was
negatively skewed for the EFL group. Additionally, Chinese vocabulary was negatively skewed
for the long-term immigrant group. All other variables were normally distributed. Corrections
to normality, as per Tabachnick and Fidell (2007), did not change patterns of correlations,
regressions or commonality analyses. As such, subsequent analyses were conducted on
untransformed scores.
To check whether administering both levels E and F to the recent and long-term
immigrant groups influenced the results, analyses (i.e., t-tests, correlations, regressions and
commonality analyses) were conducted using both raw scores and extended scale scores. These
analyses produced identical findings. Therefore, for simplicity only raw score analyses are
presented below.
A multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was conducted to test for differences
among the three groups (EFL students, recent immigrants, long-term immigrants) in age, months
in Canada, English and Chinese word reading, vocabulary and RC. There was a statistically
significant difference between the three groups on these variables, Wilks’ λ = .074, F (16, 328) =
55.09, p < .001. Univariate ANOVAs and Tukey’s post-hoc comparisons (see Table 10)
revealed that age was significantly different across the three groups. On average, the Chinese
EFL learners were the oldest by approximately one year. The long-term immigrants were almost
two years younger than the recent immigrants and three years younger than the Chinese EFL
66
learners. Length of residence was significant different across the three groups. As expected, the
recent immigrants had been in Canada significantly shorter time that the long-term immigrants.
It is important to note that length of residence was normally distributed for both groups, and a
few participants (n = 10 in total) were centered on the cut-point of 6 years. Regarding English
decoding, vocabulary and RC, the long-term immigrants scored highest, followed by the recent
immigrants and then the Chinese EFL learners. For Chinese character reading and vocabulary
measures, the Chinese EFL learners scored highest, followed by the recent immigrants and then
the long-term immigrants. For Chinese RC, the Chinese EFL learners and the recent immigrants
scored similarly, and both outperformed the long-term immigrants.
Correlations
Table 11 presents correlations for age, English and Chinese word reading, vocabulary and
comprehension for the Chinese EFL learners in the top panel, the recent immigrants in the
middle, and the long-term immigrants in the bottom panel. For the Chinese EFL learners,
English RC was correlated with both English decoding and vocabulary. Chinese RC was
correlated with Chinese character reading and vocabulary. All Chinese measures were positively
correlated with English RC. Age was not correlated with any variable in English or Chinese.
For the recent immigrants, English RC was related to English decoding and vocabulary.
Chinese RC was related to Chinese character reading and vocabulary. English RC was
positively related to Chinese RC. Additionally, English vocabulary was negatively related to
Chinese character reading. Age was positively correlated with Chinese character reading,
vocabulary and comprehension.
For the long-term immigrants, English RC was related to English decoding and
vocabulary. Likewise, Chinese RC was related to Chinese character reading and vocabulary.
67
English RC was not related to Chinese RC. Instead, English comprehension was negatively
related to Chinese character reading and vocabulary. Additionally, English vocabulary was
negatively related to Chinese character reading, vocabulary and comprehension. Age was
negatively related to English vocabulary and comprehension, and positively related to Chinese
character reading, vocabulary and RC.
Hierarchical Linear Regressions and Commonality Analyses
Tables 12 and 13 present hierarchical regressions which were used to identify within- and
cross-language predictors of RC in English (Table 12) and Chinese (Table 13) for the three
groups of bilinguals. For each regression, within-language relationships of word-level reading
and vocabulary were entered before cross-language predictors.4 For example, when English RC
acted as the outcome variable, English pseudoword reading and vocabulary were entered into the
first and second steps, respectively. Chinese character reading, vocabulary and RC were entered
in the third, fourth and fifth steps, respectively. Table 12 displays unstandarized coefficients,
standard errors, and standardized coefficients when English RC acted as the outcome variable.
For the Chinese EFL learners, 41% of the variance was explained by the regression model.
English vocabulary was a significant within-language predictor and Chinese vocabulary and RC
were unique cross-language predictors. For the recent immigrants, 73% of the variance was
explained by the regression model. English decoding and vocabulary were significant within-
language predictors and Chinese RC was a significant cross-language predictor. For the long-
4 Initially, age was added as a control variable in the first step within the regressions. However,
it was always a non-significant predictor across the three groups and did not influence any other
predictor-outcome relationships. Therefore, it was removed from the subsequent analyses to
simplify the regressions and commonality analyses.
68
term bilingual immigrants, 71% of the variance was explained by the regression model. Only
English vocabulary knowledge was a significant predictor of English RC.
Table 13 reports unstandarized coefficients, standard errors, and standardized coefficients
when Chinese RC acted as the outcome variable. For the EFL and recent immigrant groups,
43% and 77% of the variance was respectively explained by the regression models. Also for
both groups, Chinese vocabulary was a significant within-language predictor, and English RC
also positively predicted Chinese RC. On the other hand, English vocabulary was a negative
predictor of Chinese RC for both groups. Considering there was no significant zero-order
correlation between English vocabulary and Chinese RC, the relationships reported in the
regression need further clarification as variable suppression may be occurring (Zientek &
Thompson, 2010). For the long-term immigrant group, 77% of the variance was explained by
the regression models. Chinese vocabulary was the only significant predictor of Chinese RC.
To gain a better understanding of the cross-language relationships, commonality analyses
were conducted separately for the three groups of bilinguals to clarify aspects of shared and
unique variance. Examining both beta weights and structural coefficients – where structural
coefficients are Pearson correlation coefficients between a predictor variable and the predicted
outcome score (i.e., Ŷ) - is a more useful data analytic technique than just examining one or the
other (Mood, 1971; Newton & Spurrell, 1967; Pedhazur, 1997; Nimon & Reio, 2011; Zientek &
Thompson, 2010). The commonality analyses contained the same variables as the regression
models described previously.
Table 14 displays beta weights, structural coefficients, total variance, common variance
and unique variance for the within- and cross-language predictors of English RC. For the
Chinese EFL learners, the beta weights were largest for English vocabulary, Chinese vocabulary
69
and Chinese RC, and structural coefficients were moderate-to-large for all within- and cross-
language variables. For the significant cross-language predictors, variance was mostly shared
with other predictors. For the recent immigrants, beta weights were largest for English
vocabulary and Chinese RC, and moderate for English decoding and Chinese vocabulary.
However, the beta weight for Chinese vocabulary and English RC was negative. Given that the
structural coefficient was near-zero, Chinese vocabulary appeared to act as a suppressor variable
when predicting English RC for the recent immigrants. For the long-term immigrants, English
vocabulary knowledge shared a near perfect relationship with English RC.
Table 15 displays the variance coefficient (proportion of variance explained) and the
percentage of explained variance for each predictor and all combinations of predictors when
English RC acted as the dependent variable. I was most interested in the unique aspect of the
cross-language predictors and the combinations of common variance components among the
independent variables that included the cross-language predictors. Therefore, I focused on cross-
language vocabulary and RC because these relationships varied across groups.
For the Chinese EFL learners, Chinese vocabulary and RC uniquely explained 8% and
14% of the variance in English RC. Additionally, approximately 13% of the common variance
was shared with Chinese vocabulary, 16% with Chinese comprehension, and 40% with the
combination of Chinese vocabulary and Chinese RC and the within-language predictors. For the
recent immigrants, Chinese vocabulary and RC accounted for approximately 2% and 14% of the
variance in English RC respectively. Twenty-four percent of the common variance was shared
with Chinese vocabulary and 27% with Chinese comprehension. Interestingly, the combination
of shared variance accounted by Chinese vocabulary and Chinese RC was -26%. Considering
that Chinese vocabulary was acting as a suppressor variable and explained negative variance
70
when combined with Chinese RC, it seemed that Chinese vocabulary suppressed the relationship
between Chinese and English RC for the recent immigrants. Further analyses revealed that not
including Chinese vocabulary in the regression predicting English comprehension decreased the
strength of the association between English and Chinese RC, however this cross-language
relationship was still significant5. For the long-term immigrants, Chinese vocabulary and RC
explained virtually no unique variance. The amount of common variance among the cross-
language predictors was also low at 19% for vocabulary, 7% for comprehension, and -4% for the
combination of L1 vocabulary and RC.
Table 16 reports beta weights, structural coefficients, total variance, common variance
and unique variance for the within- and cross-language predictors of Chinese RC. For the
Chinese EFL learners, the beta weights were largest for Chinese vocabulary and English RC.
English vocabulary produced a negative beta weight with Chinese comprehension. Structural
coefficients were moderate-to-large for all within- and cross-language variables, except for a
weak negative coefficient for English vocabulary. For the significant cross-language predictors,
English vocabulary and English RC, variance was mostly shared with other predictors. For the
recent immigrants, beta weights were largest for Chinese vocabulary and English RC. Similar to
the Chinese EFL learners, English vocabulary produced a negative beta weight with Chinese RC.
Given that the structural coefficient was near-zero for both the Chinese EFL learners and recent
immigrants, English vocabulary acted as a suppressor variable when predicting Chinese RC for
both groups. Further analyses also revealed that not including English vocabulary in the
regression predicting Chinese comprehension underestimated the strength of the association
5Given that it is strongly suggested to retain suppressor variables in the regression analyses (e.g., Padey & Elliott, 2010; Thompson, 2006; Zientek & Thompson, 2010), omitting Chinese vocabulary when predicting English reading comprehension would lead to underestimating the relationship between reading comprehension across languages for the recent immigrants.
71
between English and Chinese RC, however this cross-language relationship was still significant
for both groups. For the recent immigrants, there was more unique than shared variance
explained by the cross-language predictors. Finally for the long-term immigrant group, Chinese
vocabulary shared the strongest relationships with Chinese comprehension.
Table 17 displays the variance coefficient (proportion of variance explained) and the
percentage of explained variance for each predictor and all combinations of predictors when
Chinese RC acted as the dependent variable. For the Chinese EFL learners, English vocabulary
and English RC uniquely explained 16% and 14% of the variance in Chinese RC, respectively.
The common variance shared with English vocabulary, and the combination of English
vocabulary and English RC was negative (-1% and -10% respectively), whereas a large amount
of common variance was shared with English comprehension (46%). There appeared to be
considerable overlap between L1 and L2 comprehension skills. Alternatively, English
vocabulary knowledge acted as a suppressor variable when predicting Chinese RC for the EFL
group. The suppression effect resulted in underestimation of the relationship between Chinese
and English RC if English vocabulary was not included in the model.
For the recent immigrants, English vocabulary and English RC explained approximately
2% and 11% of the unique variance in Chinese RC. Additionally, the common variance shared
with English vocabulary was approximately 17%, and 21% for English RC. Like the Chinese
EFL learners, the common variance for the combination of English vocabulary and English RC
was negative (-21%), suggesting that English vocabulary was acted as a suppressor variable for
the recent immigrant group. For the long-term immigrants, English vocabulary and RC
explained virtually no unique variance with Chinese RC. English vocabulary shared 35% of the
72
variance with other predictors, English comprehension shared 13% and the combination of
English vocabulary and comprehension was -12%.
73
Chapter 9: Discussion
The purpose of the current study was to identify how the within- and cross-language
contributions of word-level reading, vocabulary and RC in Chinese, the L1, and English, the L2,
varied as a function of the bilingual students’ language learning environment. Comparable
measures in the L1 and L2 were administered to three groups of bilinguals with distinctly
different experiences regarding exposure to and use of the L1 and L2. The Chinese EFL learners
experienced L2 learning within the confines of instruction only, where the L1 was the societal
language and was almost solely used to communicate with family and peers. The recent
immigrants received most of their education in China and moved to Canada during high school
or to receive an education at a Canadian university. Generally, these students were integrated
into an English education system during adolescence. The long-term immigrants moved to
Canada during elementary school or earlier and received most, if not all, of their education in an
English system. They came from families where the home language was Chinese.
Performance on word-level reading, vocabulary and RC across groups generally followed
trends that would be expected given the differences in the groups’ language learning
environments. The long-term immigrants were most proficient in their English skills and least
proficient in their Chinese skills. Also as expected, the Chinese EFL learners performed the
highest on all Chinese skills and scored the lowest on all English skills (with the exception of the
Chinese EFL learners and the recent immigrants having comparable performance on Chinese
RC). The recent immigrants’ performance was typically in-between the other two groups,
barring the exception noted above.
The regressions and commonality analyses produced similarities and differences among
predictors of English RC across groups. For the Chinese EFL learners, English RC was
74
positively predicted by English vocabulary, Chinese vocabulary and Chinese RC. When
predicting English RC for the recent immigrants, English decoding, English vocabulary and
Chinese RC were positive predictors. No other significant relationships were identified. Finally,
for the long-term immigrants, the only significant predictor of English RC was English
vocabulary.
The results for Chinese RC also produced similarities and differences across groups. For
the Chinese EFL learners, significant positive predictors of Chinese RC were Chinese
vocabulary and English RC. English vocabulary was a significant negative predictor of Chinese
RC. However, the supplemental commonality analyses revealed that English vocabulary was a
suppressor variable in the regression. For the recent immigrants, Chinese vocabulary and
English RC were positive predictors of Chinese RC. Similar to the Chinese EFL learners,
English vocabulary was a negative predictor of Chinese RC. The commonality analyses also
revealed a suppression effect for the recent immigrants. For both suppression results, not
including English vocabulary in the model underestimated the strength of the relationships
between Chinese and English RC. For the long-term immigrants, Chinese vocabulary was the
only significant predictor of Chinese RC.
The SVR (Gough & Tunmer, 1986; Hoover & Gough, 1990) is a useful framework for
understanding the within- and cross-language predictors of RC in adolescent bilinguals coming
from different backgrounds. At the same time, the results suggest that models of RC are
distinctly different across groups of Chinese-English bilinguals in diverse language learning
environments, and these groups of bilinguals utilized their L1 and L2 skills differently to
comprehend text. The following sections will outline the within- and cross-language
relationships of word-level reading, vocabulary and RC for the three groups of bilinguals.
75
The Role of Word-level Reading Within and Across Languages
English word-level reading was only a significant within-language predictor of English
RC for the recent immigrants. The results appear to suggest that recent immigrants were still
mastering decoding and individual differences were predictive of RC performance. Word-level
reading was not a unique predictor of RC in English or Chinese for the Chinese EFL learners or
long-term immigrants. The lack of relationships between English decoding and English RC may
be interpreted differently for the two groups. For the Chinese EFL learners, English education
often does not include phonics instruction (Keung & Ho, 2009). Therefore, the Chinese EFL
learners may be relying on a whole-word strategy during the RC task, which would result in
decoding skills being less related to English RC. On the other hand, the long-term immigrants
may have mastered decoding to a point where it was no longer predictive of RC performance.
Chinese word-level reading was a significant within-language predictor of Chinese RC
for the recent immigrants. However, word-level reading was not a predictor of Chinese RC for
the Chinese EFL learners or the long-term immigrants. The significant relationship for the
recent immigrants and the lack of relationships for the Chinese EFL learners and the long-term
immigrants may be understood by considering the scores obtained on the Chinese word-reading
task. For the recent immigrants there was substantial variability in the measure and no evidence
of floor or ceiling effects. On the other hand, the Chinese EFL learners did very well and there
was hardly any variability in performance which would have prevented the measure from
significantly predicting RC. Alternatively, the long-term immigrants did poorly, and there was
large variability in performance on the Chinese word reading task. Therefore, a floor effect may
have prevented the measure from significantly predicting RC for the long-term immigrants.
76
Consistent with other research regarding cross-language relationships of word-level
reading skills in Chinese and English (e.g. Gottardo et al., 2001), there were no instances of
cross-language relationships within the regression results. Considering there is a large degree of
linguistic distance between reading Chinese logographic characters and reading English words, it
is not surprising that there is no relationship across the L1 and L2. However, examination of
structural coefficients across groups revealed different patterns. Moderate to strong structural
coefficients between word-reading skills and comprehension across languages were evident for
the Chinese EFL learners. Specifically, a strong structural coefficient (.63) was noted for
Chinese word-level reading and English RC, while the structural coefficient between English
word-level reading (a decoding task) and Chinese comprehension was moderate (.36). At the
same time, near zero (or negative) coefficients were evident for the recent and long-term
immigrants. Perhaps the Chinese EFL learners are utilizing more familiar skills, such as a
reliance on a whole word activation strategy, for reading both Chinese and English. While this
strategy is useful for Chinese word-level reading, it is not as helpful when reading English
pseudowords. This interpretation may help clarify the Chinese EFL learners’ poorer
performance on the English word-level reading task in comparison to the other groups, and the
moderate relationship observed between English word-level reading and Chinese RC. This
interpretation is tentative and requires further investigation. Most importantly, a trend emerged
showing that as integration into an L2 system occur word-level reading skills in Chinese and
English become less related. Perhaps, as integration into a L2 system increases, L1 and L2
reading separate and become modularized and more language specific.
77
The Role of Vocabulary Within and Across Languages
Vocabulary was a within-language predictor of RC across groups. Within-language
semantic knowledge was critically important for L1 and L2 comprehension across diverse groups
of language learners. Vocabulary appears to be a stable predictor of comprehension and
consistently important in the L1 and L2 throughout the process of integration into a L2 society.
However, cross-language associations of vocabulary knowledge were far less consistent.
Patterns of cross-language associations differed when either the L1 or L2 acted as the outcome
variable, and also differed across groups.
Chinese vocabulary and English RC were positively related for the EFL group, which
replicated and extended the work of Li et al. (2012). The positive cross-language association in
the current study suggested that the Chinese-English EFL learners were able to utilize semantic
knowledge in their L1 to help comprehend English. The Chinese EFL learners had poor
performance in English vocabulary and superior performance in Chinese vocabulary when
compared to the other Chinese-English bilingual groups. L1 semantic skills appear to be
important in L2 reading during early stages of L2 acquisition. Considering that Chinese and
English do not have cognates, it may be semantic knowledge in the L1 that is related to reading
in the L2. Students who have well-developed semantic knowledge in the L1 may be more
proficient at producing L2 to L1 translations when reading the L2 than students with less
developed L1 semantic knowledge. Additionally, students who have well developed semantic
knowledge in the L1 may also have an easier time understanding a similar concept encountered
in the L2. However, given that only the current study and the Li et al. (2012) study have
reported positive associations between Chinese vocabulary and English RC, further investigation
is necessary to understand the nature of these cross-language associations. No positive
78
associations between L1 vocabulary and L2 RC were found for the other groups. It appears that
L1 semantic knowledge facilitates L2 comprehension only for Chinese EFL learners. Perhaps
the language learning environment may have influenced the cross-language associations. It may
be that English instruction in China emphasizes translations and using well-developed L1
knowledge to build L2 vocabulary and reading skills, while in Canada there may be less reliance
and instruction on using translation knowledge to build L2 reading and language skills.
Within this study, positive associations between L1 vocabulary and L2 comprehension
and negative associations between L2 vocabulary and L1 comprehension were demonstrated.
While the differences in these relationships confirm that asymmetrical relationships between
vocabulary and RC across languages may exist, the negative association is interpreted as
statistical suppression. The suppression effect of English vocabulary underestimated the strength
of the association between Chinese and English comprehension. Since within-language
vocabulary skills are an important predictor of within-language comprehension skills it appears
to be necessary to consider these two constructs together when examining cross-language
relationships.
The Role of RC Across Languages
The current study reported bidirectional associations of RC across Chinese and English
for the Chinese EFL learners and recent immigrants. Cross-language associations, however,
were not found among the long-term immigrants, who had immigrated to Canada at a young age.
The results of the current study showed cross-language relationships of comprehension for
students in the early stages of learning English who were proficient in their L1. These results
replicate and extended the work of Li et al. (2012), who reported bidirectional cross-language
relationships between L1 and L2 RC in younger Chinese-English bilinguals.
79
The bi-directional transfer of comprehension skills for the Chinese EFL learners and the
recent immigrants indicated that L1 and L2 comprehension was closely related for learners who
were developing proficiency in their L2. L1 RC predicted unique variance for the Chinese EFL
learners and recent immigrants but not for the long-term immigrants. Likewise, shared variance
among English and L1 predictors was substantial for all groups except the long-term immigrants.
However, as residency in an L2 educational system and culture increased, comprehension
appeared to become more language specific. The finding that L1 and L2 comprehension for the
long-term immigrants was only predicted by within-language vocabulary skills supported the
idea that L1 and L2 RC became a language specific skill. Additionally, proportions of unique
and common variance explained by cross-language RC were virtually non-existent for the long-
term immigrants. These results suggest that as exposure in an L2 environment increases L1 and
L2 skills become less related.
What is the nature of the cross-language relationships between L1 and L2 comprehension
for the Chinese EFL learners and recent bilingual immigrants? Van Gelderen et al. (2007)
proposed that the locus of transfer is most likely metacognitive in nature, when explaining the
relationship between L1 and L2 comprehension skills of Dutch-English bilinguals. Higher-level
comprehension skills such as strategy use and the ability to construct meaning from text are
skills that may transfer and explain why comprehension is related in the L1 and L2. It is highly
plausible that comprehension strategies also transfer between Chinese and English, and this
transfer explains the results in the current study. Bilingual students with relatively low L2
proficiency may rely heavily upon metacognitive skills to comprehend an unfamiliar language.
However, as L2 proficiencies develop, within-language skills become much better predictors of
L2 performance. Chinese EFL learners, recent, and long-term immigrants may adopt different
80
strategies and utilize different skills to read the L1 and L2. Future studies should examine the
use of comprehension strategies in Chinese-English bilinguals to examine whether a strategy
learned in one language can be used during reading in another language. Additionally,
examining how L1 and L2 proficiency interacts with transfer of strategies across languages
would improve our understanding regarding the nature of the relationships between RC in the L1
and L2.
Conditions that Support Cross-language Relationships
Patterns of cross-language relationships were substantially different across groups of
Chinese-English bilinguals from different language-learning environments. The patterns of
cross-language relationships that emerged in the current study demonstrates that transfer is more
likely to occur for students who are proficient in their L1 and in the early stages of learning an
L2. Even though there is considerable linguistic distance (Koda, 2007) between the L1 and L2,
cross-language relationships were still evident for students in the relatively early stages of L2
acquisition. Furthermore, cross-language relationships varied as a function of the skill under
examination. Strongest patterns of cross-language relationships were found for RC while no
cross-language relationships were found for word-level reading. These patterns suggest that
higher-level skills may transfer more easily than lower-level reading skills in cases where there is
a large degree of linguistic distance between L1 and L2 orthography.
Limitations and Future Directions
A limitation of the current study may be the specific cut-point of length of residence used
to help determine the groups. It is possible that the immigrant groups could have been divided
differently. Using a latent class analysis to sub-divide the immigrant participants would have
been helpful to inform specific cut-points, however the modest sample size of the current study
81
prevented this from being an option. Also, the age differences between the groups and the
unbalanced proportions of males and females within each group is another limitation of the study.
Future research should attempt to compare groups of bilinguals who are more similar in age.
Additionally, having a balanced proportion of males and females would allow us to rule out
differences due to gender in terms of performance or predictors of RC. An additional limitation
is the use of experimental translation tasks to assess L1 vocabulary and RC. While great care
was taken to ensure the translations were as accurate as possible, the authenticity of these
measures is not validated. Future research should attempt to develop and standardize Chinese
vocabulary and RC measures that are appropriate for adolescents with a wide range of language
and reading proficiency in Chinese. Furthermore, the Chinese word-level reading task had a
floor effect for the long-term immigrants and did not capture enough variance for the Chinese
EFL learners. Further development of this task should include higher frequency words when
used with long-term immigrants or students with low levels of proficiency. Alternatively,
additional lower frequency words should be included for students with high levels of Chinese
proficiency. Another suggestion is to add measures of word-reading fluency, as they may
capture more variance and help prevent floor effects in low-proficiency speakers. A future
direction is to include other groups of bilinguals who spoke different L1s. Including bilinguals
with an alphabetic L1 who also varied in terms of differences in their language-learning
environments would have improved the generalizability of the current study.
Given that there are stark differences between patterns of within- and cross-language
contributions to literacy skills in different learning environments, the next step is to investigate
the ways in which these different environments influence models of RC and cross-language
associations. For example: how do acculturation, engagement, and language use interact on an
82
individual level with within- and cross-language predictors of reading performance, and more
importantly reading development? Understanding individual differences in socio-cultural and
motivational factors and how they interact with cognitive and linguistic models of RC is a
natural extension of the current findings presented within this study. A longitudinal design for
the research would increase the clarity of L1 and L2 language and literacy development across
different cultural contexts and conditions of language use and exposure.
Implications
The results from the current study have theoretical and practical importance. Instances of
cross-language associations appear to be influenced by the language-learning environment and
the context for learning an L2. Failure to acknowledge these differences when designing
empirical studies will lead to difficulties improving our understanding of L2 acquisition.
Additionally, these differences should not be neglected when trying to provide the best
educational opportunities for bilinguals. Educators should be mindful of these differences and
structure educational practices accordingly. Different strategies to improve L2 (or even L1)
comprehension can occur for students with different immigration experiences. For example,
students who are learning English in a non-English speaking environment can be taught how to
best utilize existing vocabulary to increase L2 vocabulary and comprehension skills.
Additionally, students in the early stages of L2 acquisition can continue to develop higher-order
comprehension strategies in their L1, while learning L2 decoding skills and vocabulary.
Alternatively, instruction should focus primarily on teaching within-language vocabulary skills
to improve L1 and L2 comprehension for long-term immigrants. Another implication is that
assessment of RC in the L1 can inform future potential in L2 proficiency and development, or
reveal the possibility of difficulties in developing L2 comprehension. However, the results also
83
suggest that assessing L1 proficiency is most useful for students who intend to immigrate or
recently immigrated to an English speaking society.
Additionally, research must increase understanding of the integration between L1 and L2
semantic knowledge as a method to increase L2 vocabulary knowledge. L2 vocabulary
acquisition is a formidable challenge in second language acquisition because it is difficult and
time consuming to improve (e.g., Carlo et al., 2004; Farnia & Geva, 2011). While only the EFL
group could capitalize on L1 vocabulary to improve L2 comprehension, this result does point to
the possibility of students accessing their existing semantic knowledge to increase word learning
experiences in the L2 in the initial stages of second language learning. Across the groups,
comprehension appears to become a language specific skill as time spent in a L2 environment
increases. The results suggest that we can initially support L2 acquisition with L1 skills but
intensive and systematic instruction in the L2 is necessary for students to achieve high levels of
proficiency in a new language.
84
Chapter 10: General Conclusions
What emerged from Study 1 was a more refined understanding of the constituent
components necessary for RC in adolescent bilinguals, and the degree to which these
components were consistent predictors across the L1 and L2 for Spanish-English and Chinese-
English bilinguals. Vocabulary and morphological awareness emerged as consistently important
predictors of comprehension in English, Spanish and Chinese. Specifically, the results suggest a
central role of word knowledge, in terms of semantics and morphological awareness, as a critical
and universal aspect of comprehension across languages (Perfetti, 2007; Perfetti & Hart, 2001,
2002). Fostering word knowledge is essential to achieve reading proficiency in alphabetic and
logographic languages alike. Additionally, English decoding was only a significant predictor of
English RC for the Chinese-English, not the Spanish-English, bilinguals. Overall, there was a
large degree of universality among the within-language predictors of RC across Spanish, Chinese
and English. The common predictors across languages (e.g., vocabulary) were much stronger
predictors of RC performance than the language specific predictors.
While strong instances of universal components of RC were found across two distinctly
different groups of bilinguals, this should not lead to the suggestion that all bilinguals are alike.
In addition to the universal aspects of comprehension, there were also multiple language specific
findings. Understanding how the two work together, for different groups of bilinguals, is
necessary to develop a comprehensive understanding of how people comprehend text in different
languages. Additionally, these studies outline what skills should be the focus of evidence-based
instructional programs for students from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds.
Study 2 identified the degree to which within- and cross-language predictors varied as a
function of changes in the Chinese-English bilinguals’ language learning environment. In the
85
early stages of L2 acquisition, comprehension was highly related across languages, and skills in
the L1 were related to comprehension in the L2. As bilinguals became more integrated into a L2
educational system and culture, reading across languages was less related and became reliant
upon within-language skills. The interconnections between reading skills in the L1 and L2 are
sensitive to educational experiences and the language learning environment, and are a dynamic
process that is redefined as skills and knowledge within each language are developed or
forgotten.
Predictors of comprehension also appear to vary as a function language-learning
experiences. This observation suggests that we should consider the socio-cultural context of
language learning as an important methodological factor that influences how empirical studies
are constructed, how results are interpreted, and how groups of bilinguals are defined. Even
more important are the accompanying educational implications. The research presented in these
two studies strongly suggests that all bilinguals would benefit from common instructional
practices, such as enhancing vocabulary and word study instruction. However, a one-size-fits-all
approach would be a gross overgeneralization of these findings. Not only do bilinguals with
different language backgrounds require a different balance of instruction, but instructional
practices should vary based on their prior educational experiences. Understanding how and
when to capitalize on L1 language and literacy skills and how L2 instruction should be promoted
at different stages of L2 learning is critical. This will ensure we are engaged in the best practices
to reach the societal and moral obligations to ensure all bilingual students are equipped with the
language and literacy skills needed to succeed.
86
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Table 1. Descriptive statistics and Analysis of Variance of age, length of residence, English and L1 variables
Notes. Min = Minimum, Max = Maximum, SD = Standard Deviation * p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001
Spanish-English bilinguals Chinese-English bilinguals
Min Max Mean SD Min Max Mean SD
F (1, 186)
Partial η2
Age in months 177 413 235.86 40.31 174 286 221.00 25.44 8.53** .05 Length of Residence 6 276 144.54 83.86 6 204 82.51 52.13 39.16*** .17 Non-verbal Reasoning 11 32 24.51 5.41 13 32 28.00 3.27 30.44*** .14
English Measures Working Memory 12 40 26.14 7.88 11 41 27.46 7.59 1.30 .01 Word Reading 63 105 92.92 8.61 59 103 89.30 9.84 6.54* .03 Standard Score 61 126 99.98 12.65 47 121 94.16 15.57 - - Decoding 20 44 36.39 4.97 19 44 35.50 5.06 1.38 .01 Standard Score 74 146 105.46 12.99 72 131 101.03 11.62 - - Vocabulary 7 44 30.27 7.86 7 45 26.75 9.73 6.64* .03 Grade Equivalent 4 13 10.19 2.69 3 13 9.30 2.68 - - Derivational Structure 6 21 17.01 3.20 8 21 18.06 2.7 1.72 .02 Derivational Production 2 31 25.80 5.39 10 31 25.20 4.57 0.68 .00 Compound Awareness 3 24 16.85 5.17 5 25 17.95 4.36 2.64 .01 Syntactic Awareness 30 68 59.58 8.92 30 68 57.67 7.75 2.39 .01 Reading Comprehension 6 44 31.30 8.57 11 48 32.94 8.38 1.67 .01 Grade Equivalent 2 13 9.90 3.05 3 13 10.57 2.77 - -
First Language Measures Word Reading 38 96 55.66 11.87 0 288 144.10 76.84 - - Vocabulary 7 40 25.52 8.77 7 55 39.81 15.81 - - Homographic Awareness - - - - 7 40 30.35 8.37 - - Derivational Structure 2 21 16.45 4.15 - - - - - - Derivational Production 1 26 18.65 6.29 - - - - - - Compound Awareness 1 19 10.42 4.77 0 25 15.97 5.97 - - Syntactic Awareness 15 52 39.94 8.25 0 77 63.86 11.70 - - Reading Comprehension 9 44 26.42 8.47 1 45 28.98 11.33 - -
102
Table 2. Intercorrelations among English variables for Chinese-English bilinguals (above the diagonal) and Spanish-English bilinguals (below the diagonal)
* p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1. Age in months - -.49*** .10 .15 -.08 -.17 -.40** -.01 -.17 -.10 -.25*** -.24*** 2. Length of Residence -.12 - -.16 .01 .39*** .36*** .56*** .09 .34*** .16 .31*** .37** 3. Non-verbal Reasoning .05 -.07 - .19* .08 .16 .12 .32*** .11 .34*** -.04 .31*** 4. Working Memory -.13 .04 .34*** - .26** .34*** .23* .35*** .30*** .43*** .06 .27** 5. Word Reading .21 .28* .37** .31** - .70*** .64*** .42*** .64*** .42*** .32*** .59*** 6. Decoding -.04 .18 .29* .38*** .68*** - .54*** .39*** .45*** .50*** .31*** .56*** 7. Vocabulary .07 .31** .42*** .43*** .63*** .47*** - .53*** .65*** .40*** .40*** .78*** 8. Derivational Structure .21 .26* .44*** .24* .59*** .43*** .62*** - .58*** .51*** .24** .66*** 9. Derivational Production .09 .05 .18 .16 .48*** .34** .46*** .37** - .45*** .41*** .70*** 10. Compound Awareness -.15 .06 .28* .30* .35** .29* .42*** .34** .63*** - .17 .46*** 11. Syntactic Awareness -.06 .14 .33** .46*** .44*** .33** .46*** .43*** .32** .28* - .36*** 12. Reading Comprehension -.10 .24* .39*** .52*** .51*** .31** .75*** .44*** .49*** .45*** .50*** -
103
Table 3 Intercorrelations among Spanish and control measures
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 1. Age in months 1 -.12 .05 -.13 .08 .35** .40*** .34** .35** .34** .34** 2. Length of Residence 1 -.07 .04 -.18 -.52*** -.15 -.44*** -.29* -.32** -.23 3. Non-verbal Reasoning 1 .40*** -.07 .16 .24* .20 .22 .04 .39*** 4. Working Memory 1 .08 .03 .11 -.01 -.04 -.08 .29* 5. Word Reading 1 .05 .09 .13 .05 .06 .09 6. Vocabulary 1 .70*** .79*** .65*** .50*** .69*** 7. Derivational Structure 1 .74*** .60*** .43*** .66*** 8. Derivational Production 1 .66*** .59*** .61*** 9. Compound Awareness 1 .51*** .59*** 10. Syntactic Awareness 1 .36** 11. Reading Comprehension 1
* p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001
104
Table 4. Intercorrelations among Chinese and control measures
* p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1. Age in months 1 -.49*** .10 .07 .58*** .52*** .54*** .38*** .36*** .50*** 2. Length of Residence 1 -.16 .01 -.69*** -.64*** -.67*** -.47*** -.37*** -.59*** 3. Non-verbal Reasoning 1 .19* .14 .20* .21* .27** .15 .24* 4. Working Memory 1 .01 .06 .11 .12 .15 .18 5. Word Reading 1 .92*** .89*** .64*** .45*** .84*** 6. Vocabulary 1 .88*** .62*** .34*** .88*** 7. Homographic Awareness 1 .61*** .48*** .88*** 8. Compound Awareness 1 .42*** .57*** 9. Syntactic Awareness 1 .43*** 10. Reading Comprehension 1
105
Figure 1. Theoretical structural equation model of RC in English, Spanish and Chinese
Note. Derivational Structure was not included in the Chinese RC model.
106
Table 5. Coefficients for structural equation model of English RC
Spanish-English bilinguals Chinese-English bilinguals
Unstandardized
Estimate Standard
Error Standardized
Beta Unstandardized
Estimate Standard
Error Standardized
Beta English Reading Comprehension
Length of Residence 0.008 0.007 .08 0.001 0.010 .01 Non-verbal Reasoning 0.087 0.109 .06 0.381 0.121 .16** Working Memory 0.225 0.090 .21* -0.048 0.057 -.05 Decoding -0.266 0.126 -.16 0.203 0.094 .13* Vocabulary 0.598 0.111 .54*** 0.381 0.066 .46*** Derivational Structure -0.248 0.235 -.10 0.612 0.197 .21** Derivational Production 0.284 0.137 .18* 0.430 0.128 .25*** Compound Awareness 0.191 0.147 .12 0.035 0.122 .02 Syntactic Awareness 0.116 0.082 .12 0.001 0.058 .00
English Vocabulary Length of Immigration 0.017 0.007 .20* 0.082 0.011 .46*** Working Memory 0.241 0.087 .25** -0.010 0.080 -.01 Derivational Structure 0.918 0.218 .39*** 0.887 0.260 .26*** Derivational Production 0.323 0.140 .23* 0.682 0.165 .32*** Compound Awareness 0.127 0.158 .09 0.070 0.165 .03
English Derivational Production Syntactic Awareness 0.179 0.069 .29** 0.236 0.048 .41***
English Derivational Structure Syntactic Awareness 0.153 0.040 .42*** 0.077 0.031 .22*
English Compound Awareness Syntactic Awareness 0.175 0.066 .30** 0.099 0.048 .19*
* p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001
107
Table 6. Coefficients of bootstrapping for indirect effects on English RC
Notes. CI = Confidence Interval * p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001
Spanish-English bilinguals Chinese-English bilinguals 95% Bootstrapping CI 95% Bootstrapping CI
Unstandardized
Estimate Standard
Error Lower Bound
Upper Bound p
Unstandardized Estimate
Standard Error
Lower Bound
Upper Bound p
Length of Residence 0.100 0.046 0.024 0.178 * 0.202 0.048 0.142 0.302 ** Working Memory 0.151 0.063 0.069 0.282 ** 0.016 0.032 -0.038 0.067 Derivational Production 0.214 0.061 0.112 0.319 * 0.121 0.039 0.053 0.188 ** Derivational Structure 0.122 0.066 0.024 0.239 0.154 0.039 0.096 0.227 ** Compound Awareness 0.046 0.055 -0.040 0.146 0.005 0.039 -0.075 0.058 Syntactic Awareness 0.204 0.096 0.049 0.384 * 0.251 0.070 0.121 0.360 *
108
Table 7. Comparison of fit statistics by constraining parameter estimates to be equal across groups
Notes. df = degrees of freedom, CFI = Comparative Fit Index, RMSEA = Root Mean Square Error of Approximation, AIC = Akaike Information Criterion, BCC = Brown-Cudeck Criterion + p < .06, * p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001
Χ2 df Χ2/df p CFI RMSEA AIC BCC ∆AIC ∆BCC ∆df p Unconstrained 100.37 28 3.59 *** 0.90 0.12 264.37 288.40
Constraints Placed on Parameters Predicting English Reading Comprehension Length of Residence 100.67 29 3.47 *** 0.90 0.12 262.67 286.41 1.70 1.99 1 Non-verbal Reasoning 102.83 29 3.55 *** 0.90 0.12 264.83 288.57 -0.46 -0.17 1 Working Memory 106.13 29 3.66 *** 0.90 0.12 268.13 291.87 -3.76 -3.47 1 + Decoding 107.49 29 3.71 *** 0.90 0.12 269.49 294.22 -5.12 -5.82 1 * Vocabulary 103.15 29 3.56 *** 0.90 0.12 265.15 288.88 -0.78 -0.48 1 Derivational Structure 107.14 29 3.70 *** 0.90 0.12 269.14 292.87 -4.77 -4.47 1 * Derivational Production 100.98 29 3.48 *** 0.90 0.12 262.98 286.72 1.39 1.68 1 Compound Awareness 101.05 29 3.48 *** 0.90 0.12 263.04 286.78 1.33 1.62 1 Syntactic Awareness 101.71 29 3.51 *** 0.90 0.12 263.71 287.44 0.66 0.96 1
Constraints Placed on Parameters Predicting English Vocabulary Length of Residence 119.15 29 4.11 *** 0.88 0.13 281.15 304.88 -16.78 -16.48 1 *** Working Memory 105.52 29 3.64 *** 0.89 0.12 267.52 291.25 -3.15 -2.85 1 Derivational Structure 100.38 29 3.46 *** 0.90 0.12 262.38 286.12 1.99 2.28 1 Derivational Production 103.05 29 3.55 *** 0.90 0.12 265.05 288.79 -0.68 -0.39 1 Compound Awareness 101.71 29 3.63 *** 0.90 0.12 265.71 289.74 -1.34 -1.34 1
Constraints Placed on Parameters Predicting English Derivational Structure Syntactic Awareness 102.67 29 3.54 *** 0.90 0.12 264.67 288.41 -0.3 -0.01 1
Constraints Placed on Parameters Predicting English Derivational Production Syntactic Awareness 100.82 29 3.48 *** 0.90 0.11 262.82 286.55 1.55 1.85 1
Constraints Placed on Parameters Predicting English Compound Awareness Syntactic Awareness 101.42 29 3.49 *** 0.90 0.12 263.42 287.15 0.95 1.25 1
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Figure 2. Structural models of English RC showing direct and indirect effects Spanish-English bilinguals (Model 1) Chinese-English bilinguals (Model 2)
Notes. Bolded paths refer to parameters estimates that are significantly different between groups; dotted paths denoted significant indirect effects on RC.
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Table 8. Coefficients for structural equation model of first language RC
* p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001
Spanish-English bilinguals Chinese-English bilinguals
Unstandardized
Estimate Standard
Error Standardized
Beta Unstandardized
Estimate Standard
Error Standardized
Beta First Language Reading Comprehension
Length of Residence 0.011 0.009 0.11 0.006 0.011 0.03 Non-verbal Reasoning 0.266 0.123 0.18* 0.120 0.136 0.04 Working Memory 0.198 0.085 0.19* 0.139 0.059 0.10* Word Reading 0.042 0.053 0.06 -0.003 0.017 -0.02 Vocabulary 0.460 0.134 0.49*** 0.395 0.078 0.54*** Derivational Structure 0.570 0.210 0.29** - - - Derivational Production -0.016 0.190 -0.01 - - - Homographic Awareness - - - 0.552 0.121 0.40*** Compound Awareness 0.329 0.178 0.19 -0.081 0.090 -0.05 Syntactic Awareness -0.012 0.093 -0.01 0.058 0.045 0.06
First Language Vocabulary Length of Residence -0.030 0.007 -0.29*** -0.020 0.016 -0.07 Working Memory 0.014 0.070 0.01 -0.102 0.090 -0.05 Derivational Structure 0.701 0.209 0.34*** - - - Derivational Production 0.435 0.157 0.31** - - - Homographic Awareness - - - 1.438 0.121 0.76*** Compound Awareness 0.305 0.153 0.17* 0.348 0.132 0.14***
First Language Derivational Structure Syntactic Awareness 0.218 0.054 0.43*** - - -
First Language Derivational Production or Homographic Awareness Syntactic Awareness 0.446 0.073 0.59*** 0.342 0.055 0.50***
First Language Compound Awareness Syntactic Awareness 0.295 0.059 0.51*** 0.213 0.043 0.42***
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Table 9. Coefficients of bootstrapping for indirect effects L1 RC
Spanish-English bilinguals Chinese-English bilinguals 95% Bootstrapping CI 95% Bootstrapping CI
Unstandardized Estimate
Standard Error
Lower Bound
Upper Bound p
Unstandardized Estimate
Standard Error
Lower Bound
Upper Bound p
Length of Residence -0.142 0.080 -0.302 -0.031 * -0.038 0.043 -0.103 0.049 Working Memory 0.006 0.042 -0.067 0.065 -0.028 0.025 -0.084 0.005 Derivational Structure 0.164 0.087 0.045 0.324 ** - - - - Derivational Production 0.153 0.089 0.016 0.307 - - - - Homographic Awareness - - - - 0.415 0.115 0.215 0.585 *** Compound Awareness 0.082 0.060 0.007 0.191 0.075 0.043 0.017 0.170 * Syntactic Awareness 0.378 0.100 0.268 0.639 *** 0.423 0.097 0.273 0.611 **
* p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001
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Figure 3. Structural model for Spanish RC (Model 3) showing direct and indirect effects
Notes. Dotted paths denoted significant indirect effects on RC
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Figure 4. Structural model for Chinese RC (Model 4) showing direct and indirect effects
Notes. Dotted paths denoted significant indirect effects on RC
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Table 10. Descriptive statistics and Analysis of Variance for Chinese EFL learners, Recent Immigrants, and Long-term Immigrants for age, months in Canada, English and Chinese variables.
EFL (F) learners Recent Immigrants (R) Long-term Immigrants (L)
Min. Max. Mean SD Min. Max. Mean SD Min. Max. Mean SD F (2,171)
Partial η2
Pairwise Comparisonsa
Age in Months 209 270 242.42 7.88 170 286 230.62 25.92 177 286 208.35 22.58 40.75*** .19 F > R > L Length of Residence 0 0 0 0 6 72 40.63 18.73 84 204 126.59 37.45 410.93*** .83 L > R > F English Decoding 22 42 32.35 5.20 21 44 34.23 4.86 19 43 36.84 4.96 11.57*** .12 L > R > F English Vocabulary 3 32 18.00 6.16 8 45 22.32 8.20 7 42 31.42 9.05 42.91*** .33 L > R > F English RC 16 38 26.51 5.92 14 48 30.70 7.99 11 46 35.30 8.20 19.84*** .19 L > R > F Chinese Word Reading 209 238 222.18 6.48 0 214 187.57 50.69 30 288 98.35 73.28 87.69*** .51 F > R > L Chinese Vocabulary 54 77 69.40 5.42 7 54 48.43 8.69 11 55 30.74 16.58 169.97*** .67 F > R > L Chinese RC 25 44 36.39 4.59 1 41 34.67 8.18 10 45 23.00 11.14 43.02*** .34 (F = R) > L
Notes. Min = Minimum, Max. = Maximum, SD = Standard Deviation * p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001 a Equal sign indicates nonsignificant difference, and greater-than sign indicates p < .05
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Table 11. Intercorrelations among Chinese and English variables separated by group.
* p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Chinese EFL learners 1. Age in months 1 .-11 .05 -.27 -.23 -.19 -.07 2. English Decoding 1 .24 .36** .32* .19 .24 3. English Vocabulary 1 .30* .25 .17 -.08 4. English RC 1 .41** .51*** .48*** 5. Chinese Word Reading 1 .71*** .39** 6. Chinese Vocabulary 1 .55*** 7. Chinese RC 1
Recent Immigrants 1. Age in months 1 -.03 -.03 .02 .35** .27* .26* 2. English Decoding 1 .41*** .53*** -.23 -.23 -.01 3. English Vocabulary 1 .73*** -.30* -.21 -.03 4. English RC 1 -.08 .01 .33** 5. Chinese Word Reading 1 .80*** .65*** 6. Chinese Vocabulary 1 .80*** 7. Chinese RC 1
Long-term Immigrants 1. Age in months 1 -.25 -.43*** -.28* .43*** .42*** .35** 2. English Decoding 1 .56*** .53*** -.25 -.23 -.07 3. English Vocabulary 1 .81*** -.60*** -.59*** -.44*** 4. English RC 1 -.34* -.33* -.17 5. Chinese Word Reading 1 .93*** .83*** 6. Chinese Vocabulary 1 .86*** 7. Chinese RC 1
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Table 12.
Hierarchical linear regression predicting English RC, separate for EFL, Recent Immigrant, and Long-term Immigrant groups
Chinese EFL learners Recent Immigrants Long-term Immigrants
Step Variable Final B SE (B) β Final B SE (B) β Final B SE (B) β 1 English Decoding .186 .129 .19 .394 .131 .24** .084 .156 .05 2 English Vocabulary .268 .115 .24* .568 .078 .58*** .822 .103 .91*** 3 Chinese Word Reading -.082 .111 -.04 -.003 .019 -.02 .010 .023 .09 4 Chinese Vocabulary .347 .148 .28* -.229 .142 -.25 -.003 .111 -.01 5 Chinese RC .400 .171 .30* .553 .122 .57*** .123 .115 .17
Notes. B = Unstandardized Beta, SE = Standard Error, β = Standardized Beta * p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001
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Table 13.
Hierarchical linear regression predicting Chinese RC, separate for EFL, Recent Immigrant, and Long-term Immigrant groups
Chinese EFL learners Recent Immigrants Long-term Immigrants
Step Variable Final B SE (B) β Final B SE (B) β Final B SE (B) β 1 Chinese Word Reading .068 .086 .01 .011 .018 .07 .042 .027 .28 2 Chinese Vocabulary .292 .115 .41* .659 .105 .70*** .425 .120 .63*** 3 English Decoding .118 .102 .11 -.022 .134 -.01 .245 .185 .11 4 English Vocabulary -.269 .087 -.28* -.206 .100 -.21* -.080 .185 -.07 5 English RC .243 .104 .30* .499 .110 .49*** .178 .167 .13
* p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001
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Table 14. Commonality analyses beta weights, structural coefficients, proportions of total, common and unique variance for EFL, Recent Immigrant and Long-term Immigrant groups when predicting English RC
English
Decoding English
Vocabulary Chinese
Word Reading Chinese
Vocabulary Chinese
RC Chinese EFL learners
Beta Weights .190 .242 -.036 .288 .301 Structural Coefficient .560 .466 .630 .785 .734 Total Variance .131 .091 .167 .258 .225 Common Variance .101 .041 .166 .224 .166 Unique Variance .030 .050 .001 .034 .059
Recent Immigrants Beta Weights .240 .583 -.021 -.249 .564 Structural Coefficient .621 .845 -.092 .010 .387 Total Variance .284 .526 .006 .000 .110 Common Variance .234 .267 .006 -.013 .011 Unique Variance .044 .259 .000 .013 .100
Long-term Immigrants Beta Weights .051 .906 .087 -.007 .168 Structural Coefficient .627 .966 -.399 -.392 -.197 Total Variance .279 .661 .113 .109 .028 Common Variance .277 .294 .112 .109 .021 Unique Variance .002 .367 .001 .000 .007
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Table 15. Summary of unique and common variance for independent variables when predicting English RC
Chinese EFL learners Recent Immigrants Long-term Immigrants
Coefficient % R2 Coefficient % R2 Coefficient % R2
Unique to English Decoding .030 7.20 .044 6.01 .002 0.24 Unique to English Vocabulary .050 11.89 .259 35.12 .367 51.75 Unique to Chinese Word Reading .001 0.14 .000 0.02 .001 0.14 Unique to Chinese Vocabulary .034 8.06 .013 1.71 .000 0.00 Unique to Chinese RC .059 14.16 .010 13.54 .007 0.93 Common with Chinese Vocabulary (without Chinese RC) .054 12.81 .176 23.83 .134 18.90
Common with Chinese RC (without Chinese Vocabulary) .067 15.87 .200 27.19 .048 6.70
Common with Chinese Vocabulary and Chinese RC .171 40.71 -.188 -25.53 -.025 -3.53
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Table 16. Commonality analyses beta weights, structural coefficients, proportions of total, common and unique variance for EFL, Recent Immigrant and Long-term Immigrant groups when predicting Chinese RC
Chinese Word Reading
Chinese Vocabulary
English Decoding
English Vocabulary
English RC
Chinese EFL learners Beta Weights .017 .410 .110 -.280 .303 Structural Coefficient .608 .843 .364 -.130 .729 Total Variance .157 .301 .056 .007 .226 Common Variance .157 .229 .046 -.059 .167 Unique Variance .000 .073 .010 .006 .059
Recent Immigrants Beta Weights .064 .701 -.014 -.206 .487 Structural Coefficient .743 .915 -.014 -.031 .378 Total Variance .426 .646 .000 .001 .110 Common Variance .425 .481 .000 -.017 .024 Unique Variance .001 .165 .000 .018 .086
Long-term Immigrants Beta Weights .276 .633 .110 -.066 .131 Structural Coefficient .944 .978 -.083 -.500 -.189 Total Variance .689 .738 .005 .192 .028 Common Variance .678 .682 -.003 .191 .023 Unique Variance .011 .056 .008 .001 .005
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Table 17. Summary of unique and common variance for independent variables when predicting L1 RC
Chinese EFL learners Recent Immigrants Long-term Immigrants
Coefficient % R2 Coefficient % R2 Coefficient % R2
Unique to Chinese Word Reading .000 0.03 .001 0.18 .011 1.37 Unique to Chinese Vocabulary .073 17.12 .165 21.38 .056 7.31 Unique to English Decoding .010 2.31 .000 0.02 .008 1.03 Unique to English Vocabulary .066 15.58 .018 2.27 .001 0.11 Unique to English RC .059 13.84 .086 11.14 .005 0.67 Common with English Vocabulary (without English RC) -.005 -1.22 .134 17.30 .271 35.08
Common with English RC (without English Vocabulary) .196 45.99 .166 21.48 .102 13.20
Common with English Vocabulary and English RC -.043 -10.23 -.165 -21.37 -.090 -11.60
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