Reading Efficiency in Native English Speaking and English as Second Language Children

SCIENTIFIC STUDIES OF READING,10(1),31–57Copyright © 2006, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.Reading Efficiency in Native English-Speaking and English-as-a-Second-Language Children: The Role of OralProficiency and UnderlyingCognitive-Linguistic ProcessesEsther GevaUniversity of TorontoZohreh Yaghoub ZadehCanadian Council on LearningThe research examined the extent to which(a)Grade2English-as-a-second-lan-guage(ESL)and English-as-a-first-language(EL1)children resemble each other on word and text reading efficiency and(b)whether individual differences in word and text reading efficiency in the two language groups can be understood in terms of sim-ilar underlying component processes.Despite an oral language proficiency advan-tage in the EL1group,no EL1advantage existed on any of the cognitive and reading measures.Oral language proficiency,phonological awareness,rapid automatized naming,and accurate word recognition were significant predictors of word and text efficiency in the ESL group.Only rapid automatized naming and word recognition were significant in the EL1group.Overall,with the exception of English-language oral proficiency skills,EL1and ESL profiles of three efficiency subgroups(poor de-coders, low efficiency, and high efficiency) were highly similar.The goal of this article is to investigate the development of word and text reading effi-ciency in young children learning to read in their second language(L2).Because almost noresearchhasbeenconductedonthedevelopmentoffluencyandefficiencyinL2read-ing,webeginbyprovidingabriefoverviewofthefirstlanguage(L1)-basedliterature.Correspondence should be sent to Esther Geva,The Department of Human Development and Ap-plied Psychology,Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto,Toronto,On-tario, Canada M5S 1V6. E-mail: egeva@oise.utoronto.ca32GEV A AND Y AGHOUB ZADEHNo consensus exists in the reading literature with regard to the concept of read-ing fluency(Wolf&Katzir-Cohen,2001).Terms such as fluency,efficiency,and automaticity overlap to some degree and are often used as synonyms(National Reading Panel,2000).Some use the term automaticity to refer to various aspects of word identification that can be processed with little effort and attention.Theories of automaticity(LaBerge&Samuels,1974)assume that accuracy develops before speed and that an efficient reader is one who can read words both accurately and fast.Theories of verbal efficiency(Perfetti,1985)emphasize the importance of ef-fective lexical retrieval processes and their impact on individual differences in reading comprehension.Researchers have suggested that comprehension can be enhanced when lexical access processes are executed efficiently and automati-cally,so that cognitive-processing resources are not overtaxed(Bowers,Golden, Kennedy,&Young,1994;Bowers&Wolf,1993;Carver,1997;LaBerge& Samuels,1974;Perfetti,1985;Shany&Biemiller,1995;Stanovich,1992).The National Reading Panel(2000)expanded the concept of reading fluency to include “the ability to group words appropriately into meaningful grammatical units for in-terpretation”(pp.3–6).In this article we use the term word reading efficiency to re-fer to accurate and fast reading of isolated words,and text reading efficiency to re-fer to accurate and fast reading of text.Recent models espouse a more dynamic,developmental,and componential ap-proach to the study of reading fluency(e.g.,Berninger,Abbot,Billingsly,&Nagy, 2001;Kame’enui,Simmons,Good,&Harn,2001;Levy,2000;Wolf&Katzir-Co-hen,2001).Kuhn and Stahl(2000)discussed how the development of reading flu-ency relates to the stages of development described by Chall(1996).Wolf and Katzir-Cohen suggested that in the early stages of reading development fluency entails the gradual development of accurate and automatic execution of lower level components involving orthographic,phonological,lexical,morphological,and syntactic skills.To be efficient readers,children need to increase their repertoire of large orthographic units that are easily accessible from memory and to carry out these lower level operations with speed.Once readers have developed efficiency with these basic aspects of reading and word decoding becomes effortless and fast, text reading efficiency is reflected in paralinguistic features such as prosody.Effi-cient text reading allows for the allocation of attentional resources to higher level reading skills involved in comprehension.Wolf and Katzir-Cohen maintained that dysfluent reading can be the result of impairment in any component process(Meyer&Felton,1999;Wolf,Bowers,& Biddle,2000).Overall,less skilled L1readers are described in the L1reading liter-ature as recognizing printed words more slowly than skilled readers(Biemiller, 1977/78;Carver,1997;Denckla&Rudel,1976;Ehri,1998;Manis,Seidenberg, Doi,McBride-Chang,&Patterson,1996;Perfetti,1985;Torgesen,2001;Wagner et al.,1997).Two underlying processes that have been implicated in efficient word reading are phonological awareness and naming speed.Some theoreticians main-READING EFFICIENCY IN ESL CHILDREN33 tain that naming speed and phonological awareness tap common underlying pho-nological processes(e.g.,Wagner et al.,1997).Others maintain that naming speed may involve problems with a distinct phonological and visual timing mechanism necessary for establishing unitized orthographic and phonological codes(e.g., Bowers&Wolf,1993;Breznitz,2001,2002;Wolf&Bowers,1999;see Savage, 2004,for a review).Notwithstanding this unresolved theoretical debate,L1-based studies on the speed of naming various stimuli indicate that individual differences in speed of letter,digit,or word naming predict fluent reading in L1(Kirby et al., 2003;Stage,Sheppard,Davidson,&Browning,2001;Wimmer,Maryinger,& Landerl, 2000; Young & Bowers, 1995).READING DEVELOPMENT IN L2Research on L2reading development in L2children is not as extensive as the liter-ature on L1reading development.However,in the last decade the database on L2 reading development has expanded.It has shown that(a)accuracy indexes of word recognition and spelling skills in young L2children are often identical to those of L1children(e.g.,Geva,Yaghoub Zadeh,&Schuster,2000;Lesaux&Siegel, 2004;Lipka,2003;Wade-Woolley&Siegel,1997;Wang&Geva,2003);(b)cog-nitive-linguistic components such as phonological awareness and rapid automa-tized naming(RAN)can be measured reliably and utilized to predict performance on word reading skills in L1and L2children alike(e.g.,Chiappe&Siegel,1999; Comeau,Cormier,Grandmaison,&Lacroix,1999;Durgunoglu,Nagy,& Hancin-Bhatt,1993;Geva et al.,2000;Gottardo,Yan,Siegel,&Wade-Woolley, 2001;Lesaux&Siegel,2003;Lindsey,Manis,&Bailey,2003;Wade-Woolley& Siegel,1997);and(c)once individual differences in phonemic awareness and rapid naming have been taken into account,oral language proficiency skills do not add substantially to the variance in accurate basic reading skills in L2children (Arab-Moghaddam&Sénéchal,2001;Durgunoglu et al.,1993;Geva&Siegel, 2000; Geva et al., 2000; Gholamain & Geva, 1999; Lindsey et al., 2003).Although L2oral proficiency may not make a unique contribution over and above other basic reading components to accuracy in L2word recognition and spelling skills,it is reasonable to expect that it should play a more pronounced role when word and text reading efficiency are targeted.This issue has received very little attention in the L2literature and has been largely limited to the reading per-formance of adult L2readers(e.g.,Nassaji&Geva,1999;Segalowitz,1986; Shimron&Sivan,1994;Wade-Woolley&Geva,1999).To date,only a handful of L2studies have systematically examined the development of word and text effi-ciency in L2children(e.g.,Geva&Clifton,1994;Geva,Wade-Woolley,&Shany, 1997;Quiroga,Lemos-Britton,Mostafapour,Abbott,&Berninger,2002).The studies by Geva and her colleagues focused primarily on L1–L2transfer.Both34GEV A AND Y AGHOUB ZADEHstudies have shown that primary-level poor decoders were less fluent than good de-coders in reading texts in English,in their L1,and in their L2(French and Hebrew, respectively).Of particular relevance in the present context is the Geva et al. (1997)study in which performance on both accuracy and speed indexes of word reading in L1(English)and L2(Hebrew)were very similar.This result is consis-tent with the observation that oral language proficiency did not make a unique con-tribution to word recognition in L2children.In addition,in a result replicating Jackson and Donaldson(1989),Geva et al.reported that in their L1(English),chil-dren’s text reading time was faster than reading the same words presented out of context.However,context did not have a facilitating effect in Hebrew,as their He-brew proficiency was minimal.Questions concerning the role of language proficiency in enhancing reading ef-ficiency are particularly pertinent in L2contexts.Carlisle and Beeman(2000)re-ported that primary-level Spanish–English bilingual children’s vocabulary knowl-edge predicted reading comprehension in the same language.An intuitively sensible hypothesis is that word recognition skills of L2children should be slower than those of their L1counterparts because their vocabulary is not as developed and because they may be slower in accessing linguistic information(e.g.,phono-logical,semantic,morphological)than their L1counterparts.The same would be expected to be true for text reading fluency in young L2 learners.The question then becomes to what extent are L1-based theories of reading effi-ciency,which attribute slower reading to less efficient word recognition skills and to reduced access to linguistic information,applicable to L2learners?Are individ-ual differences in reading efficiency related to individual differences in underlying processes such as phonological awareness and rapid naming just as they appear to be in L1children?Alternatively,are oral proficiency and the ability to benefit from linguistic context the driving forces in enhancing L2word reading efficiency and text efficiency?According to the latter explanation,L2children would be expected to have less efficient word recognition skills than their L1counterparts and to be less fluent readers because of limitations in the efficiency of retrieving phonologi-cal, semantic, and grammatical information.In summary,although recent research has shed some light on the cognitive,lin-guistic,and orthographic underpinnings of accurate word recognition skills in L2 children,a dearth of knowledge exists about the development of reading efficiency in L2children.This study focuses on the emergence of reading efficiency in young,primary-level English-as-a-second-language(ESL)children who have mastered the basic principles of word reading.The study’s first objective is to com-pare ESL and English-as-a-first-language(EL1)children on word and text reading efficiency and to examine the effects of context on reading efficiency.A compari-son of reading efficiency in EL1and ESL children would shed light on the assump-tion that EL1children should be more efficient readers than ESL children due to their better command of the language.A second objective is to examine the extent to which a similar set of underlying processes drive word and text reading effi-READING EFFICIENCY IN ESL CHILDREN35 ciency in EL1and ESL children.To achieve this objective,we explore the relative contribution of individual differences in oral language proficiency,underlying cognitive-linguistic processes(e.g.,nonverbal ability,rapid serial naming,phono-logical awareness),and word recognition to text and word reading efficiency in EL1and ESL children.The third objective is to examine similarities and differ-ences in profiles of EL1 and ESL groups that differ in their reading efficiency.METHODParticipantsESL and L1participants were recruited from three subsequent cohorts of children in 12schools in four school boards in a large,multiethnic metropolis in Canada,where 4of10residents were born outside the country.It is not the objective of this research to examine the impact of socioeconomic status on reading achievement in ESL chil-dren.Moreover,wedidnothaveaccesstoindividualfamilylevelsocioeconomicsta-tusdata.The2001CanadianCensusdata1indicatethat,onaverage,anonofficiallan-guage(i.e.,neither English nor French)was the language spoken by58%of the people living in the communities feeding into the participating schools(the percent-ages ranged from43%to73%).On average,68%of the families living in these com-munities immigrated to Canada when they were at least20years old(with little vari-ability between the communities);another23%indicated that they immigrated between the ages of5and19.In other words,the majority of the residents were first-generation immigrants.The incidence of poverty2varied somewhat among the communities.Whereas in2of the communities no incidence of poverty was re-ported,in each of the other communities a certain proportion(12%–50%)were clas-sified as poor;the average incidence of poverty was23%.It is also important to note thatthemedianfamilyincomeineachofthe12communitieswassubstantiallylower than the median reported for the metropolis.Another key index of socioeconomic status is parental education.Quite a bit of variability exists in terms of the highest level of education achieved,reflecting immigration trends and Canadian immigra-tion policies.On average,17%of the individuals in the census district had less than9 years of education,27%obtained at least some secondary education,13%had a high schoolcertificate,8%hadtraininginatrade,another19%hadcollegeeducation,and 20%had obtained a bachelor’s degree or a higher university degree.1It is possible to access the census demographic data for dissemination areas from Statistics Can-ada.Dissemination areas are small,relatively stable geographic units,composed of one or more blocks, which respect the boundaries of census subdivisions and census tracts.They are uniform in terms of population size(400–700),and they are the smallest standard geographic area for which all census data are disseminated.The demographic information provided is based on the data from the dissemination areas in which the participating schools are located.2Poverty is defined as a family income of $30,000 (Canadian) or less for a family of four.36GEV A AND Y AGHOUB ZADEHThe initial sample consisted of183ESL children and70EL1children.The data of3(4.3%)EL1children and18(8.8%)ESL children who had a standard score be-low80on a measure of nonverbal ability(Matrix Analogies Test[MAT];Naglieri, 1989)were not included in the analyses,leaving final samples of183Grade2ESL children (46% girls) and 67 (62% girls) EL1 children.The native language groups represented in the ESL sample are Cantonese (19%),Punjabi(41%),Tamil(18%),and Portuguese(22%).The ESL children come from12schools,and the EL1children from7of these schools.The mean age was 88.43 months for the EL1 sample and 87.32 months for the ESL sample.Consent forms in English and children’s home language were distributed in each of the participating classrooms.Only children with parental consent partici-pated in the study.Interviews of parents about home literacy and the extent to which the native language was used at home were not conducted due to language barriers,budgetary constraints,and reluctance by the school districts to allow ac-cess to parents.However,information about the EL1or ESL language status of children was determined through information about each child recorded in school files and parent responses included in the consent forms.This information was subsequently validated during interviews with classroom teachers.Only children whose school records and teacher interviews indicated an ESL status were consid-ered as such in the study.In addition,children who had not lived in an Eng-lish-speaking country for at least4months at the onset of Grade1were not in-cluded.This precaution was taken to ensure that children who were included had some systematic exposure to the rudiments of language and literacy instruction.In English-speaking Canada,school-age children who are recent arrivals from a non-English-speaking country typically attend school-based ESL classes for up to 2years.In the school districts where this study was conducted,ESL instruction, which is provided on a withdrawal basis,typically occurs in daily30-to40-min sessions with groups of three to five children.In these small groups all children have similar levels of English language proficiency but not necessarily the same L1.Teachers with ESL specialist training conduct these classes.ESL classes focus on the development of spoken English and on readiness for literacy skills.Besides the ESL tutoring,new immigrant children attend regular classrooms,in which all instruction takes place in English.3Classroom teachers are expected to provide appropriate adaptations to the curric-ulum.Some of the ESL children in this study were attending ESL classes at the time of testing or had attended such classes in the recent past.Except for pull-outs for small-group ESL tutoring,the ESL children were completely integrated into the reg-ular classroom.3Classrooms in large urban centers in Canada are ethnically and linguistically diverse.Therefore, providing systematic language and literacy instruction in the home language is not feasible.In some communities,however,children may attend heritage language programs.Typically,these classes take places after school or on weekends.READING EFFICIENCY IN ESL CHILDREN37MeasuresCognitive and Linguistic MeasuresNonverbal intelligence.Children completed the MAT(Naglieri,1989),a measure of nonverbal intelligence.In this test,children are presented with an illus-tration of an incomplete visuo-spatial matrix and asked to complete it by locating the missing piece among five or six patterned segments.The test has four subtests (pattern completion,reasoning by analogy,serial reasoning,and spatial visualiza-tion),each of which consists of16matrixes.Testing within each subtest is discon-tinued after four consecutive errors. Results are reported in standard scores.RAN.The RAN task,developed by Denckla and Rudel(1976),was used to measure speed of rapid serial naming.In this continuous naming task,children are asked to name five letters as fast as they can.Each letter appears10times in ran-dom order within10sets of five items.Prior to administering the RAN task,the child is asked to name each of the five letters to ascertain familiarity with the let-ters.The RAN measure is not administered to those children who cannot name all five letters without assistance.The children’s time(in seconds)to name all the let-ters on the board is used as the naming speed measure.Note that the lower the score is the faster is the naming speed.Phonological awareness (PA).PA was measured with a task adapted from the Auditory Analysis Task developed by Rosner and Simon(1971).In this seg-mentation-deletion task,children must isolate and delete syllables or phonemes and indicate the resulting word(e.g.,“Say meat.Now say it without the/m/.”). Methodological considerations guided us in adapting this task to the ESL popula-tion.In particular,it was necessary to minimize the possible confounding of lan-guage proficiency with performance on this phonological awareness task.Our pri-mary concern was that many of the words or the resulting words on the original Auditory Analysis Task are not likely to be familiar to young ESL children(e.g., stale).The items on the adapted task are all high-frequency words,and the result-ing words after the child deletes the phoneme or syllable are also high-frequency words(e.g.,“Say leg.Now say it without the/l/.”).Of the25items on the task,the first4involve syllable deletion,and the remainder require phoneme deletion in word initial,word final,or word medial position.Some items require the deletion of a phoneme in a consonant cluster.Four practice items precede the administra-tion of the test items.Administration is discontinued after five consecutive errors. The total correct scores are reported. The Cronbachαis .92.Expressive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test–Revised.The Expres-sive One-Word Picture V ocabulary Test–Revised(Gardner,1990)was used to as-sess language proficiency.It is a standardized measure of expressive vocabulary in which children are asked to provide one-word labels to line drawing pictures pre-38GEV A AND Y AGHOUB ZADEHsented to them one at a time.The test,which includes100nouns and verbs,is dis-continued once a criterion of six consecutive errors has been established.The total number of correct responses was used in the analyses.Grammatical judgment.Children’s syntactic knowledge was assessed us-ing items adapted from a grammatical judgment measure developed by Johnson and Newport(1989).In this40-item measure of receptive syntactic skills,the child listens to prerecorded taped sentences that are either grammatically correct(e.g.,“We ate the whole pizza by ourselves.”)or incorrect(e.g.,“January is the most cold month of the year.”).Half of the sentences are syntactically correct,and the other half are syntactically incorrect.Each sentence is played twice on a tape recorder, and the child is asked to indicate whether the sentence is said“the right way”or “the wrong way.”No discontinue rule is used on this test.The total score was based on the number of correctly judged sentences. The Cronbachαvalue is .77.Basic Reading Skills MeasuresWord Attack.The Word Attack subtest of the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test–Revised(Woodcock,1987)was used to assess children’s ability to utilize their knowledge of grapheme–phoneme correspondence rules and orthographic representations to decode or“attack”pseudowords in English.This test consists of 50pronounceable pseudowords that comply with English orthographic rules(e.g., plip,cigbet).Children read the pseudowords one at a time,and testing is discontin-ued when the child makes six consecutive errors.Results are reported in terms of total correct scores.Word Recognition.To assess children’s English word recognition skills the Word Recognition subtest of the Wide Range Achievement Test–Revised(Jastak &Wilkinson,1984)was used.This test consists of42unrelated words.It begins with highly familiar,short words(e.g.,cat),and gradually the words become less frequent and more complex orthographically(e.g.,pseudonym).Testing is discon-tinued when the child makes10consecutive errors.Results are reported in terms of total correct scores.Reading Efficiency MeasuresThe Biemiller Test of Reading Processes(Biemiller,1981)was used to measure word and text reading efficiency.The test yields measures of accuracy and speed in reading isolated words and connected text.The isolated word lists come from the corresponding texts.Word efficiency.This subtest,which requires children to read isolated words,provides an indication of children’s ability to identify unrelated words ac-curately and quickly.Children are presented with two lists,each consisting of50READING EFFICIENCY IN ESL CHILDREN39randomly ordered,single-morpheme words(taken from the two corresponding texts;see the following discussion)and asked to read them as fast as possible.The first list has easier words than the second.Text efficiency.The Text Reading subtest focuses on text reading efficiency. Participants are presented with two narrative texts(containing100words each). They are required to read each text aloud as quickly as they can.The subtest in-cludes two narratives,an“easy”text,which,according to Biemiller(1981)uses primer-level words(e.g.,bear,thank,no,they,water,fish,tried,and father),and a relatively more“difficult”text,which consists of words that are typical of middle elementary-level reading(e.g.,register,asked,interested,saw,thing s,wood,tour-ists,and also).The reading materials are easy to minimize confounding of speed and accuracy (Jackson & Donaldson, 1989).Test administration.The child first reads the easy text and then the corre-sponding word list.The more difficult text and the corresponding word list are ad-ministered next.Both sets contain words that were chosen because they can be de-coded with minimal difficulty.As Biemiller(1981)pointed out,the goal of the test is to ascertain not how many words children can read but rather the speed at which they read these words.Assessment of reading efficiency,however,can be compro-mised if children make too many errors.The assessor is thus instructed to aid the child who stumbles on a word by providing without delay the unknown word as well as the subsequent two words.The Biemiller test stipulates that if a child makes more than25%errors on the first text they should not be administered the second text.Accordingly,in this study,when children failed to read the first pas-sage with an acceptable degree of accuracy(75%accuracy regardless of speed), they were considered to be poor decoders and were not administered the second passage and corresponding word list.4Speed scoring.To obtain a speed score in the isolated words condition,we divided the total number of seconds that a participant took to read the easy and hard lists by the total number of correct words read across the two lists.The same proce-dure was repeated to calculate text speed scores.The EL1and ESL groups did not differ on word accuracy(85%and88%,respectively)or on text accuracy(89%and 90%, respectively).4A comparison of efficiency scores in the EL1and ESL groups with those published by Biemiller (1981)revealed that the speed scores reported by Biemiller for the same age group were higher than those obtained in this study.However,Biemiller excluded data of children who made more than three errors on the tasks because he focused on the relationship between speed and accuracy in children who read with accuracy.The objective of this study is to compare ESL and EL1children,and,therefore,the exclusion criterion was different—only children who made more than25%errors when they read the first and easy text were excluded.40GEV A AND Y AGHOUB ZADEHReading efficiency scores.Two dependent measures were derived—a word efficiency score and a text efficiency score.Efficiency scores were computed based on a procedure used by Stanovich and West(1989).First,for each partici-pant the number of errors on each task and the time to perform each task were con-verted into their respective Z scores.The resulting accuracy and speed Z scores for each task were then combined and averaged to yield a single composite efficiency score.The two word-based composite efficiency scores(based on the easy and dif-ficult lists)were averaged to yield an overall score that represents the child’s abil-ity to read words efficiently.The same procedure was applied to develop an overall text efficiency score that represents the child’s ability to read with accuracy and speed the two narratives.Note that the lower the Z score,the more efficient the child’s reading.ProceduresAs part of a larger project(which began when the children were in Grade1),chil-dren were administered a series of tests in the first half of their2nd year in elemen-tary school.At that time children in the EL1and ESL groups have spent1½to2½years in schools in which English is the language of instruction(i.e.,senior kinder-garten and Grade1).These tasks were part of a larger battery of tests,which was administered across four testing sessions,each lasting approximately30min.Al-though the batteries were administered in a random order,tests within the batteries were administered according to a fixed random order.Children were tested on an individual basis by one of a number of experienced graduate students.For the MAT, standardized scores were used. However, raw scores were used when other standardized tests such as the Expressive One-Word Picture V ocabulary Test (Gardner,1990)and the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test–Revised(Woodcock, 1987) were used, because the norms were not developed for ESL children.RESULTSOf the67EL1children,12(18%)were deemed to be poor decoders,as they made too many decoding errors on the easy story and were,therefore,not able to prog-ress to the difficult story.Of the183ESL children,32(17%)were not able to prog-ress to the difficult story and were likewise considered poor decoders.Fifty-four EL1and151ESL children met the minimum requirements for becoming efficient readers because they were able to complete both the easy and difficult subtasks of the Biemiller(1981)test.A cross-tab chi-square analysis was done to examine whether the proportion of poor decoders was higher in the ESL group than in the EL1group.This analysis reveals that the proportion of poor decoders in the EL1 and ESL groups was similar,χ2(1,N= 250) = .07,p= .460.。