Longitudinal data from the Early Grade Reading Study (EGRS I) in South Africa (N = 4538) were used to examine the role of instructional contexts in the relations of literacy skills between children's home language (L1 Setswana) and a second language (L2 English). All children received literacy instruction in Setswana in Grades 1 to 3. However,…

While it has been shown that socioeconomic status (SES) is important for children's literacy development in their first language (L1), less is known about its association with reading in a second language (L2). The present study examined the different effects of SES on the acquisition of reading in Chinese as L1 and English as L2 from ages 7 to…

This paper examines the construct of bilingual phonemic awareness in Irish-English bilinguals. Though traditionally viewed as a skill or ability which transfers across languages, recent accounts have considered whether phonemic awareness has a language-specific component. This study used a cross-sectional design to examine this question. A total…

We investigated spelling errors in English and Spanish essays by Spanish-English dual language learners in Grades 1, 2, and 3 (N = 278; 51% female) enrolled in either English immersion or English-Spanish dual immersion programs. We examined what types of spelling errors students made, whether they made spelling errors that could be due to…

This study investigated how experience with a first language (L1) writing system affects the development of the second language (L2) word recognition subskills and how L2 linguistic knowledge constrains such L1 impacts. In this study, word recognition is conceptualized as a complex construct that entails multiple subskills necessary for…

The aim of this study was to test whether Cummins' Linguistic Interdependence Hypothesis (LIH) might also apply to writing, by determining to what extent writers' text quality, source use and argumentation behavior are related in L1 and L2, how effective writers' behavior is and whether their L2 proficiency influenced the relations between them.…

The purpose of the present study was to explore the role of morphological awareness in reading comprehension in different language learning contexts (ESL and EFL). Korean ESL and Korean EFL learners (50 and 257 respectively) in grades five and six were administered measures of L2 (English) morphological, phonological, and orthographic awareness…

Linguistic abilities as well as home environment explain successful English as a foreign language (EFL) reading acquisition. The aim of this study was to examine the extent to which morphological derivational awareness measured in Arabic as a first language (L1) predicted EFL word recognition and reading comprehension among 66-11th grade female…

This study compared how lexical quality (vocabulary and decoding) and executive control (working memory and inhibition) predict reading comprehension directly as well as indirectly, via syntactic integration, in monolingual and bilingual fourth grade children. The participants were 76 monolingual and 102 bilingual children (mean age 10 years,…

The linguistic interdependence hypothesis (Cummins, 1979, 2000) states that children's second-language (L2) proficiency is, to some extent, a function of their first-language (L1) competence. Previous studies have examined this hypothesis with focus on a unidirectional relation from L1 to L2. In the present study, we examined…

Although there is a growing body of literature on the development of reading skills of Spanish-speaking language minority children, little research has focused on the development of writing skills in this population. This study evaluated whether children's Spanish early reading skills (i.e., print knowledge, phonological awareness, oral language)…

This study examines the relationship between phonological awareness (PA) in the two languages of Korean English as a foreign language learning children in relation to L1 characteristics and school experiences, and its predictive role in word decoding skills in each language. Seventy-two 5-6-year-old Korean children who had attended English-medium…

Cross-language transfer of awareness of the structure of compound words was investigated among native speakers of Chinese who were learning English as a second language. Chinese fifth graders received instruction in the morphology of four types of compound words in either Chinese or English. They then completed both the Chinese and English…