The aim of this study was to examine variation in early reading comprehension development for second language (L2) readers compared with first language (L1) readers and to investigate the impact of vocabulary knowledge in their first and second language. Participants were 75 Dutch monolingual children (L1 readers) and 71 Turkish-Dutch bilingual…

Background: The goal of this study was to examine the effect of cognates on Spanish-English bilingual children's English reading fluency. Because cognates lead to higher levels of non-target language activation, we hypothesised that the presence of cognates would result in reduced reading fluency for bilingual children. Methods: Monolingual…

Background: While much is known about how morphological awareness (MA) contributes to reading development, little attention has been paid to how reading may conversely affect MA development, particularly in readers of Chinese in a bilingual/multilingual setting. Methods: The study adopted a cross-lagged panel design. Young bilingual readers of…

This study explored components of language comprehension (vocabulary, grammar, and higher-level language) skills for poor comprehenders in French immersion. We identified three groups of bilingual comprehenders (poor, average, and good) based on English reading performance and compared their language comprehension skills in English L1 and French…

This study investigates the within- and cross-language relations between orthographic processing and spelling for children learning to read in languages that share the same Roman script: namely, English and French. We examined these relations in a group of 152 children attending grade 1 in a French immersion program. Measures of English and French…

By using the eye-tracking method, the present study explores whether working memory capacity assessed via the second language (L2) reading span (L2WMC) as well as the operational span task (OSPAN) affects the processing of subject-extraction and object-extraction in Chinese-English bilinguals. Results showed that L2WMC has no effects on the…

In this study, we analysed the relationships between word decoding, vocabulary knowledge, meta-cognitive knowledge and reading comprehension in low-achieving adolescents and examined whether the strength of these relationships differed between Grade 7 and 9 students and between monolingual and bilingual students. Tests were administered to 328…

Our goal with this special issue was to bring together a range of research on learning to read in more than one language. In this introduction, we provide an overview of clear diversity across the language pairings, learning contexts and reading-related skills examined. We also highlight some particularly noteworthy and often intriguing findings…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of structured story reading intervention, "S"tory re"T"elling and higher order thinking for "E"nglish "L"anguage and "L"iteracy "A"cquisition (STELLA), delivered to 38 Hispanic English language learners (ELL) placed in an enhanced transitional bilingual programme over 2 years from…

This study focused on the associations of general auditory processing, speech perception, phonological awareness and word reading in Cantonese-speaking children from Hong Kong learning to read both Chinese (first language [L1]) and English (second language [L2]). Children in Grades 2--4 ("N" = 133) participated and were administered…

This study examined cross-language transfer of morphological awareness in Chinese-English bilingual children. One hundred and thirty-seven first to fourth graders participated in the study. The children were tested on parallel measures of compound awareness, vocabulary, word reading and reading comprehension in Chinese and English. They also…

French and Dutch differ regarding the manifestations and lexical functions of the stress pattern of words. The present study examined group differences in stress processing abilities between French-native and Dutch-native listeners, thus extending previous cross-linguistic comparisons involving Spanish-native and French-native adults. The results…

This study explored comprehension monitoring, use of reading strategies and reading comprehension of bilingual students at different levels of perceived proficiency in Italian. The participants were bilingual fifth to eighth-grade elementary school students from four Italian schools in Rijeka, Croatia. Students' reading comprehension was assessed.…