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…

We investigated the role of socioeconomic status (SES) in the unfolding of vocabulary and text-comprehension skills in language minority bilingual children, who are educated exclusively in their L2. For comparison, a monolingual control group was also tested, consisting of children of the same age and schooling. We administered a synonyms task to…

We examined the influence of language and socioeconomic factors on academic achievement in the Basque Autonomous Community (BAC): a multilingual society with a recent history of language revitalisation. We analysed scores obtained by Grade 4 and Grade 10 students on a diagnostic mathematics test administered in either Basque or Spanish in the BAC.…

Until children can produce letters quickly and accurately, it is assumed that handwriting disrupts and limits the quality of their text. This investigation is the largest study to date (2596 girls, 2354 boys) assessing the association between handwriting fluency and writing quality. We tested whether handwriting fluency made a statistically unique…

Interactions with classroom friends may be an important contributor to first and second language development, but to date this hypothesis has not been tested. Using a longitudinal design, the current study investigated the relationship between classroom friendships and oral language development in children. In 8 classrooms, we assessed the…

In this study, we examined the accuracy and consistency of Greek-speaking children with spelling difficulties using a spelling level-matched design at two time points. Eighty-seven children were selected for inclusion in three groups: a group with spelling difficulties (SpD, n = 22 fifth graders) and two control groups, a chronological age-matched…

School leadership ranks as an essential factor for successful schools. The purpose of this study is therefore to investigate the effects of two central leadership practices -- "setting directions" and "managing instructional processes" -- on both instructional quality (mediator) and student achievement (target) in Austrian…

This study examined how Papiamento and Dutch attitude and home literacy environment of 168 children in fourth grade of the post-colonial Dutch Caribbean, predicted L1 and L2 reading literacy in sixth grade. Overall, children had higher scores for reading literacy in L1 Papiamento as compared with L2 Dutch. They showed more positive attitudes…

This study investigated the correlation and predictive capacity of verbal working memory (VWM) to the reading comprehension of children in their first language (L1) and second language (L2). The term verbal working memory refers to a cognitive system with a limited capacity that can hold and manipulate verbal and auditory information temporarily.…

This study investigated the connection between translanguaging and reading comprehension of Filipino ESL intermediate learners. The respondents were intermediate pupils enrolled in the selected central schools in Bicol, Philippines. The respondents' ages range from 8 to 12 years old, and 124 students (27.55%) were males while 326 students (72.44%)…

This study leverages six years of public prekindergarten (pre-K) and kindergarten data (N = 22,469) from the Boston Public Schools (BPS) to examine enrollment in BPS pre-K from 2012-2017 for students from different racial/ethnic, socioeconomic, and linguistic groups. The largest differences in enrollment emerged with respect to race and…

One shared goal of classroom instruction is to support students' reading competence as a key skill of school success and participation in daily life. Yet, teaching that addresses multilingual students' language-related resources to support reading is rare. In this study, we enriched reciprocal teaching with elements of linguistically responsive…

It has been widely recognised that plurilingual pedagogy offers many benefits both for language learning and learning in general. However, in contexts where the linguistic profile of students is diverse, it can still be challenging for teachers to view working with the language resources of their students as feasible. In this article, we discuss…

The longitudinal study investigated the directionality and transfer mechanism of cross-linguistic transfer of phonological awareness between L1 and L2 in predicting early writing (word dictation) in Chinese children learning English as L2. Ninety primary school Grade 1 (P1) students were assessed on phonological awareness in Cantonese (syllable…

Following a period of close to a century when the Irish language was placed at the margins of the education system under British rule, there was a radical change in curriculum provision following political independence in Ireland in the 1920s. The importance of the Irish language in defining sovereignty, national identity, and nationhood in the…