This study examined whether the assessment of executive function (EF) added a unique contribution to second language (L2) reading comprehension in children in French immersion. Participants were 8- to 9-year old children who completed a collection of measures assessing French reading (i.e., word reading, decoding, and reading comprehension ) and…

Purpose: This study investigated the extent to which comprehension monitoring in children's first and second language predicts reading comprehension. Method: Children's ability to detect inconsistencies in orally presented stories was measured by response to a judgment question about whether the story made sense and by the identification of the…

As dual-language children's books are becoming increasingly popular in language and literacy education, scholars are starting to zero in on how students construct meaning as they read these books. In this paper, in light of the previously mentioned body of literature, we present a qualitative study focusing on the reading strategies that three…

This study evaluates the extent to which syntactic awareness contributes to reading comprehension in English-French bilinguals, considering both the potential for a direct relation, as well as an indirect one, through word reading. Participants were 146 first-grade students enrolled in early French immersion programs in Canada. While the children…

Reading comprehension performance is predicted by decoding skill and linguistic comprehension (e.g., Hoover & Gough, 1990; Joshi & Aaron, 2012; Scarborough, 2001). However, the type of strategies that readers recruit to build a discourse should also contribute to success in first and second language reading comprehension. Sixty-six French…

This study explores the cross-linguistic reading strategies that 16 Grade 3-4 French immersion pupils schooled in Saskatchewan used while reading two types of dual-language children's books: translated and integrated. In the first type, the same text appears in both French and English, whereas in the second one, English and French are integrated…

This study investigated an emergent interaction between word reading fluency and vocabulary knowledge in the prediction of reading comprehension among French immersion students in Grades 2 and 3. A group of 66 students were tested on measures of phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, word reading accuracy, vocabulary, word reading…

In this article, we report two studies that compared the development of English and French language and literacy skills in French immersion students identified as native English speakers (EL1s) and English learners (ELs). In study 1, 81 EL1s and 147 ELs were tested in the fall and spring terms of grade 1. The EL1s and ELs had similar outcomes and…

The classroom demographics in French immersion (FI) programs across Canada are changing: There are a growing number of multilingual students who are learning English as a second language (L2) and French as a third language (L3). However, little is known about the development of French language proficiency and reading skills of multilingual…

We tracked the developmental influences of exposure to French on developing English phonological awareness, decoding and reading comprehension of English-speaking at-risk readers from Grade 1 to Grade 3. Teacher-nominated at-risk readers were matched with not-at-risk readers in French immersion and English language programs. Exposure to spoken…

The relationship between first language (L1) typology, defined as the classification of languages according to their structural characteristics (e.g. phonological systems and writing systems), and the development of second (L2) and third (L3) language skills and literacy proficiency in multilingual children was investigated in this study. The…

This paper reports the results of a cross-lingual study on the role of comprehension monitoring in L1 (English) and L2 (French) reading proficiency. Fifty-two undergraduate students from two FSL backgrounds, French immersion (FI) and core French (CF), were given reading comprehension tests as well a monitoring task in both languages. Results…

The effectiveness of the Chicago Mastery Learning Reading (CMLR) Program implemented in Ontario's Kettleby Public Schools (KPS) was measured by the students' reading progress and comparisons with the progress of other students in French immersion (FI) and other non-FI programs, including a gifted program. Within six months of CMLR implementation,…

Studies on reading comprehension for bilingual students are reviewed to examine the importance of first-language mastery prior to second-language acquisition. Immersion program factors analyzed include automaticity, plateau effects, need for a variety of sociolinguistic settings, oral facility versus cognitive academic linguistic abilities, and…

The report, entirely in French, describes Alberta's curriculum for ninth-year French immersion, as revised in 1998. An introductory section offers background information on the curriculum revision, links between the core curriculum and French immersion, underlying principles of second language instruction, the revised curriculum's objectives and…