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THE RELATION BETWEEN READING AND WRITING DEVELOPMENT IN ENGLISH AND ESL STUDENTS
By
Susan Elizabeth Ball
A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Graduate Department of Education University of Toronto
© Copyright by Susan Elizabeth Ball 2003
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ABSTRACT
The Relation between Reading and Writing Development in English and ESL Students
Susan Elizabeth Ball
Graduate Department of Education, University of Toronto
Surprisingly little is known about similarities and differences in how reading and writing
skills develop. Most attempts to examine the relation between reading and writing
development have used few measures at a single point in time with small samples of
children. The current study explored the relation between the lower (decoding and
spelling) and higher levels (reading comprehension and story construction) of reading
and writing development for students in Grades 3 and 5/6, and also explored many
underlying cognitive and language processes that are predictive of reading and writing
achievement. In addition, the present study addressed these issues as they relate to
students for whom English is either their first (ENG) or second (ESL) language. A series
of ANCOVAs revealed few significant differences between ENG and ESL students on
reading, writing and cognitive measures; however, significant differences were found on
oral language proficiency (OLP) measures in favor of ENG students. Multiple sequential
regression was undertaken to investigate the underlying cognitive and language processes
that predict reading and writing development. The cognitive ability composite predicted
the most variance in lower-level decoding and spelling skills, and the OLP composite
predicted the most variance in the higher-level reading comprehension and story
construction skills. These results have significant implications for assessment and
programming, particularly for ESL students.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
To my thesis supervisor, Dr. Dale Willows, my utmost respect and admiration. Dale’s
professionalism, her standards of excellence, and her wish to be involved in research that
makes a difference so that all students can learn to read and write, are exemplary
contributions to the field as well as to individual lives. She has been an exemplary role
model and mentor to me. To Dr. Tom Humphries and Dr. Esther Geva for their insight
and expertise, and to Dr. Lesly Wade-Woolley, thank you for the valuable contributions
you made to this thesis.
To my parents, who I am sure are quite proud and also quite relieved that I am finished.
To Christopher and Scott, for understanding when Mommy had to work on her ‘big
paper’ yet again, and finally, to my husband Dave, who has been my biggest supporter all
along this journey. Thank you so much for your encouragement and your support, and
for helping to make this dream a reality. I could not have done this without you.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION.................................................................... 10
Literature Review.........................................................................................10
Overview....................................................................................................... 10
Reading and Writing Development............................................................ 11
ENG and ESL Reading and Writing Development.................................. 11
The Simple Views of Reading and Writing.............................................. 12
The Relation between Reading and Writing............................................. 15
Research on the Relation between Reading and Writing..........................16
The Stages of Reading and Writing Development................................... 18
Reading and Writing Development at Grade 3.........................................20
Reading and Writing Development at Grade 5/6..................................... 21
Interpretation of Stage Theories............................................................... 22
Cognitive and Language Processes Underlying Reading and Writing
Development................................................................................................. 23
Cognitive Processes.................................................................................. 24
Language Processes.................................................................................. 28
Similarities and Differences between ENG and ESL students in Reading,
Writing, Cognitive and Language Development.......................................31
Oral Language Proficiency as it relates to differences between
ENG and ESL students............................................................................. 33
Goals of the Present Study.......................................................................... 34
Research Questions......................................................................................36
CHAPTER TWO: METHOD.................................................................................37
Description of Participants and Measures................................................ 37
Participants.......................................................................................37
Measures........................................................................................... 39
Procedures.................................................................................................... 49
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CHAPTER THREE: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION......................................... 50
Overview....................................................................................................... 50
Variable Screening.......................................................................................50
Similarities and differences between ENG and ESL students.................51
Reading Measures..............................................................................53
Writing Measures...............................................................................58
Cognitive Measures........................................................................... 58
Language Measures........................................................................... 59
The relation between lower- and higher-level reading and writing
skills...............................................................................................................60
Variance accounted for in lower- and higher-level reading and
writing.........................................................................................................62
Regression split by language (ENG/ESL)..................................................67
CHAPTER FOUR: GENERAL DISCUSSION....................................................70
Contributions............................................................................................... 70
Limitations....................................................................................................73
Diagnostic and Instructional Implications................................................ 74
References.....................................................................................................76
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LIST OF TABLES
Table 1. Stage 1 - Beginning Literacy Development - Kindergarten to Grade 2... 19
Table 2. Stage 2 - Confirmation and Fluency - Grade 2 to 4................................. 19
Table 3. Stage 3 - Reading and Writing for Learning the New - Grade 4 to 8......20
Table 4. Languages Represented in the ESL group............................................... 38
Table 5. Participant Characteristics - Fall 1999..................................................... 39
Table 6. Test Measures............................................................................................40
Table 7. Group Comparisons on Reading, Writing, Cognitive and Language
Processing Measures (based on raw scores).............................................54-
Table 8. Partial Correlations Between the Lower- and Fligher-Level Reading
and Writing Skills by Grade (3, 5/6) and by Language (ENG/ESL)........61
Table 9. Factor Loadings of the Reading and Writing Measures - Principal
Component Analysis with Varimax Rotation...........................................64
Table 10. Factor Loadings of the Cognitive and Language Processing Measures
Principal Component Analysis with Varimax Rotation........................... 65
Table 11. Summary of the Variance Accounted for by the Composites on
the Lower- and Higher-Level Reading Skills For ENG and ESL............ 67
Table 12. Summary of the Percentage of Variance Accounted for by the
Composites on the Lower- and Higher-Level Writing Skills
For ENG and ESL Learners......................................................................68
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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure B-l. Mean Spelling by Grade and Language
(WRAT Spelling raw scores)................................................................88
Figure B-2. Mean TOWL - III Spelling Errors (# of errors) by Grade
and Language........................................................................................89
Figure B-3. Mean RAN time (measured in seconds) by Grade and Language 90
Figure B-4. Mean Sequences by Grade and Language (CMS raw scores).............. 91
Figure B-5. Mean Receptive Vocabulary by Grade and Language
(PPVT raw scores).................................................................................92
Figure B-6. Mean Syntax by Grade and Language (CELF-III Formulated
Sentences raw scores)............................................................................ 93
Figure B-7. Mean Expressive Vocabulary by Grade and Language
(EVT raw scores)................................................................................... 94
Figure B-8. Mean Listening Comprehension by Grade and Language (Durrell
raw scores)............................................................................................. 94
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APPENDICES
Appendix A................................................................................................................84
Appendix B................................................................................................................ 88
Appendix C................................................................................................................98
Appendix D................................................................................................................ 102
Appendix E.................................................................................................................I l l
Appendix F.................................................................................................................113
Appendix G................................................................................................................ 115
Appendix H................................................................................................................ 118
Appendix 1..................................................................................................................114
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CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
For years, much of the research on reading and writing development has had a relatively
narrow focus. Although a great deal of programmatic research has been conducted on the
lower-level skills involved in reading (e.g., decoding/word identification) and, to a lesser
extent, writing (e.g., spelling), until quite recently, much less research has investigated
the acquisition of higher-level reading skills (e.g., reading comprehension), and even less
has studied higher-level writing skills (e.g., story construction). Moreover, with a few
notable exceptions, researchers have largely neglected the study of the interrelations
between the development of reading and writing skills. Furthermore, until quite recently,
the focus of attention has been almost exclusively on the study of reading and writing
processes among children who speak English as a first language and few researchers have
studied the development of English reading and writing skills among students for whom
English is their second language (ESL). This latter shortcoming of the research literature
is particularly concerning given the burgeoning numbers of ESL students learning to read
and write in English language schools.
The purpose of the present study was to investigate the relation between lower-level
(decoding and spelling) and higher-level (reading comprehension and story construction)
reading and writing skills among students in Grades 3 and 5/6 for whom English was
their first (ENG) or second (ESL) language. In addition, the research was designed to
explore similarities and differences in the underlying cognitive and language processes
associated with reading and writing development in ENG and ESL students.
Literature Review
Overview
This review is presented in five sections. The first examines the literature on reading and
writing development for ENG and ESL students, while the second section explores the
relation between reading and writing in these two populations. The third section
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discusses the cognitive and language variables that researchers have found to correlate
significantly with the acquisition of reading and writing. The fourth section examines the
literature on the similarities and differences between ENG and ESL cognitive, language,
reading and writing development. The final section of the literature review outlines the
goals of the present study.
As mentioned in the Introduction, the literature documenting reading acquisition in
English is substantial whereas the literature on writing acquisition in English is, at this
point, less developed. Very few studies have explored the relation between reading and
writing development in English. Moreover, the research literature relevant to the
development of English language reading and writing skills among ESL learners is even
smaller. This review will integrate the available literature for ENG and ESL learners
throughout, starting with theories of reading and writing development.
Reading and Writing Development
ENG and ESL Reading and Writing Development.
Geva and Verhoeven (2000) document that although a considerable body of research
exists on reading acquisition in children’s first language (LI), much less attention has
been paid to the acquisition of reading in a second language (L2). The literature in L2
reading research at present is still dominated by LI frameworks. These frameworks -
where English is, by far, the most frequent LI represented - conceptualize reading as a
complex information processing operation that draws on underlying component processes
which can be a potential source of individual differences (Daneman, 1996). Efficient
lower-level processing allows the limited capacity system to be devoted to processing
higher-order information during reading comprehension (Stanovich, 1991). L2 reading
has also been conceptualized as a complex cognitive skill, which is characterized by the
development of adequate skill in lower-level graphophonic processing and a gradual
automatization of decoding (McLaughlin, 1990). In Bernhardt’s (1990) multivariate L2
reading model, lower-level word recognition processes are important parameters of L2
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reading comprehension. Other researchers have also stressed the importance of lower-
level component processes in L2 reading (Haynes & Carr, 1990; Koda, 1994). While
these frameworks exist on reading development in English as a first (ENG) and second
(ESL) language, little theory or research exists on writing acquisition for either ENG or
ESL, with the exception of Haynes and Carr (1990) who applied the component process
framework to writing development in ESL students. The “simple views” of reading and
writing offer a common framework for the discussion of lower- and higher-level reading
and writing development in both ENG and ESL students.
The “Simple Views” of Reading and Writing
The simple views of reading and writing, originally presented by Gough and Tunmer
(1986) and Juel (1988), provide a framework by which to conceptualize the
representative lower- and higher-level reading and writing skills. Although this theory
has been applied specifically to the development of reading and writing in English, the
ESL literature has utilized a framework by which the same lower- and higher-level
reading skills (Perfetti, 1985) were identified. There is no corresponding model of
writing presented within the ESL literature.
Gough and Tunmer (1986), Hoover and Gough (1990), and Gough (1996) outlined a
“simple view” of reading ability that is composed of two factors: decoding (i.e., word
identification) and language comprehension, (a) Word identification is the result of the
application of decoding skills (word analysis based on phonemic awareness - blending -
and grapheme-phoneme correspondences), (b) Language comprehension is the process
by which the meanings of decoded words can be integrated into meaningful sentences
and text structures. As part of the lower-level reading process, phonemic awareness is
required for decoding which then leads to word identification. Once this lower-level skill
(decoding) has been consolidated (leading to fluent - automatized - word identification),
readers are then able to focus on attributing meaning to the text they have decoded
(comprehension). A single underlying process is seen as producing both listening and
reading comprehension, despite differences in speech and written text. Thus, in the
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simple view of reading, a poor reader (i.e., reading comprehender), is a poor word
identifier, a poor language comprehender, or both. The sequence by which these reading
skills develop is represented therefore, as follows: decoding, word identification, fluency
and reading comprehension. Reading comprehension has come to be viewed as the
“essence of reading” (Durkin, 1993) because it integrates complex cognitive and
language skills, and it depends on accurate and efficient word identification in order to
access meaning from print.
Juel (1988) outlined a “simple view” of writing, also composed of two factors: spelling
and ideation, (a) Spelling involves the application of encoding processes, some of the
same processes as decoding. Encoding (i.e., analysis of a spoken word’s sounds and the
representation of the sounds in print, also based on phonemic awareness - segmentation -
and phoneme-grapheme knowledge) is the process by which a writer represents the
sounds of spoken words in print, (b) Ideation is the ability to generate and organize
ideas, encompassing both the generation of creative thoughts and their organization into
sentence and text structures. Thus, in the simple view of writing, a poor writer (i.e.,
producer of written composition) is a poor speller, a poor ideas generator and organizer,
or both. The sequence by which these writing skills develop is represented, therefore, as
follows: spelling, productivity, the ability to use the conventions of writing, the ability to
use the language (sentence structure) of writing, and finally, the ability to organize ideas
and to construct written compositions. Written composition is a final common pathway
of multiple developmental functions integrating complex cognitive and language skills.
As with reading comprehension, written composition depends on the consolidation of
lower-level skills and fluency, in order to allow the student to focus, in this case, on the
organization of complex ideas into a written composition.
Juel acknowledges that these models of reading and writing may seem somewhat
simplistic. Only two components seem necessary to characterize both the “lower” word-
level skills (i.e., word identification or spelling) and the “higher” text-level skill (i.e.,
reading comprehension or written composition) of reading and writing; however, each
component is complex in its own right, and may be broken down into subcomponents.
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Poorer lower-level processes may impede the development of higher-level processes. For
example, until the lower-level process of spelling is somewhat automatic - at least for a
number of high frequency words - the attention of the writer may be diverted from
higher-order composing processes (Scardamalia, 1981). In reading, efficient word
identification leads to better comprehension. The “simple view” framework will be
adopted in examining the relation between the lower- (word identification and spelling)
and higher-level (reading comprehension and written composition) reading and writing
skills, and also in evaluating the underlying cognitive and language processes that are
correlated with those lower- and higher-level reading and writing skills.
There are no explicit references to the simple view of reading in the ESL literature;
however, Geva and Clifton (1993) describe reading as involving two interrelated factors:
word identification, or lexical access, and comprehension. They reference Perfetti (1985)
in that “ complex comprehension processes build upon word recognition process”.
According to Perfetti, reading comprehension depends upon the efficient operation of
lower lexical processes. Skilled readers can direct their attention to text comprehension
rather than decoding or word recognition, because of efficient basic processes. There are
no references to the simple view of writing in the ESL literature, but there is also a lack
of literature evaluating writing development in general, beyond the development of
spelling. Within the ESL literature, results from cross-linguistic comparisons of reading,
spelling, cognitive and linguistic processes implicitly fit the simple view of reading in
that different cognitive and language processes have been found to correlate with higher-
leading comprehension) as opposed to lower-level (word identification) skills. This ESL
research has identified that oral language proficiency (OLP) is positively related to
higher-level comprehension (Geva & Ryan, 1993; Verhoeven, 1990) while cognitive
analytical skills are related to lower-level word identification skills.
It is clear from both research and models of reading and writing development in ENG and
ESL that the processes that are of central importance in the beginning stages of
development are not as important (in the sense that they are performed automatically, so
they do not require as much attention) at later stages of development. It is also clear that
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there are many interdependent processes involved in the development of both reading and
writing skills. This has lead researchers to speculate that the development of reading and
writing skills is related. The automatization of lower-level reading and writing skills,
which are dependent on similar underlying cognitive and language processes, is required
for higher-level skills to develop. Theory and research has evaluated this relation
between reading and writing, primarily at the rudimentary stages of decoding and
spelling. The evaluation of the similarities and differences in the cognitive and language
processes that underlie reading and writing, within the context of stage theories of
literacy development, will enable the interpretation of the relation between reading and
writing.
The Relation between Reading and Writing
There are theoretical models (Ehri, 1986; Frith, 1985) and empirical research (Clarke,
1988; Morris & Pemey, 1984) concerning the relation between reading and spelling
acquisition during the early stages of literacy development. Ehri (1986) theorized that
reading and spelling depend on the same knowledge sources in memory: knowledge
about the alphabetic system, and knowledge about the spelling of specific words.
Similarly, Henderson (1978) theorized that developing word knowledge, composed of
phonemic awareness and orthographic awareness is conceptual in nature and underlies
children’s ability to both read and spell words. Empirically, Henderson found changing
developmental patterns in spelling with an increasing correlation between reading and
spelling in grade-one students as the school year progressed.
While there is considerable research on this relation between selected measures of early
reading and spelling, there is not much research extending beyond that to later stages of
development. There is little research evaluating higher-level reading comprehension as it
relates to higher-level writing (as in ideation, organization of ideas and support for
arguments). Research does exist on the development of story schema (a person’s
conception of what constitutes a story and how a typical story is organized from
beginning to end) but the focus has not been related to the higher-level reading
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comprehension tasks. Panto (1999) tracked reading and writing development
longitudinally from grade 1 to 4, comparing ENG and ESL learners, but did not focus on
the relation between reading and writing measures across grades. She did, however,
develop a scoring system for story schema based on the work of Nodine, Barenbaum, and
Newcomer (1985). According to this scheme, Panto scored children’s ideas in their
understanding and production of stories and found that their story ideation changed with
development. As children gained more exposure to different types of stories, their ability
to use more complex ideation of their own also changed (Stein & Glenn, 1982; Stein &
Policastro, 1984), but not as a result of their language status. There were no significant
differences between ENG and ESL learners.
As indicated earlier, most examinations of the relation between reading and writing
development have involved small numbers of measures collected at a single point in time,
with small samples of children. Some studies have also attempted to measure underlying
cognitive and language processes, but again, most have focused on only one or two
specific measures. The broadest work investigated differences in the relation among
multiple reading and writing measures in grades 2 and 5, but it did not investigate
underlying cognitive and language processes (Shanahan, 1984). Another large-scale
study, by Juel (1988), tracked reading and writing development longitudinally from grade
1 to 4, but did not focus on the relation between the two skills or the underlying cognitive
and language processes. In addition, neither of the above mentioned studies investigated
these issues from a second-language perspective.
Research on the Relation between Reading and Writing
Shanahan (1984) and Shanahan and Lomax (1986,1988) examined 256 students in grade
two and 251 students in grade five. An exploratory analysis of multiple reading and
writing measures was undertaken using canonical correlational analysis with separate
analyses performed for each grade level and for beginning and proficient readers. The
word recognition factors drawn from the reading set were most related to the spelling
variables of the writing set at both grade levels and at the beginning reader level.
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Substantial differences were found across the reading level cohorts, however. For
beginning readers, the relationship was based on word recognition and spelling levels.
Thus, the ability to apply basic phonics rules in decoding and the ability to spell
accurately were closely related. As students became more proficient as readers, the
nature of the relation between reading and writing changed with an increasing importance
of sophisticated vocabulary and story structure to writing achievement, and an increasing
importance of reading comprehension to reading achievement. For proficient readers, the
ability to structure prose in complex ways and use a variety of vocabulary in writing was
related to the prose comprehension factor. In none of the analyses was reading or writing
found to explain more than 45 percent of the variance in the opposite test set. Using
these data, Shanahan and Lomax (1986, 1988) then conducted a series of LISREL path
analyses of alternative models of reading-writing relations. Their analyses indicated that
reading and writing influenced each other. The model that best fit their data was an
interactive one. This model postulates that reading can influence writing development
and that writing can influence reading development.
On the basis of the interactive model of reading and writing and other research,
Fitzgerald and Shanahan (2000) present an introductory developmental view of the
relation between reading and writing. They make a specific theoretical contribution by
outlining the critical knowledge required for each of the stages of reading and writing
development using Chall’s (1996) framework. They cite research into reading-writing
connections that analyzes the shared knowledge and cognitive processes between reading
and writing at the different levels of development. This model begins with the
proposition that reading and writing are constellations of cognitive processes that depend
on knowledge representations at various language levels (phonemic, orthographic,
semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic). Reading and writing are related because they
depend on similar knowledge representations and cognitive processes across
developmental stages. Therefore, it would be expected that reading and writing
developments should parallel each other closely. While Fitzgerald and Shanahan (2000)
describe critical cognitive features that are likely to be important to both reading and
writing proficiency at different stages, their model is most useful as an organizing plan.
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When Chall’s (1983, 1996) model of the stages of reading development and Levine’s
(1998) model of writing development are combined, the understanding of reading and
writing at different developmental stages becomes more fleshed out and applicable.
The Stages of Reading and Writing Development
Chall (1983,1996) proposed broad developmental stages of reading, spanning birth
through adulthood. She contributed significantly to the field of reading research by
showing that reading is not a single skill, and that word recognition, word meaning and
reading comprehension are separate aspects of literacy that need to be developed
differently at the different stages of literacy development. In contrast to reading, few
broad and comprehensive stage theories exist of writing development. Levine’s (1998)
six-stage model of writing development, which parallels Chall’s reading stages, provides
an important contribution to this literature by outlining comprehensive and detailed
expectations regarding the particular components of writing acquired at each stage. In
addition, both models contribute by adding the critical elements of language development
at each stage that influence literacy development.
Chall’s (1983,1996) and Levine’s (1998) models of the stages of reading, writing and
language development will be discussed as they relate specifically to the stages of
development relevant to the current study. Tables 1 to 3 outline the stages of reading,
writing and language development from Initial Literacy, Kindergarten to Grade 2 (Table
1), to the developmental stages of Confirmation and Fluency, Grade 2 to 4 (Table 2) and
Reading and Writing for Learning the New, expected at Grade 4 to 8 (Table 3).
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Table 1. Stage 1 - Beginning Literacy Development - Kindergarten to Grade 2
Reading_____________________________________________________________- phonemic awareness__________________________________________________- mastery of alphabetic principle (phoneme-grapheme correspondences)___________- word-by-word (dysfluent) reading________________________________________
Writing _____________________________- acquisition of letter and number forms _________________ _- beginning appreciation of spelling accuracy and the use of invented spelling______- introduction to the conventions of capitalization, punctuation and sentence structure
Language____________________________________________________________- vocabulary expansion ________________________________________________- use of unsophisticated language in writing _____________ __________ _* Adapted from Chall (1983,1996) and Levine (1998)
Table 2. Stage 2 - Confirmation and Fluency - Grade 2 to 4
Reading_________________________________________________________________- growing sight vocabulary___________________________________________________- increasing speed and efficiency______________________________________________- reading to confirm existing knowledge________________________________________
Writing_________________________________________________________________- rapidly increasing spelling ability____________________________________________- the integration of conventions (punctuation, capitalization) with language
(morphology, syntax, narrative organization)___________________________________
Language________________________________________________________________- linguistic and cognitive contents of materials remain beneath student’s processing ability- written language is less sophisticated than speech_______________________________* Adapted from Chall (1983,1996) and Levine (1998)
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Table 3. Stage 3 - Reading and Writing for Learning the New - Grade 4 to 8
Reading__________________________________________________________________- reading to acquire new knowledge____________________________________________- reading rate and efficiency improve considerably ______ _ _ _ _____ ___________- appearance of new and specialized vocabulary - expanding understanding of morphology
Writing__________________________________________________________________- writing occurs with less expenditure of conscious thought_________________________- the ability to produce larger volumes of writing develops__________________________
Language________________________________________________________________- reading content becomes de-contextualized and the linguistic sophistication of what
students are reading catches up to and surpasses the contents of everyday speech_______- written language approximates speech______________ ___________________________* Adapted from Chall (1983,1996) and Levine (1998)
There is research evaluating the underlying cognitive and language processes related with
reading and writing at early stages of literacy development, but not much at the more
advanced stages of literacy development. In the present research, children in grades 3, 5
and 6 were selected because they would be at stages where enough children would have
already developed the lower-level reading and writing skills. This would allow for the
extension of knowledge about the interrelation between the underlying cognitive and
language processes and reading and writing development by comparing both lower- and
higher-level reading and writing skills within the same sample.
Reading and Writing Development in English at Grade 3
According to Chall (1983, 1996), children in grades 2 and 3 are generally still learning to
read. They read primarily to confirm what they know. The language and ideational
content of what they are reading is not as sophisticated as that encountered in daily
conversation, magazines, movies and television. They are acquiring a rapidly expanding
sight vocabulary by which they can read more efficiently and begin to add greater
linguistic sophistication. Concurrently, they are developing word analysis skills, learning
more advanced rules of phonics, and beginning to recognize the basic structure of
morphology (suffixes, prefixes, compound words, roots and syllables). During this time,
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their language skills are also improving which enables the use of context clues to assist in
decoding and comprehension. The use of context may be particularly more difficult for
ESL learners. The emphasis dining this stage is on fluency and using context. In terms
of writing, according to Levine (1998), children in grades 2 to 4 are learning to gradually
incorporate standards of capitalization, punctuation, syntax, and grammar. Writing is
more often used to state the obvious or relate an experience than to solve a problem or
develop elaborate ideas. During this stage, conversational speech is more sophisticated
and syntactically complex than writing. The language content is likely to be
uncomplicated with the use of simple declarative sentences and few subordinate clauses.
Reading and Writing Development in English at Grades 5/6
Students in grades 4 to 8 are generally at a stage where they read to acquire new
knowledge (Chall, 1983,1996). The linguistic sophistication of what they are reading
catches up and surpasses the content of everyday speech and the media. Textbooks
provide an important source of new knowledge. Comprehension skills play a more
decisive role as reading content becomes de-contextualized, removed from everyday
experience. There is also a demand for the integration of passage reading and memory,
as students must store and recall important facts from what they have read. In addition,
new and specialized vocabulary is introduced during reading. A student now confronts
words in print that are seldom, or never encountered in daily conversation. Students in
grades 4 to 7 write with greater volume (Levine, 1998) and are expected to not only apply
the mechanics of writing with increasing automaticity, but also to review their work and
correct errors in sentence structure, grammar, capitalization, punctuation and spelling.
Language usage becomes increasingly important. Written language starts to approximate
spoken language as language usage becomes increasingly important. Sentences become
longer and contain more sophisticated vocabulary and conceptual content. For the first
time, children use words in writing that they would not likely use in conversation and
writing is no longer used as an end or a process in itself. Instead, it becomes a means of
communicatioa Thus, greater specificity and accuracy in the use of vocabulary and
language gains importance.
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Interpretation of Stage Theories
While these models provide valuable information regarding expected development, it is
important to recognize that these stages are meant to be useful as a heuristic. They are
not reached automatically by the grades indicated, but are an approximate guideline to
when literacy skills are mastered, and outline a developmental sequence in order to
understand individual differences. Times vary, particularly for students who have
difficulty learning languages, whether it be their first language or second. Some students
encounter more difficulties at one stage than another, and some may reach a certain stage
and never pass beyond it.
There is no research explicitly evaluating the stages of literacy development for ESL
students. In the introduction to the second edition of ChalTs Stages o f Reading
Development (1996), Geva indicated, based on the L2 literature, that there is no reason to
believe that ESL students will not reach the same stages of literacy development as ENG
students. She did suggest, however, that the pace at which they arrive at each stage may
differ. In addition, ESL students may have more difficulty accessing context as required
due to insufficient vocabulary development and lexical access.
Fitzgerald and Shanahan (2000) provide persuasive evidence that reading and writing
rely on correlated mental processes, though the nature of the relation is different at
different age or grade levels. The closest correlations between them are best summarized
by the aspects of learning that are particularly important or most variant at a given stage
of development (such as phonological-orthographic development in the early stages of
literacy learning). It is necessary to establish not just from a proficiency standpoint, but
from a normal development standpoint, which cognitive and language processes underlie
these lower- and higher-level reading and writing skills. It is also important to
understand which cognitive and language processes account for the most variance in
lower- and higher-level reading and writing skills at different stages of development for
children who represent ENG and ESL populations.
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Because reading and writing are both developmental processes, what is learned at one
stage of development can be qualitatively different from what is learned at another stage
of development. If the underlying cognitive and language processes that are associated
with reading and writing are the same within, but different across the lower and higher
levels of development, more will be understood about the nature of the relation between
reading and writing across development. The present study offers the opportunity to
examine these issues across the lower and higher levels of reading and writing, while also
evaluating the contribution of various cognitive and language processes correlated with
that development. Furthermore, the study extends that understanding to ESL students.
By evaluating similarities and differences in the amount of variance accounted for by the
underlying cognitive and language processes at the lower and higher levels of reading
and writing for ENG and ESL students, valuable information will be gained for the
assessment of written language difficulties, as well as for initial teaching, and remedial
intervention.
Cognitive and Language Processes Underlying Reading and Writing Development
A vast literature exists on the underlying processes that affect the acquisition of reading
and writing skills in English, and how these processes differ in individuals of varying
abilities (e.g., Ceci, 1984; Denckla & Rudel, 1974; Juel, 1988; Scarborough, 1989;
Stanovich, 1986). Researchers have found that the ability to read and write is dependent
on a number of complex, interrelated processes, such as phonemic awareness, rapid
automatic naming, working memory, cognitive capacity, auditory processing skill and
language ability. The majority of this research has focused on the acquisition of reading
skills with the assumption that if an individual has difficulty learning to read, he/she will
also have difficulty learning to write since reading and writing share so many of the same
underlying processes. However, writing is generally acknowledged to be the more
difficult of the two since it is dependent on recall, while reading is dependent on
recognition memory (Juel, Griffith, & Gough, 1986). Juel (1988) found that some
children who were poor writers had difficulties with both form (e.g., spelling) and
process (e.g., content generation), whereas others had difficulties with just one or the
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other. It can be anticipated that these particular aspects can be a significant problem for
students whose oral language may not be as well developed and understood because both
decoding and comprehension skills are required for writing. The present study offers the
opportunity to evaluate which of the many cognitive and language predictors associated
with reading and writing development, explain the most variance in the lower and higher
levels of reading and writing development for ENG and ESL learners.
Just as there are lower- and higher-level reading and writing skills, it is theorized that
there are lower- and higher-level cognitive and language skills that make a unique
contribution to reading and writing development. The assumption is that lower-level
cognitive and language processing components (e.g., phonemic awareness, rapid
automatic naming, sequencing, working memory, short-term memory) take place prior to
higher-level semantic and syntactic processing (e.g., vocabulary, grammatical judgment)
as the higher-level processes depend on the information supplied by lower-level word
identification processes (Haynes & Carr, 1990). The following subsections describe the
cognitive and language processes that have been found to correlate very highly with
reading and writing achievement.
Cognitive Processes
Phonemic awareness
Research has consistently shown that phonemic awareness is a better predictor of later
reading achievement than IQ or even general language proficiency (Griffith & Olson,
1992). In fact, from a considerable body of research on English literacy, phonological
(i.e., phonemic) awareness has been highlighted as the single most important predictor
(Verhoeven, 2000). It is generally believed that a minimal level of phonemic awareness
is required to learn to read and spell, and that phonological awareness develops further as
literacy abilities develop (Stanovich, 1992). Children who lack phonemic awareness do
not have the tools they need to become successful readers and/or writers. They have not
yet attained adequate awareness of the sound structure of words. They have insufficient
phoneme awareness to allow them to make sense of the alphabetic writing system. Less
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investigation has been done into the relation between phonemic awareness and writing
ability (Griffith, 1991). However, given that the English writing system is essentially
phonemic, if a child has not yet grasped that words are made up of individual phonemes,
he or she will be unable to master the alphabetic code by which phonemes correspond to
graphemes. Thus, just as learning how to read words requires phonological awareness, so
does learning how to spell (Bradley & Bryant, 1983; Juel et al., 1986).
Research on ESL reading development in school children (e.g., Bruck & Genesee, 1995;
Cisero & Royer, 1995; Dorgunglu et al., 1993; Geva, 2000; Geva, 1998; Geva &
Gholamain, 1998; Geva & Wade-Woolley, 1998; Service 1992; Service & Kohonen,
1995) strongly implicates underlying cognitive and language factors such as phonological
processing skills, phonological memory and naming speed. There is evidence that these
same processes are also important contributors for native speakers of other languages,
ranging from Chinese (So & Siegel, 1997) to Norwegian (Hoien, Lundberg, Stanovich &
Bjaalid, 1995) to Hebrew (Ben-Dror, Bentin, & Frost, 1995). Phonemic awareness and
rapid naming tasks contributed unique variance to word recognition performance for both
ENG and ESL students (Geva, Yaghoub-Zadeh, & Schuster, 2000).
Rapid Automatic Naming (RAN)
Rapid automatic naming is another component of phonological processing that
researchers have found to play an important role in the acquisition and development of
written language skills. Denckla and Rudel (1974,1976) provided evidence for a general
naming retrieval deficit. They showed that poor readers were significantly slower than
good readers in naming continuous lists of single digits, letters, colours and objects.
These tests of naming speed were designed to measure how automatically children recode visual information into a phonologically represented name code. Bowers and Swanson
(1991) described the development of automaticity in the use of lower-level reading skills
as crucial to developing skilled reading. Children who suffer from a retrieval deficit
affecting the rate at which they access and retrieve information are clearly at a
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disadvantage. Subsequent studies have replicated these findings while controlling for IQ,
reading experiences and socio-economic status (Meyer, Wood, Hart & Felton, 1998).
Longitudinal studies of early reading development have shown that rapid naming tasks in
the pre-literacy period are a major predictor - along with phonemic awareness skills - of
later reading skill (Meyer et al, 1998; Scarborough, 1989). They also show that rapid
naming tasks contribute variance to reading measures independent of the contribution by
phonemic awareness measures. In fact, the ‘‘double deficit” hypothesis, Bowers (1995)
and Bowers and Wolf (1993), stress somewhat separate phonological and rapid naming
mechanisms. In this two-factor theory, speed of processing is the critical component
tapped in rapid naming tasks, and such tasks contribute specific variance to orthographic
processing skill.
Less research is available on the role of RAN in the acquisition of writing skills in
English. However, just as fluent reading is dependent on the automatization of lower-
level reading processes such as decoding, it can be surmised that written composition is
largely dependent on the automatization of spelling patterns. Until the lower-level
spelling and writing conventions (capitalization, punctuation) are automatic, the attention
of the writer may be diverted from higher-level composing/ideation (Bereiter, 1980;
Scardamalia, 1981).
Research on ESL reading development in school children, as previously indicated,
strongly implicates naming speed in reading development (e.g., Brack & Genesee, 1995;
Cisero & Royer, 1995; Dorgunglu et al., 1993; Geva, 1998; Geva & Gholamain, 1998;
Geva & Wade-Woolley, 1998; Service 1992; Service & Kohonen, 1995). In the ESL
research literature, the potential relation between RAN performance and writing
development is virtually unexplored.
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Memory: Sequencing, Short Term Memory, Working Memory
As a child learns to decode and spell, she or he must segment words into their written
symbols and associate those symbols with specific sounds. To identify words, the child
must hold the sounds in active working memory and then synthesize them, blending them
to form a recognizable word. Poor readers have been found to perform less well than
good readers on a variety of short-term and active working memory tasks, such as the
digit span test (digits forward and backward), and to have difficulty recalling in order,
strings of letters, digits, nonsense syllables or words (Brady & Shankweiler, 1991; Mann
& Brady, 1988). In fact, comprehension problems have also been found in some cases to
be predominantly due to working memory difficulties (Gottardo, Stanovich, & Siegel,
1996; Mann, Cowin, & Schoenheimer, 1989).
Working memory, in particular, has been found to play an important role in second
language word identification and reading comprehension (Geva & Ryan, 1993; Geva &
Wade-Wooley, 1998; Gholamian & Geva, 1999; Harrington & Sawyer, 1992). Geva and
Ryan (1993) found that working memory plays an even more important role in second
language reading than in first language reading. These researchers interpreted that this
finding was due to the heavier demands posed by working memory because of the lack of
automaticity in executing lower-level component processes in second language than first
language reading.
Verbal memory: Memory for Words, Sentences and Stories
Prediction studies have found that children’s memory for sentences and stories are more
strongly related to word identification and reading comprehension skills than are their
scores on digit span, word span and word repetition measures (Scarborough, 1998).
Among these language measures, phonemic awareness, expressive vocabulary, sentence
imitation and story recall were the strongest predictors of skilled word identification and
reading comprehension, whereas speech perception and articulation were weakest. In
contrast, nonverbal visual and motor tasks provided little or no prognostic information.
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Language Processes
Vocabulary
The literature on reading acquisition and vocabulary shows that once decoding skills have
become automatized, insufficient knowledge of word meanings may be a primary cause
of academic failure (Becker, 1977, Biemiller, 2001). Robbins & Ehri (1994) showed that
children with larger vocabularies learned more words from storybook readings than
children with smaller vocabularies. Research has indicated that L2 and economically
disadvantaged students who were good decoders in grades one and two start to show a
decrease in academic achievement soon after (Becker, 1977; Chall, Jacobs & Baldwin,
1990) which may be due to vocabulary deficits. Therefore, while vocabulary in the early
stages of reading may not play a significant role in the acquisition of lower-level reading
skills such as word recognition or word attack skills, it becomes increasingly important in
higher-level reading comprehension. Since vocabulary deficiencies are a primary cause
of academic failure in grades 3 through 12 (Baumann & Kameenui, 1991; Becker, 1977;
Stanovich, 1986), children with less-developed vocabularies will become increasingly
disadvantaged as the focus on learning to read changes to one on reading to learn (Chall,
1983,1996). Vocabulary, as a measure of oral language proficiency, is of particular
significance to the ESL literature. Geva and Petrulis-Wright (1998) found that regardless
of ENG-ESL status, children in grades 1 and 2 who have a more expanded vocabulary
and a more sophisticated command of grammar, are also better decoders and
comprehenders.
Syntax/Grammatical Judgment
Syntax involves word order and grammatical construction. The inability to understand
and use syntax has the potential to interfere with sentence comprehension, even if the
child is adept at decoding. Children who have mastered the basic syntax needed to
understand simple constructions may have more difficulty with the complex
constructions found in more advanced textbooks, especially when the content is
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unfamiliar. Phonological processing and syntactic awareness have been shown to be
significant contributors to the development of reading skills for native English speakers
(Siegel, 1993) and for English-as-a-second-language speakers (Geva & Petrulis-Wright,
1998). In addition, Da Fontoura and Siegel (1995) found that the syntactic skills of
bilingual children bom in Canada still lagged behind the skills of monolingual children in
grades 4, 5 and 6.
Oral Language Proficiency (OLP)
Rice (1989) identified four major dimensions of oral language proficiency (OLP):
phonology (the sound system); semantics (the system of meanings); morphology (the
rales of word formation); and syntax (the rales of sentence formation). In addition, OLP
includes the ability to understand and use speech appropriately in social contexts
(pragmatics). In the L2 research, considerable attention has focused on the contribution
of OLP to reading. This is based on the assumption that because L2 OLP and reading are
both language based processes, achievement in one should contribute to achievement in
the other (e.g., Cummins, 1984). A number of studies have documented the role of oral
language proficiency in L2 reading and supported the existence of a positive relationship
between OLP and reading comprehension (Geva & Ryan, 1993; Verhoeven, 1990).
However, the relationship between OLP and more basic reading skills, such as word
recognition and decoding, has been shown to be perhaps less critical (Durgunoglu, Nagy
& Hancin-Bhatt, 1993; Geva & Siegel, 1999; Geva & Wade-Woolley, 1998; Geva,
Wade-Woolley & Shany, 1997; Gholamain & Geva, 1998). These studies showed that
elementary school children can decode and spell words that may or may not be part of
their vocabulary, even when their OLP is not fully developed. These findings were
surprising as it was generally expected on the basis of theories of language and literacy
development that oral language proficiency was related to reading development.
Cummins’ language interdependence hypothesis (1979) suggests that there is a
significant relationship between children’s skills in acquiring native and foreign
languages. That is, only children who have deficient language and cognitive skills in
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their first language would exhibit similar difficulties in learning a foreign language.
Conversely, children who have strong cognitive and language skills in their first language
are likely to develop similar strengths when learning a foreign language. Cummins
(1980, 1984) also indicated that it takes an ESL student 5 to 7 years to acquire the
necessary cognitive academic language proficiency skills to achieve comparably with
native-speaking first language students. Cummins indicated that most ESL students are
able to communicate in social situations and day-to-day classroom interactions within
one or two years (basic interpersonal communication skills). However, students may
require from five to seven years to develop the ability to understand the academic
language used in textbooks and to express in English the increasingly complex and
abstract vocabulary, syntax and concepts encountered in the higher grades.
Support for Cummins’s language interdependence hypothesis comes from the studies
comparing LI and L2 basic literacy skills among young bilingual or L2 learners (Bruck
& Genesee, 1995; Durgunoglu, Nagy & Hancin, 1993; Geva & Clifton, 1993; Geva,
Wade-Wooley & Shany, 1993; Geva & Siegel, 1991; Gholamain & Geva, 1997). Results
from these studies suggest that parallel LI and L2 reading skills are positively correlated.
The positive and moderate-to-high correlations between parallel LI and L2 word
recognition skills across different languages, with differing orthographies, suggest that
common underlying cognitive and language processes play an important role in
explaining the correlations between parallel LI and L2 reading tasks. They also suggest
that LI and L2 individual differences in the development of these skills can be predicted
to some extent on the basis of the specific underlying cognitive and language abilities.
The cognitive and language processing skills identified in these studies (i.e., phonological
processing, working memory, orthographic knowledge and RAN, or speed of lexical
access) appear to play a similar role in LI and L2 reading skills acquisition.
Chiappe and Siegel (1999) also found evidence to support Cummins’s language
interdependence hypothesis in cross-linguistic phonological transfer. For both ENG and
ESL children in their sample, reading difficulties appeared to be strongly linked with
impaired phonological processing. Thus, phonological processing has been shown to
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play a critical role in reading acquisition for both first and second language speakers.
Other than the finding that the ESL learners had poorer grammatical sensitivity and lower
scores on an oral cloze task, the profiles of the ESL children were very similar to those of
native English speakers. Reading difficulties in English occurred with approximately the
same frequency for native and non-native speakers of English. These findings are
consistent with the findings of DaFontoura and Siegel (1995). Although the Portuguese-
English bilingual children in their study had no difficulties on word reading tasks, their
oral cloze scores were significantly lower than those of English monolingual children.
Although it would be hoped that this difference would diminish in time, DaFontoura and
Siegel (1995) found that the syntactic skills of these children, bom in Canada, still lagged
behind the skills of English monolingual children in grades 4, 5, and 6. The present study
will compare similarities and differences in the development of ENG and ESL children’s
syntactic skills, and also assess the contribution that judgement of syntax makes, as part
of an oral language proficiency composite, to higher-level reading and writing skills.
Similarities and Differences between ENG and ESL students in Reading, Writing
Cognitive and Language Development
Evidence is accumulating that while there are few differences in reading, writing, or even
cognitive measures between ENG and ESL students (Panto, 1999), there are significant
differences in language processes (e.g., receptive vocabulary and grammatical judgment),
favoring ENG students, which take longer to disappear (DaFontoura & Siegel, 1995;
Geva, 1998; Geva & Pefrulis-Wright, 1998). These findings seem to support Cummins’s
5-to-7-year timeline for ESL students to achieve comparable language proficiency (e.g.,
vocabulary and syntax knowledge) with native speakers. An apparent inconsistency is
found in that the ESL research does document that ESL students have achieved
comparable performances on some of the higher-level academic tasks (reading
comprehension and written language), although at earlier stages of development (Geva &
Petrulis-Wright, 1998; Panto, 1999).
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Panto (1999) compared the spelling and higher-level writing ability of ENG and ESL
students. She found that ENG and ESL students performed similarly on a variety of
spelling and writing measures, and that there were no differences in the patterns of
growth in spelling and writing development in these children across grades 1 to 4, as well
as no significant differences between ENG and ESL students in their higher-level story
schemas.
Geva (1998) compared ENG and ESL students’ performance on reading, writing,
cognitive and language measures in grades 1 and 2. Measures of word recognition,
spelling, phonemic awareness, rapid naming, working memory, receptive and expressive
vocabulary, grammatical judgment and listening comprehension were collected. None of
the children categorized as ESL in this study had been in an English-speaking
environment for more than 2 years. Literacy instruction in the primary grades in the
school setting in which these data were collected involved a balanced combination of
activities and instructional approaches (Willows, 1996) designed to enhance children’s
general language development, literacy skills and phonemic awareness and alphabetic
coding (Lloyd, 1983). The results on the reading and writing tasks did not support an
expected ENG advantage. A significant difference was not found on word recognition
between ENG and ESL students. Although a significant difference was found on spelling,
to the advantage of ENG students, it was noted that the group differences were not that
striking. Results comparing the cognitive and language skills of ENG and ESL students
indicated that on measures of phonological processing and letter naming speed (RAN),
the two groups did not differ significantly. In contrast, ENG children showed an
advantage on working memory measures for verbal information and for numbers, and on
all of the oral language proficiency measures (receptive vocabulary, expressive
vocabulary, grammatical judgment and listening comprehension).
A series of multiple regressions was then undertaken to examine the role of the
underlying cognitive and language processes in accounting for variance in the reading
and listening skills in the ENG and ESL groups. The lower-level phonemic awareness
and RAN (letter naming speed) tasks were found to be the only significant predictors of
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the lower-level word attack, word recognition and spelling skills in each of the language
groups. Measures of oral language proficiency played a significant role in accounting for
higher-level listening comprehension. Measures of higher-level reading comprehension
and written composition were not collected in this study. In addition, the children in this
study were in grades 1 and 2, during the earlier stage of beginning literacy development.
The fact that ESL students had less developed English vocabulary knowledge and less
command of English syntax at this stage was not surprising. What was less obvious was
the fact that while proficiency on these oral language measures played a significant role
in explaining higher-level listening comprehension, it was less crucial in the development
of lower-level L2 word recognition skills.
Oral Language Proficiency as it relates to differences between ENG and ESL
Petrulis-Wright (1998) found that LI and L2 children differed in English OLP, but not on
reading tasks in grades 1 and 2. She also found that OLP played a greater role in
predicting reading comprehension than in predicting basic reading skills, and that it
contributed significantly to the explained variance of L2 basic reading skills, but not to
LI. She concluded that LI children are utilizing analytical skills, while L2 children are
utilizing OLP skills to achieve the same performance. Three to four percent of the
variance of basic reading skills was accounted for by the interaction between language
status, and vocabulary and grammatical judgment. That is, the relationship between these
two language measures and basic reading skills differed depending on whether the
children spoke English as a first or second language. The authors hypothesized that the
significant interaction of LI -L2 status with OLP may be due to the fact that cognitive-
language resources, such as phonological processing skills and rapid automatic naming
speed, of the L2 speakers may be more fully taxed. They are forced to use these resources to develop various aspects o f spoken language concurrently, in addition to
developing reading skills. In summary, although some studies indicate that differences
may be found between LI and L2 children in terms of their phonological processing
profiles, these differences do not appear to be reflected in their ability to learn basic
reading and spelling skills.
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In a review of the L2 literature, Geva (1998) concluded that a complex interaction of
processes is involved in children’s L2 reading development at both the lower and higher
levels of development. Furthermore, Nassaji and Geva (1999) found that L2 reading
comprehension is an interactive multivariate process in which the underlying cognitive
and language processes are highly intercorrelated. Each of the component processes
contributed to each other and to reading comprehension overall.
The question that arises is what generalizations and conclusions can be made from
comparisons between students assessed in English as their first language (ENG) and
students assessed in English as their second language (ESL)? Results from the ENG
research literature indicate that if ESL students have adequate exposure and instruction in
their second language, strong positive correlations should be expected between parallel
ENG and ESL measures of various component reading skills (e.g., accurate and fast word
recognition; the ability to decode unfamiliar words; efficient text reading efficiency; and
reading comprehension). This finding informs expectations regarding the pace of ESL
students’ reading development. However, less research is available to inform decision
making adequately regarding the expected pace of writing development as compared with
first language speakers (ENG). Furthermore, the research on oral language development
indicates that there may be delays beyond what would be expected given the positive
correlations found between LI and L2 lower- and higher-level reading skills. The present
study offers the opportunity to compare reading, writing and oral language development
for both ENG and ESL students at more advanced stages of reading and writing
development when it would be expected that lower-level skills would be consolidated
(e.g., automatic).
Goals of the Present Study
Previous studies have compared reading, writing, cognitive and language skills for ENG
and ESL students in a comparable multilingual population within Metropolitan Toronto
(Geva, 1998; Panto, 1999; Petrulis-Wright, 1998). The results of those studies suggest
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comparable literacy skills at grades one and two for ENG and ESL students, with
superior OLP skills for ENG students (Geva, 1998; Petrulis-Wright, 1998) and
comparable spelling and writing skills for grades one to four ENG and ESL students
(Panto, 1999).
Evidence from the reading acquisition literature on second languages has indicated that
OLP is not related to beginning word identification skills (Geva & Petrulis-Wright, 1999)
but it is documented to be related to later comprehension tasks (Clifton & Geva, 1994;
Geva & Ryan, 1993; Verhoeven, 1990). The present study offers the opportunity to
examine the cognitive and language processes that are associated with lower- and higher-
level reading (decoding and reading comprehension) and writing (spelling and story
construction) skills at Grades 3, 5 and 6 within the same sample. It also offers the
opportunity to compare the skills and abilities of ENG and ESL students.
The present study extends current knowledge in several areas. It contributes to the
literature on the relation between lower- and higher-level reading (decoding; reading
comprehension) and writing (spelling; story construction). It contributes to the ESL
literature by investigating lower and higher levels of reading and writing development at
the more advanced stages of literacy development in Grades 3, 5 and 6. It also
investigates which of the many underlying cognitive and language processes associated
with reading and writing achievement explain the most variance for lower and higher
levels of reading and writing skills for both ENG and ESL students. Thus, the following
research questions will be asked.
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Research Questions:
1. Do ENG and ESL students in grades 3 and 5/6 differ significantly in their
performance on a) reading, b) writing, c) cognitive, and d) language measures?
2. What is the relation between lower-level and higher-level reading and writing
skills across Grade (3, 5/6) and Language (ENG/ESL)?
3. Which cognitive and language composites (Cognitive Ability and OLP) explain
the most variance in the lower (word attack and spelling) and higher levels
(reading comprehension and story construction) of reading and writing
development?
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CHAPTER TWO: METHOD
In order to address these research questions, two age/grade groups of ENG and ESL
children (grades 3 and 5/6), representing an “earlier” and “later” stage of literacy
development were assessed on a number of reading and writing measures as well as a
number of cognitive and language processing measures.1
Description of Participants and Measures
The present study was part of a large-scale longitudinal project examining the
development of early literacy skills. As a sub-set of this larger investigation, it made use
of data collected in the fall of 1999, and added measures specific to the current research
questions.
Participants
The participants in the present study were children drawn from eighteen public schools in
a lower-middle-class suburb of a large multi-ethnic metropolitan center in Canada. Five
years earlier, these children had been in schools that had been part of a “balanced
literacy” research project in which teachers and school administrators had participated in
professional development (Lloyd, 1993; Willows, 1996).2
At the time of the completion of the present study (1999), the children were in the
beginning of the fall term of their respective grades (3, 5 and 6). Of the 289 children
participating in the study, 110 (34.6 %) were classified as English as a Second Language
(ESL). Children were classified as ESL if they spoke a language other than English at
home and if a language other than English was their first language. As outlined in Table
1 On the average, children in grade 3 and 5/6 would be expected, to be functioning in reading/writing stages 2 and 3, respectively.2 Especially given the context between ENG and ESL, it would be important to ensure that groups were equated on nonverbal intelligence. In the research proposal, two nonverbal measures had been included, but the school board would not approve their use. As an alternative, cognitive measures, such as short-term and working memory, with extremely little language demands, were used.
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4, the main languages spoken by the ESL learners were Punjabi, Chinese, Arabic, Urdu
and Vietnamese. Other languages groups that were represented included Tamil,
Portuguese, Gujaerati, Patois, Spanish, Italian, German, Korean, Latvian, and French.
Table 4 - Languages Represented in the ESL group
Home Language # of Students Home Language # of Students
Punjabi 51 Gujaerati 2
Chinese 16 Patois 2
Arabic 9 Spanish 1
Urdu 9 Italian 1
Vietnamese 7 German 1
Tamil 5 Latvian 1
Portuguese 4 French 1
In order to compare two samples of children - representative of earlier and later stages of
literacy functioning - two age/grade groups were formed, grade 3 and grade 5/6. On the
average, grade 3 children (assessed near the beginning of the school year) would have
been expected to be functioning in reading and writing Stage 2, in which the lower-level
skills (decoding and spelling) are not yet automatized, whereas grade 5/6 children (also
assessed near the beginning of the school year) would have been expected to be
functioning in reading and writing Stage 3 in which the higher-level skills (reading•3
comprehension and written composition) play a more prominent role. Table 5 presents a
summary of the participant characteristics.
3 Combining data from these later grades made sense because, according to both Chall’s (1996) and Levine’s (1998) stages o f reading and writing development, students in grades 5 and 6 would function similarly. Combining data from grades 5 and 6 also increased the number of ESL students in the “later” literacy stage group. Appendix A provides evidence of the comparability of the 5 and 6 groups on reading, writing, cognitive and language processing measures.
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Table 5. Participant Characteristics - Fall 1999
Grade 3 Grade 5/6
(n= 118) (n=171)
ENG ESL ENG ESL
Language n = 56 n = 62 n = 123 n = 48
Mean Age 8.45 years 8.33 years 10.76 years 10.95 years
SD Age 3.30 months 3.38 months 6.70 months 6.62 months
Measures
Table 6 provides a list of the measures collected for children in grades 3 and 5/6.
Overall, there were 24 measures (4 reading, 7 writing, 8 cognitive, and 4 language). Four
standardized reading tests provided measures of word attack, word recognition, fluency
and reading comprehension. The seven writing measures were obtained from two
sources, a standardized test of spelling provided one measure and a writing sample taken
in response to a picture prompt provided six measures of components reflecting different
aspects of writing. These included contextual conventions, contextual language, story
construction and understanding of story schema, as well as number of words written
(productivity) and the number of spelling errors (spelling errors). The eight cognitive
processing measures included measures of phonemic awareness, rapid automatic naming,
short-term auditory memory, working memory, sequencing, as well as memory for
words, sentences and stories. The four language processing measures included measures
of receptive vocabulary, expressive vocabulary, grammatical judgment and listening
comprehension. On the basis of a principal components analysis, an oral language
proficiency (OLP) composite score was created, combining sentence memory from the
cognitive battery with the four language measures.
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Table 6. Test Measures
Type Name Skill
Reading WRMT-R Word Attack * Pseudoword decoding
WRAT-III Reading * Word recognition
Biemiller Test of Reading Processes Reading fluency (time)
Gates-MacGinitie * Reading comprehension
Writing WRAT-III Spelling *
TOWL-III Writing Sample
Spelling
Contextual Conventions (TOWL-III) * Capitalization/punctuation
Contextual Language (TOWL-III) * Sentence structure/grammar
Story Construction (TOWL-III) * Plot/setting/character/theme
Productivity Number of words written
Spelling errors Number of spelling errors
Story Schema (Nodine, 1985) Elements of story structure
Cognitive Test of Auditory Analysis Skills (TAAS) Phonemic awareness
RAN (CELF-III) * Rapid Automatic Naming
Sequences (CMS) * Sequencing
Numbers Forward (CMS) * Short-term memory
Numbers Backward (CMS) * Working memory
Verbal Learning (WRAML) * Memory for words
Sentence Memory (WRAML) * Memory for sentences
Story Memory (WRAML) * Memory for stories
Language PPVT-III * Receptive vocabulary
EVT* Expressive vocabulary
Formulated Sentences (CELF-III) * Grammatical judgment/syntax
Durrell Analy sis of Reading Difficulty Listening comprehension
* Asterisks denote standardized tests
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Reading Measures
Of the 4 reading measures, three are representative of lower-level reading skills: word
attack, word recognition and reading time. The fourth measure is representative of
higher-level reading skill: reading comprehension. Each of these measures is discussed
in turn.
Lower-level reading skills
Pseudoword Decoding. The Word Attack subtest of the Woodcock Johnson Reading
Mastery Test (WJRMT) was used to measure decoding skills. The child is asked to read
pronounceable pseudowords, or non-words (e.g., “ift”, “mancingful”) that can be
decoded by using English grapheme-phoneme conversion rules. The test consists of 45
items, and is terminated when the child makes six consecutive errors.
Word Recognition. The word recognition subtest of the Wide Range Achievement Test -
Third Edition (WRAT-3) (Jastek & Wilkinson, 1995) was used to measure context free
word recognition. The child is asked to read a list of 42 isolated words. The list starts
with simple words (e.g., “in”, “cat”, “book”) and progresses to more difficult words (e.g.,
“stretch”, “horizon”, and “itinerary”). The test is terminated when a child reads
incorrectly ten consecutive words. The maximum score attainable on this test is 57.
Reading Speed. The Biemiller Test of Reading Processes is a timed reading task that
assesses the student’s ability to use context to facilitate word identification. The student
is asked to read the passage as quickly as they can. The maximum score is the time (in
seconds) that it takes for the student to read the passage.
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Higher-level reading skill
Reading Comprehension. The Gates MacGinitie Reading Comprehension Test was
administered to assess reading comprehension. The child is instructed to pay close
attention to the stories as he/she is reading, because he/she will be asked questions about
the story. The child is not provided with any assistance while reading. When the child
has completed reading the passage, they must read and answer the questions that follow
the story. It is important to note that two different test booklets were used. The grade 5
and 6 level booklet had more difficult processing and language demands than at the grade
3 level booklet. The maximum score for both the grade 3 and the grade 5/6 booklets is
48.
Writing Measures
Two writing measures were collected. The first measure, WRAT spelling, was chosen as
a representative lower-level writing skill. The second measure, a writing sample taken
lfom the TOWL-III, was chosen specifically to look at the different components of
writing in a standardized fashion. However, given the biases of standardized norms with
an ESL population, raw scores were used. There are scoring measures that represent
lower level skills, such as the conventions of writing (punctuation and capitalization), the
language of writing (sentence structure and grammar), productivity (number of words),
and number of spelling errors. Scoring measures representing higher-level skills include
story construction (the cognitive component of what a story is made of) which involves
understanding the importance of a beginning, middle, and end to a story structure as well
as the presence of conflict, and the resolution of that conflict for plot development. In
addition, a measure called story schema, looks specifically at how the student is able to
represent their understanding of a story. Each of these scoring measures is discussed in
turn.
Writing Sample. A standardized writing sample was collected using the Test of Written
Language - Third Edition (TOWL-III). The children were given 45 minutes to write a
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story that went with the visual prompt. According to instructions, stories were only
scored if they contained more than 40 words. The writing sample was then scored
according to the last three subtests (the first two represent lower level skills, and the last
represents higher level skill) of the TOWL-III. Descriptions follow:
Lower-level writing skills
Spelling. The spelling subtest of the Wide Range Achievement Test - Third Edition
(WRAT-3) (Jastek & Wilkinson, 1995) was used to measure context free spelling. The
child is asked to spell a list of 42 isolated words. The list starts with simple words (e.g.,
“in”, “cat”, “book”) and progresses to more difficult words (e.g., “stretch”, “horizon”,
and “itinerary”). The test is terminated when a child spells incorrectly ten consecutive
words. The maximum score on this test is 55.
Contextual conventions. This subtest of the TOWL-III measures mastery of the arbitrary
conventions of written language: punctuation, spelling and capitalization. A score is
assigned out of 18.
Contextual language. This subtest measures the use of language in writing, paying
particular attention to sentence structure, grammar and vocabulary. A score is assigned
out of 29.
Higher-level writing skills
Story construction. This subtest evaluates the student’s use of prose, action, sequencing
and theme. A score is assigned out of 21. It measures the cognitive components of story
writing in that the student’s understanding of what constitutes a story (beginning, middle,
end, conflict and resolution of conflict) is assessed.
Three unstandardized measures supplemented the previously reported standardized
measures from the TOWL-III. A simple word count was taken as a measure of
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Productivity - the number of words written in a 45 minute time period. In addition, a
simple count of the number of spelling errors that occurred within the writing sample was
taken as a measure of the students’ spelling errors made within the context of their
writing. The third measure was taken from research on children’s development of a story
schema.
Story schema. This measure assessed children’s understanding of the requirements of a
story. To study the development of children’s writing, researchers have developed
category systems to analyze and classify children’s written compositions. The four
categories used as a measure of story schema in this study are based on the work of
Nodine et al. (1985) whose four categories used to classify story development are
expressive, descriptive, story-like and story. Inter-rater reliability was .87 for
composition classification. Children’s writing samples were scored on the basis of which
category best described their stories as follows:
Expressive: A writing sample was judged to be expressive if it did not contain a story line or narrative. Both this category and the next one, descriptive writing, lack a story line, but unlike descriptive writing, the expressive writing does not relate to the story in any manner.
Descriptive: A writing sample was judged to be descriptive if it described a picture, person, place or thing, but failed to integrate them into a story. There was no evidence of story schema.
Story-Like: A writing sample was judged to be “story-like” if it identified a setting but failed to describe a complication or resolution.
Story: This category was used to describe writing samples that contained a setting, a conflict, and a resolution that related to one another. A story schema was evident.
Cognitive Processing Measures
Eight processing measures were collected on the basis of the research findings. First they
were evaluated separately as to whether there were significant differences between the
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first language and second language speakers on each of these measures. Then, they were
put into a factor analysis to see how they loaded into factors, in an attempt to simplify the
regression analyses. These measures loaded onto two factors: a short-term auditory
memory factor (consisting solely of the numbers forward subtest) and a cognitive ability
factor which included the TAAS (Rosner), RAN, working memory and sequencing
measures. The factor analysis follows in the Results section.
Test of auditory analysis skills (TAAS; Rosner & Simon. 197IT The TAAS taps into a
child’s syllable and phoneme awareness. The first few items require the segmentation of
words into syllables, but the task becomes increasingly difficult as participants are asked
to perform more complex phoneme manipulations including the deletion of initial,
medial, and final sounds and the splitting of consonant blends. There were two trial
demonstration words, followed by test items. The child was asked to repeat a word
spoken by the examiner, and then repeat it again but without saying a particular syllable
or phoneme (e.g., “ Say ‘dog’. Now say it again without the /d/”). Testing was
discontinued after two consecutive errors and the child’s score was recorded as the item
number prior to the two errors (consistent with the TAAS instructions). The child’s score
was the number of items he/she got correct ranging from 0 to 22. The extended version
of the TAAS, items 14 to 22, was used to provide items that would challenge the students
in grades 5 and 6. This task has been shown to have a moderate to high reliability
(a=.78) using Cronbach’s alpha (Yopp, 1988).
Rapid automatized naming (RAN). Tests of rapid automatic naming speed are designed
to measure how automatically children recode visual information into a phonologically
represented name code. The Rapid Automatic Naming task (RAN) task used in this
study recorded how rapidly and accurately children identified a series of geometric
shapes presented in a series of 10 in 5 rows. This task was taken from the Clinical
Evaluation of Language Fundamentals - Third Edition (CELF-III). The maximum score
on this test is how many seconds it takes the child to name the objects.
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Sequencing. The Sequences subtest of the Children’s Memory Scale (CMS) was
administered as a measure of sequencing and working memory because, like the memory
for numbers backwards subtest, the child was required to hold information in his or her
memory and manipulate it before recalling it. However, this subtest differs in that it also
requires the child to recall sequences of information, from well-learned sequences such as
the alphabet, to sequences that required the child to add numbers by 3’s. The maximum
score on this test was 84.
Short-term auditory memory. The Memory for Numbers Forwards subtest of the
Children’s Memory Scale (CMS) was administered as a measure of short-term auditory
memory. Each child was asked to remember a series of numbers of increasing length.
The maximum score on this test was 16.
Working memory. The Memory for Numbers Backwards subtest of the Children’s
Memory Scale (CMS) was administered as a measure of working memory. Each child
was required to remember a series of numbers of increasing length, manipulate them in
memory and recall them in a backward order.
Memory for words. The Verbal Learning subtest of the Wide Range Assessment of
Memory and Learning (WRAML) was administered as a measure of memory for words.
Each child was required to recall a long list of words over four presentations with the
opportunity to learn the words with repetition. For children 8 years and younger (grade
3), the maximum score is 52, and for children 9 years and up (grade 5/6), the maximum
score is 64.
Memory for sentences. The Sentence Memory subtest of the WRAML was administered
as a measure o f memory for sentences. Each child was required to recall a number o f
sentences of increasing length and complexity. Memory for sentences has been found to
distinguish between LI and L2 learners because of the heavy language/syntax demands
inherent in the task. This measure was collected as part of the Cognitive battery, but as
an individual subtest, it loaded heavily on the Oral Language Proficiency factor and was
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therefore included in the composite. The maximum score on this subtest is 40 regardless
of age.
Memory for stories. The Story Memory subtest of the WRAML was administered as a
measure of memory for stories. Each child was required to recall as many details in two
stories that they were able to. This subtest assessed children’s ability to recall verbal
detail with the benefit of context. The maximum score for children 8 years and younger
(grade 3) is 45, and the maximum score for children 9 years and up (grade 5/6) is 51.
Language Measures
Four language measures were collected. Their contribution was assessed separately as
well as in an Oral Language Proficiency (OLP) composite. This composite was
constructed on the basis of a principal components analysis on which these five items
loaded heavily.
Receptive vocabulary. The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test - Third Edition (PPVT-III)
is a measure of receptive vocabulary. Each child was shown four pictures on a page (e.g.,
“dog”, “brush”, “chair”, “car”) and was then asked to point to one item (e.g., “can you
point to the picture of a chair?”). The test consists of 204 words of increasing difficulty.
The test is discontinued when the child responds incorrectly to eight items in a block of
twelve questions. The maximum score on this test is 204.
Expressive vocabulary. The Expressive Vocabulary Test (EVT) is a measure of
expressive vocabulary. Each child was shown a picture (e.g., “bus”) and was then asked,
“Can you tell me what this is a picture of ”? The test consists of 190 items of increasing
difficulty. The test is discontinued when the child responds incorrectly to 5 consecutive
items.
Syntax/grammatical judgment. The Formulated Sentences subtest of the CELF-III was
administered as a measure of syntax and grammatical judgment. Many studies have
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shown that this skill discriminates between LI and L2 learners. The maximum score on
this test is 22.
Listening comprehension. The Durrell Analysis of Reading Difficulty (Durrell, 1970)
assesses listening comprehension. The test is comprised of three short stories (about a
paragraph in length) that are read aloud to the child. Each child was instructed to pay
attention while the researcher read the story and then was asked questions about the story.
Following each story the child was asked to retell the story. This was followed by 5
questions - 4 factual questions and one requiring inference. The maximum score on this
test is 6 (corresponding to attributed grade level).
The Sentence Memory subtest of the WRAML, as described in the Cognitive Measures
section, was administered as a measure of memory for sentences. As previously
mentioned, memory for sentences has been found to distinguish between LI and L2
learners because of the heavy language/syntax demands inherent in the task. Although
this measure was collected as part of the Cognitive battery, it loaded heavily on the Oral
Language Proficiency composite.
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Procedures
As indicated earlier, this research comprised a sub-study within the context of a larger
project, assessing the development of literacy skills. As part of the larger project,
children were tested on a variety of standardized reading and writing measures. As part
of the current study, children were also assessed on a variety of cognitive and language
processing measures. With the exception of the reading comprehension task and the
writing sample that were administered within the class setting, the children were seen
individually, in a quiet setting, by members of the research team (graduate students in
psychology and education). The walls of all testing rooms were purposely bare, without
letters, words or writing samples on display that might interfere with the accuracy of the
testing results.
To avoid bias associated with using norms standardized on LI populations, standardized
test (e.g., WRAT-III, word recognition) raw scores were not converted to percentiles or
standard scores. Instead, all analyses for both standardized and informal tasks were
based on raw scores.
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CHAPTER THREE: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Overview
The results are presented in three major parts corresponding to the three main research
questions. The first part examines whether any significant differences exist between
ENG and ESL students on the reading and writing academic measures, and the cognitive
and language processing measures. The second part examines the relation between
lower- and higher-level reading and writing measures by Grade (3, 5/6) and by Language
(ENG/ESL). The third part examines how much variance in the lower- and higher-level
reading and writing skills is accounted for by the underlying cognitive and language
processes.
Variable Screening
As previously mentioned, analyses were performed on raw scores (i.e., standardized test
raw scores were not converted to percentiles or standard scores) to avoid problems
associated with using norms standardized on English populations for ESL children. Prior
to analysis, all variables were examined for accuracy of data entry, missing values,
normalcy of distributions and other assumptions of univariate and multivariate analyses
(using SPSS 9.0). When variables were found to possibly violate the normality
assumption, two sets of analyses were performed. Analyses were run on both
transformed (via square root and logarithmic transformations which brought the
distributions within acceptable norms) and non-transformed variables. Differences in the
results of these analyses were negligible, with no change in the level of significance.
Therefore, analyses using non-transformed variables will be discussed, since
interpretation o f these results is more meaningful.
Regression analyses, following the recommendation of Cohen and Cohen (1983) (see
also Aiken & West, 1991; Holbeck, 1997), involved the use of z scores. The independent
variables used in the interaction terms within the multiple sequential regression (i.e.,
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Language X OLP) needed to be centered from the mean prior to their inclusion in the
regression analyses. The use of z scores addresses the potential problem of
multicollinearity that could result from this inclusion of the independent variables and
their interaction terms in the regression analyses.
Similarities and differences in ENG and ESL students on reading, writing, cognitive
and language measures
The first of the four major questions concerned similarities and differences in the skills
and abilities of ENG and ESL students. This section presents the results addressing this
first question. The question is stated as follows:
1. Do ENG and ESL students in grades 3 and 5/6 differ significantly in their
performance on a) reading, b) writing, c) cognitive, and d) language measures?
Preliminary analyses were first performed to determine whether it would be legitimate to
combine the results from grades 5 and 6 , since children in both grades would,
theoretically, represent the same stage of literacy development in the reading and writing
stages frameworks used to guide the research. 2 x 2 factorial ANCOVAs were conducted
with 2 levels of Grade (5, 6 ) and 2 levels of Language (ENG, ESL) to determine the
similarities in the patterns of results for grades 5 and 6 . Based on these analyses the
decision was made to combine grades 5 and 6 . The results for the combined grade 5/6
group were in the same direction as those for the grade 5 and 6 groups separately, and
combining the two grades increased the sample size for the ESL group. Table A -1 in
Appendix A summarizes the means, standard deviations, maximum scores, F, p and f
values for all of the measures in grades 5 and 6 by Language (ENG and ESL).
ANCOVAs were undertaken to ensure that age was not contributing to the pattern of
results, given the wide age range in the combined grade 5/6 group. The primary analyses
did not control for chronological age because the purpose of the research was to evaluate
development according to stage theory, and the contribution of chronological age was
established in the preliminary analyses.
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The primary analyses addressing the first main research question involved 2 X 2 factorial
ANOVAs. These were performed for each measure by Grade (3, 5/6) and by Language
(ENG/ESL) in order to determine whether significant differences existed on the reading,
writing, cognitive and language measures of ENG and ESL students.4 The ANOVAs
were followed by planned comparisons between Grade (3, 5/6) to see where the
significant differences existed. Table 7 summarizes the means, standard deviations,
maximum scores, F,p and rj2 (i.e., effect size) values for all of the measures (by Grade
and Language) and indicates comparisons on which the performance of the ENG and
ESL groups differed significantly.
Eta square {ij2) effect sizes were calculated as an alternative to d. Eta square ranges in
value from 0 to 1, as d values do. An ij2 value of 0 indicates that there are no differences
in the mean scores among groups. A value of 1 indicates that there are differences
between at least two of the means on the dependent variable and that there are no
differences on the dependent variable scores within each of the groups (i.e., perfect
replication). In general, tj2 is interpreted as the proportion of variance of the dependent
variable that is related to the factor. Traditionally, rj2 values of .01, .06, and .14 represent
small, medium and large effect sizes, respectively.
The findings on the reading, writing, cognitive and language measures will be discussed
in order.
4 This procedure was chosen instead of MANOVAs because there were multiple Reading, Writing, Cognitive and Language measures that were clearly correlated and not independent. When the Dependent Variables are correlated, they measure the same facets of behavior in slightly different ways. Since a MANOVA creates a composite DV that maximizes group differences, not much would be gained by the inclusion of several measures of the same thing. Even moderately correlated Dependent Variables diminish the power of the MANOVA (Tabachnik & Fidell, 2001).
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Reading Measures
Significant main effects of Grade were found for Word Attack, F (4, 288) = 15.89,/? <
.001, WRAT Reading, F (4,288) = 86.67,/? < .001, and for Reading Time, F (4,284) =
7.53,/? < .0 1 , indicating that the scores on these different reading measures increased
with age. Thus, the grade 5/6’s read faster than the grade 3’s and were more fluent and
automatized. Significant main effects of Grade were not found for Reading
Comprehension.5
Surprisingly, there were no significant main effects of Language (ENG, ESL), nor were
there any significant interactions with Language. This means that on both lower-level
(word decoding, word recognition, reading time) and higher-level (reading
comprehension) reading tasks, there were no significant differences between the ENG
and ESL students. One might have expected differences between the ENG and ESL
students in the time it took them to read graded passages and on the higher-level reading
comprehension task with its more complex language demands. This was not the case.
5 The comparison of Grade on the reading comprehension task is meaningless because different tests were involved at grade 3 and 5/6. The actual raw scores are very similar between the grade 3 and 5/6 tests because the tests are designed to be appropriately difficult for the age group. The test was the same for grade 5 and 6.
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Table 7.
Group Comparisons on Reading, Writing, Cognitive and Language Processing Measures (based on raw scores)
GRADE3
GRADES5/6
ENG ESL F P< ENG ESL F P K
n = 56 n = 57 n= 123 n = 48Reading Measures
Word Attack Maximum score = 45
X = 26.71 S.D.= 8.21
X = 27.25 S.D. = 9.62
.386 n/s .003 X = 30.50 S.D. = 7.67
X = 31.65 S.D. = 7.40
.632 n/s .004
WRAT Word Recognition Maximum score = 57
X = 31.51S.D. = 3.98
X = 31.46 S.D. = 4.61
.037 n/s .0 0 0 X = 36.60 S.D. = 4.98
X = 37.21 S.D. = 4.30
.161 n/s .0 0 1
Reading Comprehension Maximum score = 48
X = 28.21 S.D. = 9.32
X = 26.46 S.D. = 10.17
.422 n/s .004 X = 27.46 S.D. = 9.39
X = 25.56 S.D. = 8.06
2.24 n/s .013
Reading Time (seconds) X = 51.60 S.D. = 19.93
X = 56.65 S.D. = 33.08
.414 n/s .004 X = 48.63 S.D. = 26.43
X = 44.00 S.D. = 14.03
.419 n/s .003
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GRADE3
GRADES5/6
ENG ESL F P< r ENG ESL F P<
Writing Measures
WRATSpellingMaximum score = 55
X = 25.57 S.D. = 3.03
X = 26.72 S.D. = 4.18
3.69 p=. 06 .03 X = 31.45 S.D. = 5.64
X = 33.60 S.D. = 4.56
3.88 .05 .0 2
TOWL-III Spelling Errors (#) X = 10.45 S.D. = 5.74
X = 9.26 S.D. = 7.51
.806 n/s .0 0 0 X = 9.12 S.D. = 7.26
X = 6.87 S.D. = 4.29
3.19 p=. 07 .0 2
TOWL-IIIContextual Conventions Maximum score = 18
X = 2.64 S.D. = 2.48
X = 3.46 S.D. = 2.62
3.31 p=. 07 .029 X = 4.88 S.D. = 3.20
X = 5.12 S.D. = 2.98
.0 1 0 n/s .0 0 0
TOWL-IIIContextual Language Maximum score = 29
X = 9.73 S.D. = 3.16
X = 9.95 S.D. = 3.41
.084 n/s .0 0 1 X = 13.11 S.D. = 4.04
X = 13.14 S.D. = 3.47
.065 n/s .0 0 0
TOWL-III Story Construction Maximum score = 21
X = 10.71 S.D. = 3.20
X = 10.45 S.D. = 3.55
.0 0 2 n/s .0 0 0 X = 11.99 S.D. = 3.92
X = 12.37 S. D. = 3.18
.223 n/s .0 0 1
Story Schema Maximum score = 4
X = 3.22 S.D.= .95
X - 2.96 S.D. = 1.04
.647 n/s . 0 0 0 X = 3.47 S.D. = .90
X = 3.44 S.D. = .81
.006 n/s .0 0 0
Productivity (# of words) X = 103.49 S.D. = 43.50
X = 99.67 S.D. = 41.89
.025 n/s .0 0 0 X = 134.96S.D. = 45.89
X = 148.52 S.D. = 42.92
.2 2 1 n/s .014
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GRA51
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ENG ESL F P K V2 ENG ESL F P<Cognitive Measures
TAASMaximum score = 22
X = 14.41 S.D. = 5.75
X = 15.29 S.D. = 5.74
.529 n/s .005 X = 15.65 S.D. = 5.64
X = 16.51 S.D. = 5.57
.487 n/s .003
RAN (seconds) X = 36.71 S.D. = 10.38
X = 35.59 S.D. = 9.75
.910 n/s .009 X = 30.46 S.D. = 9.31
X = 25.66 S.D. = 3.95
9.62 .0 0 1 .05
CMS - Sequences Maximum score = 84
X = 45.11 S.D. = 9.75
X = 44.31 S.D. = 11.88
.028 n/s .0 0 0 X = 53.47 S.D. = 10.28
X = 57.08 S.D. = 9.02
3.31 p=. 07 .019
CMS - Numbers Forward Maximum score = 16
X = 7.61 S.D. = 1.58
X = 7.63 S.D. = 1.91
.033 n/s .0 0 0 X = 8.46 S.D. = 1.79
X = 9.00 S.D. = 1.55
3.02 n/s .018
CMS - Numbers Backward Maximum score =14
X = 3.88 S.D. = 1.27
X = 4.14 S.D. = 1.55
1.29 n/s . 0 1 2 X = 4.55 S.D. = 1.58
X = 4.83 S.D. = 1.49
.681 n/s .004
WRAML - Verbal Learning Gr. 3 Maximum score = 52 Gr. 5/6 Maximum score = 64
X = 25.42 S.D. = 6.08
X = 25.94 S.D. = 6.41
.248 n/s .0 0 2 X - 31.78 S.D. = 7.45
X = 32.25 S.D. = 9.14
.032 n/s .0 0 0
WRAML - Sentence Memory Maximum score = 40
X = 13.69 S.D. = 3.58
X = 12.49 S.D. = 3.48
1 .8 8 n/s .017 X = 17.35 S.D. = 4.20
X = 16.44 S.D. = 4.34
2.29 n/s .014
WRAML - Story Memory
Gr. 3 Maximum score = 45 Gr. 5/6 Maximum score =51
X = 23.92 S.D. = 7.05
X = 23.07 S.D. = 7.36
.135 n/s .0 0 1 X = 26.04 S.D. = 7.84
X = 24.60 S.D. = 7.43
1.89 n/s .011
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DES5
ENG ESL F P < v 2 ENG ESL F PKLanguage measures
Receptive Vocabulary Maximum score = 204
X = 116.23 S.D. = 22.18
X = 106.94 S.D. = 19.75
3.02 p=.08 .0 2 X = 142.92 S.D. = 17.14
X = 132.81S.D. = 18.47
14.45 .0 0 1 .08
Expressive Vocabulary Maximum score =190
X = 77.71 S.D. = 14.16
X = 76.40 S.D. = 11.19
.0 0 0 n/s .0 0 0 X = 98.98 S.D. = 15.72
X = 94.47 S.D. = 10.79
4.00 .05 .0 2
SyntaxMaximum score = 22
X = 13.11 S.D. = 3.07
X = 12.45 S.D. = 3.56
.713 n/s .007 X = 15.69 S.D. = 3.46
X = 14.39 S.D. = 3.60
5.11 .05 .03
Listening Comp. Maximum score = 6
X - 3.46 S.D. = .80
X = 3.43 S.D. = .88
.003 n/s .0 0 0 X = 4.39 S.D. = 1.06
X = 4.04 S.D. = 1.00
3.91 .05 .0 2
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Writing Measures
Significant main effects of Grade were found on all of the writing measures, as follows:
WRAT Spelling, F(A, 288) = 114.74,/? < .001; Spelling Errors, F (4, 288) = 5.46,/? <
.05; Productivity, F (4,288) = 51.76,/? < .001; Contextual Conventions, F (4,288) =
27.42,/? < .001; Contextual Language, F (4,288) = 49.58,/? < .001; Story Construction,
F (4,288) = 12.13,/? < .001; and Story Schema, F (4,288) = 8.92,/? < .01. These results
indicate that grade 5/6’s spell more accurately than grade 3’s, and that grade 5/6’s also
write longer stories with more developed punctuation, sentence structure and story
structure than grade 3’s do.
The only significant main effect of Language found on the seven writing measures
favored ESL on WRAT Spelling, F( 4, 288) = 9.58,/? < .01. No significant interactions
were found. Planned comparisons between Grade 3 and 5/6 revealed that it was the
Grade 5/6 ENG and ESL students who differed significantly in their spelling, favoring
ESL, F (2, 170) = 3.88, p < .05, with a small effect size of rj2 = .03. For graphic
representation and discussion of these findings, see Appendix B.
Cognitive Measures
Significant main effects of Grade were found on six of the eight cognitive measures, with
trends on the two remaining measures, as follows: RAN, F (4,279) = 54.90,/? < .001,
Sequences, F (4,278) = 64.37,/? < .001, Numbers Forward, F (4,279) = 24.53,/? < .001,
Numbers Backward, F (4, 278) - 12.36,/? < .001, Memory for Words, F (4, 279) = 45.16,
p < .001, Sentence Memory, F (4,278) = 4.87,/? < .05, and a trend on Story Memory, F
(4,278) = 3.57,/? = .06, and the TAAS, F (4,278) - 2.95,p = .08. These results indicate
that the grade 5/6’s were able to rapidly name geometric shapes, sequence information,
remember numbers in both a forward and backward sequence, and remember more words
and sentences than grade 3’s.
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The only significant main effect of Language, favoring ESL students, was found for
RAN, F (4, 279) = 7.66, p < .01, and no significant interactions were found. This result
indicates that ESL students were able to name geometric shapes faster than ENG
students. Planned comparisons between Grade (3, 5/6) revealed that the significant
difference between ENG and ESL students was again at the grade 5/6 level, F (2, 170) =
9.63,p < .001, ij2 — .05. This result may in fact help to interpret the spelling differences
favoring ESL children as research supports a positive relation between spelling and rapid
automatic naming (Denckla & Rudel, 1974,1976 and Wolf & Bowers, 1999). RAN
measures how automatically children recode visual information into a phonologically
represented name code (Denckla & Rudel, 1974, 1976), and such tasks have been shown
to contribute specific variance to orthographic processing (Bowers, 1995). For graphic
representation and discussion of these findings, see Appendix B.
Language Measures
Significant grade effects were found for Receptive Vocabulary, F (4, 280) = 123.86,
p < .001, Judgment of Syntax, F (4,278) = 25.98,/? < .001, Expressive Vocabulary,
F (4, 280) = 127.59,/? < .001, and Listening Comprehension, F (4, 279) = 37.94,
p < .001. Thus, grade 5/6’s have a larger receptive and expressive vocabulary than grade
3’s. Grade 5/6’s are also better able to formulate sentences with proper grammatical
syntax, and possess a more advanced listening comprehension than grade 3’s.
In addition to significant Grade effects, significant main effects of Language, favoring
ENG students, were found for Receptive Vocabulary, F (4, 280) = 19.34,/? < .001, and
for Judgment of Syntax, F (4, 278) = 4.87, p < .05. A trend was found in the same
direction for Expressive Vocabulary, F (4,280) = 3.29, p = .07. As would be expected,
ENG students have both a larger store of receptive vocabulary, and a more advanced
ability to formulate sentences and judge grammatical syntax. No significant interactions
were found. Planned comparisons revealed that the significant differences between ENG
and ESL students were found at grade 5/6, although the pattern was similar in grade 3.
For discussion and graphic representation of these results, see Appendix B.
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Given the significant differences found in these oral language proficiency measures
between ENG and ESL students, to the advantage of ENG students, it is important to
highlight the lack of differences that were found on the academic measures, at both the
lower- and higher-levels of reading and writing development, as will be addressed in the
next section.
The Relation Between Lower- and Higher-Level Reading and Writing Skills
The second of the three major questions concerned the relation between reading and
writing in ENG and ESL students. The results addressing this question are presented in
this section. The question is stated as follows:
2. What is the relation between lower-level and higher-level reading and writing
skills across Grade (3, 5/6) and Language (ENG/ESL)?
Partial correlations were undertaken controlling for chronological age, because the grade
5 and 6 samples were combined, and it was important to ensure that the results were not
unduly influenced by chronological age.6 Preliminary correlational matrices were
undertaken for all of the reading and writing measures. Results indicated a strong
correlation between reading and spelling across Grade and Language. For discussion and
presentation of the results, see Appendix C.
Tables 8 presents the partial correlations between lower- and higher-level reading and
writing measures by Grade (3, 5/6) and by Language (ENG/ESL). Using the Bonferroni
approach to control for Type 1 error across the many correlations, a p- value of less than
.005 (.05/10) was required for significance. In the table, the correlations that reached this
level of significance are bolded.
6 A comparison of the same correlations between reading and writing measures, by Grade and Language, without controlling for age showed very similar results with almost exactly the same significance levels. Therefore, partial correlations were used to most accurately reflect the relation between the measures, without the effect o f chronological age.
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Table 8.
Partial Correlations Between the Lower- and Higher-Level Reading and Writing Skills by Grade (3,5/6) and by Language (ENG/ESL)
Grade 3 Grac e 5/6ENG ESL ENG ESL
Word Attack and Spelling .74 .77 .72 .52
Reading Comprehension and Story Construction
.31 .54 .51 .35
Note: Based on Bonferrotvi adjustment,/? <.001 in bold, For ENG, r = .31,p < .05; For ESL, r = .35,p < .05
These correlations convincingly demonstrate the strong relation between lower-level
word attack (pseudoword decoding) and spelling across Grade and Language. The
relation between word attack and spelling remained consistently strong for both ENG and
ESL across Grade; however, the relation between higher-level reading comprehension
and story construction was more variable.
For ENG, the relation between higher-level reading comprehension and story
construction was not significant at the p < .001 level in grade 3, but, was significant in
grade 5/6 (r = .51 ,P< .001). This pattern would be expected given that the consolidation
of lower-level reading and writing skills would be in the lower grade (stage) in order to
further the development of higher-level skills in the higher grade (stage). It is in grades 5
and 6 that the ENG students would have consolidated both the lower-level reading and
spelling skills, as well as the complex linguistic sophistication required for the higher-
level reading and writing skills. Interestingly, for ESL, the correlation between higher-
level reading comprehension and story construction was moderately significant in grade 3
(r = .54, p < .001) and not significant atp< .001 in grade 5/6. Possible interpretations of
this finding include that in grade 3, the test items may be fairly common whereas in grade
5/6, the items become more difficult and go beyond what would ordinarily be expected.
The language demands in grade 5/6 thus become more complex and abstract, whereas in
grade 3, the language demands are not as complex, and are more literal. It is possible that
the correlation between higher-level reading comprehension and story construction is
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significant for ESL students in grade 3 and not in grade 5/6 precisely because the
language demands of the tasks are less complex. It may be that it takes the ESL students
longer to develop the degree of linguistic sophistication that ENG students do in grades 5
and 6 (as evidenced in the significant differences found in OLP measures), and this is
reflected in the relation between their higher-level reading and writing skills. The likely
reason as to why there are significant differences on oral language measures and not on
written ones, is that the language demands are greater on the oral language measures
(e.g., receptive vocabulary, expressive vocabulary, and judgment of syntax) than they are
on the written tests (e.g., reading comprehension and story construction). It may be that
the written language tasks used in the current study did not adequately tap the linguistic
differences that exist between the ENG and ESL students.
Given the differences between ENG and ESL in the relation between lower- and higher-
level reading and writing tasks, it is valuable to explore how much of the variance in
lower- and higher-level reading and writing is accounted for by the underlying cognitive
and language processes.
Variance accounted for in lower- and higher-level reading and writing
The last of the three major research questions concerns the prediction of reading and
writing skills from the underlying cognitive and language processes. The question
follows:
3. Which cognitive and language composites (Cognitive Ability and OLP) explain
the most variance in the lower (word attack and spelling) and higher levels
(reading comprehension and story construction) o f reading and writing
development?
Preliminary correlational matrices for reading and writing measures, with cognitive and
language measures were undertaken across Grade (3, 5/6) and Language (ENG/ESL). In
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summary, the major findings indicated that although both cognitive and language
processes were represented across the measures, a pattern appeared in which mainly
cognitive processes were correlated with lower-level word attack for both ENG and ESL,
and predominantly language measures were correlated with higher-level reading
comprehension across Grade and Language. For more details of these results, see
Appendix D.
A principal component factor analysis was run in order to reduce the large number of
reading, writing, cognitive and language variables into a smaller number of components.
This procedure also allowed for the discovery of those variables that formed coherent
subsets that were relatively independent of each other. The variables that were correlated
with one another, but largely independent of other subsets of variables, were then
combined into factors6. Those factors, as will be discussed, are thought to reflect
underlying processes that have created the correlations among variables. The most
commonly used method of rotation, Varimax, was used after extraction of these
components, in order to maximize the variance. The factors that emerged for the reading
and writing measures using this procedure, were a strong Decoding/Encoding factor
(word attack, word recognition, spelling, reading time and reading comprehension), an
Age factor (chronological age), and a Story Schema factor (Story Construction and Story
Schema). For the cognitive and language processing measures, three factors emerged: A
Cognitive Ability factor (TAAS, RAN, Sequencing, and Working Memory), a Short-term
Memory factor (numbers forward) and an Oral Language Proficiency factor (Receptive
and Expressive Vocabulary, Syntax, Listening Comprehension and Sentence Memory).
Table 9 shows the respective loadings for the reading and writing measures.
The first factor was named the Decoding/Encoding Factor because it contained measures
pertaining to those written language processes. Interestingly, it included all four reading
measures (both lower and higher level skills) as well as the lower-level Spelling measure.
6 Technically, Principal Component Analysis produces components while Factor Analysis produces factors. Since these two statistical techniques are both applied to a set of variables for the purpose of discovering which variables form subsets, for ease of discussion, the results will be called factors.
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The second factor was named Age because it involves the effect that chronological age
had on reading and writing performance. This was to be expected given the nature of the
sample in which data was collected for three grades. The third factor was named the
Story Schema factor because it was comprised of the two writing measures that tap
higher-level cognitive understanding of stories, Story Construction and Story Schema.
Notably, this factor separated out from the other writing measures, such as Spelling,
Contextual Conventions and Contextual Language.
Table 9 - Factor Loadings of the Reading and Writing Measures - Principal Component
Analysis with Varimax Rotation
Components
Measures 1 2 3
Word Attack .782
Word Recognition .767 .417
Spelling .756 .513
Reading Fluency -.732
Reading Comprehension .695 .405
Contextual Conventions .638
Contextual Language .534 .477 .385
Chronological Age .8 8 8
Story Schema .842
Story Construction .799
Productivity .612 .457
Note: Values in boldface represent the highest loadings for each factor.
The cognitive and language measures loaded onto factors that made sense conceptually as
the reading and writing factors did. Table 10 shows the factor loadings for the cognitive
and language measures.
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Table 10 - Factor Loadings of the Cognitive and Language Processing Measures
Principal Component Analysis with Varimax Rotation
Components
Measures 1 2 3
Receptive Vocabulary .856
Expressive Vocabulary .805
Syntax .719
Listening Comprehension .691
Sentence Memory . 6 6 8 .426
Working Memory .676
Sequences .662
TAAS .652
RAN -.610
Short-term Memory .785
Note: Values in boldface represent the highest loadings for each factor.
The first factor was named the Oral Language Proficiency Factor because it contained all
of the measures pertaining to oral language, with the addition of Sentence Memory. The
second factor was named Cognitive Ability because it contained those lower-level
Cognitive measures that researchers have used to control for cognitive ability apart from
language. The third factor was named the Short-Term Memory Factor because it
contained the one measure that taps short-term auditory memory. This factor was not
used in the multiple sequential regressions because when it was used in an exploratory
manner, it did not account for much of the variance. In addition, it was not reviewed in
the research to be as important a contributor to reading and writing as cognitive ability
and oral language proficiency. The two factors, Cognitive Ability and OLP were then
used to create composites (by first converting the raw scores to z scores, and then by
calculating the overall sum of the individual measures within the factors and averaging
them). The composites rather than the individual measures were entered into the multiple
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sequential regressions in order to increase power by reducing the total number of
predictors. Further exploration was undertaken within Grade (3, 5/6) to determine if the
cognitive and language factors that were used to create the composites were stable across
development. For more details of these results, see Appendix E.
To investigate the contribution of these composites to reading and writing measures,
sequential multiple regression analyses were conducted. The dependent variables were
the four lower- and higher-level reading and writing measures (Word Attack, Spelling,
Reading Comprehension and Story Construction) . 7 The predictors were the two
composites that were identified in the principal components analysis (Cognitive Ability
and Oral Language Proficiency). Following the recommendations of Cohen and Cohen
(1983) (See also Aiken & West, 1991) the variables used in the interaction term were
centered, that is, each variable was subtracted from the mean score for that variable, prior
to their inclusion in the regression analyses (by transforming them into z scores). This
procedure is used to address the potential problem of multicollinearity that can result
from the inclusion of the independent variables and their interaction terms in the
regression analyses.
The sample was split by Language (ENG/ESL) to investigate similarities and differences
in the contributions of the two composites to the lower- and higher-level reading and
writing measures. The predictors were the composites entered in the following order:
Grade was entered first in order to control for any differences dues to age. The Cognitive
Ability composite was entered before the Oral Language Proficiency composite based on
the assumption that the execution of the lower-level Cognitive processing measures (e.g.,
phonemic awareness, speed of naming, working memory, sequencing) takes place prior
to the higher-level semantic and syntactic Language processing. In other words, higher-
level processes depend on the information supplied by lower-level visual and word
identification processes (Haynes & Carr, 1990). This also allowed for the control of
Cognitive Ability, to examine how much of the variance OLP accounted for above and
7 Story Construction, the standardized measure, was used to represent the higher-level writing task as Story Construction and Story Schema were moderately correlated (r =•7 , p < .01). However, Story Schema also was included in regressions undertaken for the purposes o f further exploration in Appendix I.
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beyond the Cognitive Ability composite (Geva, 1999). Since one could argue that the
cognitive measures are confounded to some extent with OLP, particularly for the ESL
group, further exploration was undertaken with the OLP composite entered before the
Cognitive Ability composite. For details of these regressions, see Appendix F.
Sequential Regression Split by Language (ENG/ESL)
The Cognitive Ability composite accounted for a comparable percentage of the variance
for both ENG and ESL students. There were, however, differences in the contribution of
the OLP composite, with more of the variance accounted for by OLP in ENG than ESL
students, as seen in Tables 11 and 12. The contribution of the OLP composite was
greater on the higher- level Reading and Writing measures (Reading Comprehension and
Story Construction). With the exception of Spelling, the percentage of total variance
accounted for, was higher for ENG than ESL students.
Table 11.
Summary of the Percentage of Variance Accounted for by the Composites on the Lower- and Higher-Level Reading Skills For ENG and ESL Learners
Word Attack Reading ComprehensionR2 change________________ R2 change______
ENG ESL ENG ESLGrade 4 y ** 6.3 ** 0 .1 0. 18Cognitive Ability 23 7 *** 25.8 *** \ 2 9 *** 12 9 ***OLP 9 3 *** 1.7 39.3 ** 27 7 ***Total Variance 37.7 33.8 52.2 40.7* p < .05, **p < .01, *** p < .001
8 The fact that Grade did not account for any of the variance on the Reading Comprehension task is not surprising given that two different tests were used for grade 3 and 5/6. Thus, the difference between the two cannot be meaningfully compared.
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Table 12.
Summary of the Percentage of Variance Accounted for by the Composites on the Lower- and Higher-Level Writing Skills For ENG and ESL Learners
Spelling Story ConstructionR2 change________________ R2 change
ENG ESL ENG ESLGrade 22.7 *** 40.2 *** 2.6 * g g ***Cognitive Ability 2 *** g *** g 4 *** 6.7 **OLP g g *** 3.7 17 2 *** 2.6Total Variance 46.7 55.8 26.2 19.1*p< .05, **p< .01, ***p < .001
A combined analysis, presented in Appendix G, confirmed that Language, when entered
as a factor, was not significant, nor were there any significant interactions between
Language and the reading and writing measures. The evident patterns, as seen in Tables
11 and 12, are similar with the combined analysis, as seen in Appendix G. Cognitive
Ability accounted for the most variance in lower-level word attack and spelling for both
ENG and ESL. These results indicated that it was oral language ability that accounted for
the variance in higher-level reading comprehension for both ENG and ESL, and in
higher-level story construction for ENG only. It is important to note that for story
construction, there was still a considerable amount of the variance that was not accounted
for. While OLP accounted for 16.7 percent of the variance in story construction for ENG
students, it did not contribute significantly for ESL students. Only 25 percent of the total
variance was accounted for in ENG story construction, and even less (18 percent) for
ESL story construction. This finding means that some other unmeasured variable was
accounting for that difference.
These results indicate very clearly that Cognitive Ability accounts for more of the
variance in lower-level word attack and spelling. Oral Language Proficiency accounts
for more of the variance, beyond the contribution of Cognitive Ability, in higher-level
reading comprehension, notably for both ENG and ESL students, and in stoiy
construction for ENG students.
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Further exploration was undertaken to explore how ESL students were able to achieve
comparably with ENG students on higher-level story construction despite significantly
lower OLP. Stepwise regressions were undertaken for both of the higher-level writing
measures (story construction and story schema). Results indicated that while OLP and
Grade accounted for the variance in ENG story construction, a smaller contribution of
OLP and Cognitive Ability accounted for the variance for ESL story construction. For
details of these findings, see Appendix H. Further exploration was initially attempted to
determine the contribution of the various components within the Cognitive Ability and
OLP composites, however, given the number of regressions undertaken, the small sample
size, and the necessary caution required with which to interpret the findings, the analyses
were not included. In addition, further exploration was undertaken to look at the
regressions by Grade in order to determine if the structure of the predictors is different in
Grade 3 than it is in Grade 5/6. Given the small sample size when presented by Grade,
the results of these regressions also should be interpreted with caution. No firm
conclusions can be drawn. For details of these results, see Appendix I.
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CHAPTER FIVE: GENERAL DISCUSSION
The results will be presented as a general discussion of the contributions, limitations, and
the diagnostic and instructional implications that will outline the practical relevance of
the findings of the current study.
Contributions
An important contribution of the current study is the evaluation of many reading and
writing skills, and cognitive and language abilities for both ENG and ESL students at
more advanced stages of development than have previously been explored. Significant
Grade effects on almost all of the measures, indicated that, in fact, as expected, grade 5/6
students’ reading, writing, cognitive and language abilities were more developed than
were the grade 3’s (Chall, 1990; Fitzgerald & Shanahan, 2000; Levine, 1998).
The contribution the current study makes in terms of comparing ENG and ESL
development is that while surprisingly few significant differences were found on reading,
writing, and cognitive measures even at the higher-levels of reading and writing
development, significant differences remained on the majority of oral language measures,
favoring ENG. In particular, on receptive vocabulary, a moderate effect size indicates
that in fact, a highly significant difference (p < .001) existed between ENG and ESL
students on that particular language measure. While these results confirmed the
expectation that ENG-speaking students’ receptive and expressive language skills,
judgment of syntax, and listening comprehension were more developed than those of
ESL students, the findings seemed inconsistent with the fact that no significant
differences were found on the higher-level reading and writing measures (reading
comprehension and story construction). The fact that widely used standardized measures
were utilized, indicates that this may also be how ESL students appear to be functioning
in the classroom. It would be overstating the findings to say that ENG and ESL students
do not differ in reading comprehension and written language composition. One can only
say that they do not differ on the measures used in this study. These measures may be
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lacking the level of complexity needed to tap into the linguistic differences that exist
between the groups. It also may be that more linguistically complex scoring methods are
needed within these measures, such as sentence complexity (Mean Length of Utterance),
or breadth of vocabulary. The question that emerges is how the ESL students are able to
achieve comparable higher-level writing skills despite significantly lower OLP. The
results of exploratory stepwise regressions found that for ENG students, while the OLP
composite and Grade accounted for the variance in Story Construction, for ESL students,
it was the OLP and the Cognitive Ability composites that accounted for that variance. It
may be the use of these cognitive ability processes that distinguishes ESL from ENG
students, thus allowing for comparable results even though significant differences in OLP
favored ENG students. It is also possible that nonverbal intelligence plays some role in
accounting for the organization of ideas in the ideation required for higher-level written
composition.
The fact that a significant difference remained in oral language skills at the more
advanced stage, in grade 5/6 ESL students, despite their having received their education
in English, is a significant contribution to the ESL literature, and corroborates
DaFontoura and Siegel (1995). The ESL students likely had less exposure to the more
complex English vocabulary and syntax because English was not the language spoken at
home. Although they received exposure at school to English-speaking teachers, it
appears that the exposure was not sufficient to bring them to the level of their English-
speaking peers. These results indicate that ESL children who come from homes in which
indirect or basic interpersonal communication is almost exclusively in their first
language, may have difficulty with the de-contextualized nature of communication and
language demands at the more advanced stages of literacy development (Juel, 1988).
The strong and consistent relation between lower-level decoding and spelling for both
ENG and ESL students in grade 3 and 5/6 corroborated Shanahan (1984). The ability to
spell accurately and apply basic phonics rules in decoding was closely related, with the
correlation between the two accounting for approximately 49 percent of the variance. In
fact, regression analyses confirmed that these lower-level skills shared similar underlying
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cognitive processes, as the Cognitive Ability composite accounted for most of the
variance in the lower-level reading and spelling skills for both ENG and ESL students. In
contrast, the correlation between higher-level reading and writing (reading
comprehension and story construction) varied. This relation between higher-level
reading comprehension and story construction was significant in grade 5/6 for ENG
students, as would be expected according to stage theories of literacy development.
These higher-level reading and writing skills depend on the automatization of lower-level
reading and spelling skills. However, for ESL students, the relation between higher-level
reading comprehension and story construction was significant (p< .001) at grade 3 and
not at grade 5/6. This finding is likely, to a certain extent, also to be a result of the
measures used. The reading comprehension measure taps more ordinary words at the
grade 3 level than at the grade 5/6. Thus, the ESL students are better able to consolidate
the relation between reading comprehension and written composition when the language
demands of the test are not as complex. The written language tests did not have the same
level of language demands that the oral language tests did.
The current study confirms that lower-level cognitive processes accounted for more of
the variance in lower-level word attack and spelling skills, while higher-level oral
language processes accounted for more of the variance in the higher-level reading
comprehension and story construction skills. These results would be expected according
to stage theories of reading and writing development (Chall, 1990; and Levine, 1998).
This finding also corroborated the ESL literature that has identified the cognitive
predictors of word identification and spelling, and the language predictors of reading
comprehension (Geva, 1998; Geva & Petrulis-Wright, 1998; Panto, 1999; DaFontoura &
Siegel, 1995). However, the current study did so at a more advanced stage of
development (Stage 3), assessed the contribution of many cognitive and language
predictors that previously have been studied individually, and extended the ESL literature
by documenting that relation with higher-level writing.
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Limitations
One limitation of the present study is the constraint placed by collecting data as part of a
longitudinal study. Ideally, children in a lower grade would also have been studied in
order to assess beginning literacy development (stage 1) as well as confirmation and
fluency (stage 2) and reading and writing for learning the new (stage 3). This would
allow for a wider range of development for comparison. The use of measures was also a
constraint of the longitudinal study. Ideally, reading comprehension and written
composition measures would be chosen that would tap the more complex linguistic
demands that differentiate ENG from ESL students. Furthermore, the collection of a
measure of nonverbal intelligence would have allowed for a comparison that might have
accounted for the lack of significant differences between ENG and ESL on these higher-
level reading and writing measures. In addition, comparisons across grade have an
unavoidable confound such that some of the schools have grades 5 and 6 in them, and do
not have grade 3. It is therefore not possible to ensure that the catchment areas have
identical demographics. A caution must therefore be taken in interpreting grade and/or
possible social class differences. In terms of the generalizations that can be drawn from
the current study, the fact that the ESL children were tested as part of a heterogeneous
population that spoke many different languages, rather than one (or two) specific LI
backgrounds, is a limitation. There was limited information available regarding the
amount of English the ESL students speak at home, the length of time they had been in
Canada, or other English-speaking country, and whether they were also literate in another
language or orthography. The current study compared similarities and differences in
reading, writing, cognitive and language measures between English-speaking students,
and those for whom English was their second language, defined in the broadest sense.
This allowed for an understanding of the pace of literacy and language acquisition for
ESL students within the context of an English education system; however, general L2
conclusions cannot be drawn for the reasons previously discussed. Further studies are
needed to replicate these results before strong conclusions can be drawn.
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Diagnostic and Instructional Implications
A significant conclusion from this study is that the development of various aspects of oral
and written language processing skills is not synchronous. These findings have important
implications for assessment and instruction in that assessment can proceed separately for
oral and written language, and that the assessment of potential at-risk status may take
place even when ESL oral skills are not comparable with ENG. When assessing lower-
level reading and writing skills in the earlier grades, it could in fact, be detrimental to
refrain from assessment until the child has developed adequate oral language skills as it is
clear that cognitive processes explain the most variance in lower-level reading and
spelling, while oral language accounts for more of the variance in higher-level reading
comprehension and story construction. The child at risk may require early identification
and intensive instruction focusing on the development of word identification and spelling
skills in addition to the development of oral language skills. The results of the current
study also indicate that continued oral language programming for ESL students is
important even at more advanced stages of literacy development.
Cummins (1976,1980,1984) indicated that most ESL students are able to communicate
in social situations and day-to-day classroom interactions within one or two years;
however, they may require from five to seven years to develop the ability to understand
the academic language used in textbooks and to use English to express the increasingly
complex and abstract concepts encountered in the higher grades. The results of the
current study have shown that although there are few significant academic differences
between ENG and ESL students in grades 3,5/6, there were significant differences in oral
language proficiency favoring ENG students in grades 5/6. ESL students have more
difficulty with complex sentences and vocabulary even at grade 5/6. Efforts must be
made to understand this gap in oral language proficiency and program for it. Closing the
gap in language proficiency is a formidable challenge for ESL students because they
must catch up with a moving target as ENG students continue to grow every year in
language abilities (range of vocabulary, command of complex syntax, etc.). Particularly
at the higher stages of literacy development, academic success depends on students’
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gaining access to and comprehending the language of text that is found only in books.
Academic language is much more complex than conversational language in terms of
vocabulary and syntax. Thus, students’ knowledge of academic language and their
ability to use academic language coherently in their own writing is crucially dependent
on the amount and variety of what they read, in addition to the language models they
hear. The fact that ESL students will be catching up in academic language over a number
of years means that if they are to acquire the necessary academic English skills, their
language development must be promoted across the curriculum, and taught concurrently
with reading and writing.
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Appendix A
Table A-l
Group Comparisons for Grade 5 and 6 on Reading, Writing, Cognitive and Language Processing Measures (based on raw scores)
GRADE5
GRADE6
ENG ESL F P < r ENG ESL F P < 9 2
n = 83 n = 23 n = 40 n = 25Reading MeasuresWord Attack Maximum score = 45
X = 30.06 S.D.= 8.06
X = 31.81 S.D. = 7.55
.846 n/s .008 X = 31.42 S.D. = 6.80
X = 31.52 S.D. = 7.43
.003 n/s .0 0 0
WRAT Word Recognition Maximum score = 57
X = 36.02 S.D. = 4.97
X = 36.59 S.D. = 4.77
.2 2 0 n/s . 0 0 2 X = 37.80 S.D. = 4.85
X = 37.76 S.D. = 3.85
.0 0 1 n/s .0 0 0
Reading Comprehension Maximum score = 48
X = 26.92 S.D. = 9.26
X = 24.26 S.D. - 8.53
1.51 n/s .015 X = 28.57 S.D. = 9.68
X = 26.76 S.D. = 7.58
.611 n/s .0 1 0
Time (seconds) X = 50.42 S.D. = 29.47
X = 48.72 S.D. — 17.15
.055 n/s .0 0 1 X = 44.97 S.D. = 18.50
X = 39.66 S.D. = 8.70
1.83 n/s .029
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GRADE5
GRADE6
ENG ESL F P< ENG ESL F P< v 2Writing MeasuresWRATSpellingMaximum score = 55
X = 30.90 S.D. = 5.79
X = 31.91 S.D. = 4.16
.603 n/s .03 X = 31.45 S.D. = 5.64
X = 33.60 S.D. = 4.56
4.12 .05 .06
TOWL-III Spelling Errors (#) X = 9.08 S.D. = 7.50
X = 7.50 S.D. = 4.72
.6 6 8 n/s .007 X = 9.20 S.D. = 6.89
X = 6.04 S.D. = 3.75
4.56 .05 .070
TOWL-IIIContextual Conventions Maximum score =18
X = 4.63 S.D. = 3.20
X = 4.04 S.D. = 3.25
.552 n/s .029 X - 5.35 S.D. = 3.18
X = 6.12 S.D. = 2.36
1.04 n/s .017
TOWL-IIIContextual Language Maximum score = 29
X = 12.76 S.D. = 4.15
X = 12.65 S.D. = 3.47
.0 1 0 n/s .0 0 0 X = 13.76 S.D. = 3.80
X = 13.60 S.D. = 3.47
.028 n/s .0 0 0
TOWL-III Story Construction Maximum score = 21
X = 11.43 S.D. = 4.01
X = 13.08 S.D. = 2.82
3.39 p=.06 .035 X = 13.02S.D. = 3.56
X = 11.72 S. D. = 3.40
2.16 n/s .034
Story Schema Maximum score = 4
X = 3.38 S.D.= .93
X = 3.75 S.D. = .55
2.65 n/s .031 X = 3.61 S.D. = .84
X = 3.20 S.D. = .91
3.66 p=.06 .057
Productivity (# of words) X = 127.20 S.D. = 46.18
X = 149.43 S.D. = 44.34
4.14 .05 .042 X = 149.69 S.D. = 42.08
X = 147.68 S.D. = 42.48
.034 n/s .0 0 1
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GRADE5
GRADE6
ENG ESL F P< V2 ENG ESL F P< V2Cognitive Measures
RosnerMaximum score = 22
X = 15.40 S.D. = 5.58
X = 15.68 S.D. = 5.48
.042 n/s .0 0 0 X = 16.17 S.D. = 5.79
X = 17.24 S.D. = 5.65
.527 n/s .008
RAN(seconds)
X = 31.04 S.D. = 9.80
X = 26.60 S.D. = 4.79
4.53 .05 .042 X = 29.25 S.D. = 8.20
X = 24.80 S.D. = 2.82
6.71 .0 1 .098
CMS -Sequences Maximum score = 84
X = 52.68 S.D. = 11.13
X = 54.39 S.D. = 9.68
.439 n/s .004 X = 55.12 S.D. = 8.12
X = 59.56 S.D. = 7.76
4.65 .05 .070
CMS -Numbers Forward Maximum score =16
X = 8.39 S.D. = 1.73
X = 8.69 S.D. = 1.49
.564 n/s .005 X = 8.60 S.D. = 1.94
X = 9.28 S.D. = 1.59
2 .1 0 n/s .033
CMS - Numbers Backward Maximum score =14
X = 4.48 S.D. = 1.59
X = 4.39 S.D. = 1.40
.061 n/s .0 0 1 X = 4.70 S.D. = 1.57
X = 5.24 S.D. = 1.47
1 .8 6 n/s .029
WRAML - Verbal Learning Gr. 3 Maximum score = 52 Gr. 5/6 Maximum score = 64
X = 31.46 S.D. = 7.67
X = 30.86 S.D. = 8.68
.105 n/s .0 0 1 X = 32.42 S.D. = 7.01
X = 33.52 S.D. = 9.53
.271 n/s .004
WRAML - Sentence Memory Maximum score = 40
X = 16.95 S.D. = 4.18
X = 15.45 S.D. = 4.74
2.08 n/s .0 2 0 X = 18.20 S.D. = 4.18
X = 17.32 S.D. = 3.83
2.29 n/s .014
WRAML - Story MemoryGr. 3 Maximum score = 45 Gr. 5/6 Maximum score =51
X = 25.54 S.D. = 6.99
X = 23.43 S.D. = 7.54
1.58 n/s .015 X = 27.07 S.D. = 9.37
X = 25.68 S.D. = 7.31
.756 n/s .0 1 2
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GRADE5
GRADE6
ENG ESL F P< r ENG ESL F P< f}2Language MeasuresReceptive Vocabulary Maximum score = 204
X = 140.74 S.D. = 17.56
X = 128.82 S.D. = 19.52
7.83 .0 1 .071 X - 147.45 S.D. = 15.50
X =136.48 S.D. = 17.02
7.08 .0 1 .103
Expressive Vocabulary Maximum score = 190
X = 98.18 S.D. = 15.61
X = 94.69 S.D. = 12.81
.956 n/s .009 X = 100.65 S.D. = 16.02
X = 94.28 S.D. = 8.80
3.40 p=.07 .052
SyntaxMaximum score = 22
X = 15.59 S.D. = 3.84
X = 14.21 S.D. = 3.47
2.38 n/s .023 X = 15.90 S.D. = 2.53
X = 14.56 S.D. = 3.77
2.87 n/s .044
Listening Comp. Maximum score = 6
X = 4.38 S.D. = .97
X = 4.17 S.D. = 1.07
.807 n/s .008 X = 4.42 S.D. = 1.23
X = 3.92 S.D. = .95
2.97 n/s .046
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Appendix B
Planned comparisons between Grade 3 and 5/6 ENG and ESL on Writing, Cognitive and Language Measures
Writing Measures
Planned comparisons were undertaken to see where the significant differences lay in the
writing and cognitive measures between ENG and ESL students, particularly given the
significant Grade effects. The results will be discussed and presented graphically.
Figure B-l
1. Mean Spelling by Grade and Language (WRAT Spelling Raw Scores)
■ BIG
■ ESL
Students received a point for spelling the target word correctly, thus, a higher score
indicates more words spelled correctly. While this was the only significant difference,
three notable trends were present. The grade 3 students showed a trend on Spelling,
favoring ESL students, F (2, 117) = 3.69, p = .06, with a small effect size of i]2 = .03.
The grade 3 students also showed a trend on Contextual Conventions, F (2,117) = 3.31,
p = .07, with a small effect size of rj2 = .03. This finding is not surprising given that
accuracy of spelling is a main scoring feature of the Contextual Conventions measure.
A third trend was found in grade 5/6 on the TOWL (# of) Spelling Errors measure, again
with the ESL students outperforming the ENG students, F (2,159)= 3.19,/? = .07, with a
small effect size, i]2 = .02 (See Figure IB-2.) There were no significant interactions with
Language on any of the writing measures.
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Figure B -2. Mean TOWL - III Spelling Errors (# of errors) by Grade and Language
12
10
8
6
4
2
oGrade 3 G rades 5/6
To explore factors that might account for the apparent ESL advantage on spelling
measures, an ANCOVA controlling for chronological age was undertaken on the
measures of Cognitive Ability. As will be discussed in Question 4, a Cognitive-Ability
composite (comprised of the TAAS, RAN, working memory and sequencing ability) was
created. No significant differences were found between ENG and ESL groups on this
Cognitive Ability composite for either the grade 3 group, F (2, 117) = .001, p = .98,
rj2 ~ .00, or for the grade 5/6 group, F (2, 171) — .08,/? = .78, ij2 = .00. However, as the
results in the Cognitive measures section will show, a significant difference and a trend
were found on two of the individual measures that comprise the Cognitive Ability
composite (RAN and Sequencing), with the ESL students outperforming the ENG
students.
Overall, the pattern of results on the writing measures indicates that, with the exception
of more accurate spelling in grade 5/6 for ESL students, and a trend favoring grade 3 ESL
students’ use of the conventions of writing (with a spelling component), there were no
other significant differences found in the remainder of the writing measures. The ESL
students’ use of language in writing (sentence structure), their ability to construct stories,
and their schema for stories, were developed to the same extent as the ENG students.
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Surprisingly, there were no significant differences on the higher-level writing task, Story
Construction, with its inherently more complex cognitive and language demands.
Cognitive Measures
Figure B -3. Mean RAN time (measured in seconds) by Grade and Language
Grade 3 Grade 5/6
HENG ■ ESL
Performance on RAN is measured by the time in seconds it takes for the student to name
geometric objects as rapidly as they can (5 objects repeated 20 times each in random
sequence). Therefore, the shorter the amount of time, the better the performance. On this
graph, one can clearly see that the grade 5/6 ESL students took less time to name the
objects in question than the ENG students. This finding may, in fact, help to explain the
spelling differences favoring the ESL children. There is research to support a positive
relation between spelling and rapid automatic naming (Denckla & Rudel, 1974,1976 and
Bowers, 1995). RAN measures how automatically children recode visual information
into a phonologically represented name code (Denckla & Rudel, 1974,1976), and such
tasks have been shown to contribute specific variance to orthographic processing
(Bowers, 1995).
Within these planned comparisons between Grades (3, 5/6), a trend was evident in Grade
5/6 favoring ESL students on the Sequencing measure, F (2, 170) = 3.36,p = .07, with a
small effect size, rj2 ~ .02, as can be seen in Figure 1C -2. This task measured the
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students’ ability to recall rote information, such as the alphabet, the days of the week and
the months of the year forward and backward in sequences as quickly as possible.
Figure B-4 Mean Sequences by Grade and Language (CMS Raw Scores)
60
50
40
30
20
10
0Grade 3 Grade 5/6
There is also research to support the positive relation between spelling and sequencing
ability. As students spell words, they must segment each word into its constituent speech
sounds and represent the sounds with the appropriate symbols by holding the sounds in
active working memory and sequentially representing each sound in the word. Thus,
sequencing ability and memory are important in the segmentation and synthesis that is
required for spelling (Lieberman, Shankweiler, Liberman, Fowler & Fischer, 1977).
While it is impossible to know for sure why the obtained differences existed in this
sample, it is likely that the ESL students’ faster and more automatic recoding of visual
information and their better-developed sequencing ability positively impacted their
spelling.
Language Measures
The results for all four language measures, receptive vocabulary, expressive vocabulary,
syntax and listening comprehension, are summarized in Figures 2d 1-4. On receptive
vocabulary, planned comparisons between Grade (3, 5/6) revealed a trend in grade 3,
favoring ENG students, F (2, 108) = 3.03,p = .08, with a small effect size, tj2 = .03. A
significant difference was found in grade 5/6, favoring ENG students, on the receptive
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vocabulary measure, F (2,170) = 14.45,/? < .001, with a moderate effect size, i]2 = .08.
There was no significant interaction with Language.
Figure B-5. Mean Receptive Vocabulary by Grade and Language (PPVT Raw Scores)
Grade 3 Grade 5/6
Figure B-5 clearly shows the superiority of the ENG students in their store of receptive
vocabulary, with both a trend at grade 3, and a significant difference at grade 5/6. This
Language effect is not surprising. The language demands at the beginning of grade 3 are
not as complex. In grade 5 and 6 , the language demands are more complex because they
refer now to abstract de-contextualized vocabulary that is removed from everyday
experience. Thus, it is not surprising that ESL students would have more difficulty with
these more challenging vocabulary items in grades 5 and 6 than ENG students.
An analysis of the mean number of items achieved on the receptive vocabulary task in
grade 3 indicates that ENG and ESL students were able to handle comparably
challenging items such as “ co-operating, microscope, and archery”. However, in grade
5/6, ESL students have greater difficulty with items that the ENG students are able to
answer, such as “pedestrian, and constrained”. Thus, when the material is more difficult
and a larger vocabulary and more developed syntax are required, ESL students have more
difficulty on items that they would have little exposure to beyond what they would
experience in written text. This same pattern is also evident on the syntax and the
expressive vocabulary tasks. A significant difference was found, favoring ENG students,
in their judgment of syntax, F(2, 170) = 5.1 \ , p < .05, with a small effect size, ij2 = .03.
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Figure B - 6. Mean Syntax by Grade and Language (CELF-III - Formulated Sentencesraw scores)
Grade 3 Grade 5/6
This graph shows the superiority for grade 5/6 ENG students over ESL students in their
understanding and judgment of syntax. This finding is consistent with Da Fontoura and
Siegel (1995), who found that the syntactic skills of bilingual children bom in Canada
still lagged behind the skills of monolingual children in grades 4, 5 and 6 .
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Figure B - 7. Mean Expressive Vocabulary by Grade and Language (EVT raw scores)
Grade 3
■ BIG
■ ESL
No significant difference was found on expressive vocabulary in grade 3, however, a
significant difference was found, favoring ENG students, in grade 5/6 as can be seen in
this graph, F (2, 170) = 4.00,/? < .05, with a small effect size, q2 = .02.
The same pattern was found on listening comprehension. No significant differences were
found in grade 3; however, the difference approached significance in grade 5/6, favoring
ENG students. This trend can be seen in Figure B - 8
Figure B - 8 . Mean Listening Comprehension by Grade and Language (Durrell raw
scores).
■ ENG■ ESL
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The results for judgment of syntax, expressive vocabulary and listening comprehension
are consistent with what was found on the receptive vocabulary measure and can be
explained according to the stages of literacy development in the same manner. The
vocabulary and syntax demands are not as complex in early grade 3 as they are in grades
5 and 6 . According to the stages of literacy development, comprehension becomes more
decisive in grades 5 and 6 because of increasing linguistic sophistication that surpasses
the content of everyday speech. Listening comprehension integrates complex cognitive
and language skills, and depends on knowledge of vocabulary, concepts, text structures,
syntax and pragmatics.
With the exception of the trend found in receptive vocabulary, no other significant
differences were found on the language measures for this grade 3 sample. This lack of
significant differences between the grade 3 ENG and ESL groups was very surprising,
given that the children had a language other than English as their home language and that
many of the children would have spoken little English prior to school entry (into half-day
senior kindergarten). Many of these children, tested in the beginning months of grade 3,
would have had fewer than 3 years of regular English language use in school. Based on
Cummins’s (1984) 5-to-7-years estimate for achieving cognitive academic language
proficiency, the grade 3 ESL children would have been expected to differ substantially
from their ENG counterparts on measures of oral language processes. But they did not.
To ensure that the grade 3 ESL sample was truly “second language”, the children were
traced back in the longitudinal data set to senior kindergarten (1996/1997) when language
measures were obtained for them. Analyses of their language skills at that time showed
that the ENG children were significantly better than the ESL children on both vocabulary
and syntactic measures (p < .001). Thus, these children were truly “second language”
learners. Details of group comparisons are provided in Table B-9 and B-10.
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Table B-9.
Group Comparisons on Language and Literacy Measures (based on raw scores) for the Grade 3 sample (1999/2000) tracked back to Senior Kindergarten (1996/1997)
S.K.
ENG ESL F P<
n= 114 n = 94
Language Measures
Receptive Vocabulary X = 64.50 S.D. = 14.53
X = 47.96 S.D. = 14.89
64.45 .0 0 1
Linguistic Concepts (CELF) X = 17.38 S.D. = 2.68
X = 15.07 S.D. = 4.15
22.96 .0 0 1
Sentence repetition X = 15.84 S.D. = 2.55
X = 13.37 S.D. = 3.45
34.32 .0 0 1
Wepman Auditory Discrimination (# correct)
X = 16.54 S.D. = 2.42
X = 16.16 S.D. = 3.49
.843 n/s
Rosner X = 2.29 S.D. = 2.40
X = 2.34 S.D. = 2.49
.018 n/s
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Table B-10.
Group Comparisons on Language and Literacy Measures (based on raw scores) for the 16 Grade 3 students (1999/2000) tracked back to Senior Kindergarten (1996/1997)
S.K.
ENG ESL F P<
n = 7 n = 9
Language Measures
Receptive Vocabulary X = 69.29 S.D. = 15.51
X = 51.67 S.D. = 17.26
4.47 .05
Linguistic Concepts (CELF) X = 18.14 S.D. = 1.07
X = 15.44 S.D. = 4.07
2 .8 8 n/s
Sentence repetition X = 16.86 S.D. = 1.35
X = 12.89 S.D. = 3.82
6.79 .05
Wepman Auditory Discrimination (# correct)
X = 17.00 S.D. = 2.08
X = 17.33 S.D. = 2.18
.096 n/s
Rosner X = 7.16 S.D. = 3.97
X = 5.71S.D. = 3.03
.558 n/s
Given the significant differences found in these oral language proficiency measures, to
the advantage of ENG students, it is important to highlight the lack of differences that
was found on the academic measures, at both the lower- and higher-levels of reading and
writing development. The second research question will address the relation between
lower- and higher-level reading and writing by Grade (3, 5/6) and Language (ENG/ESL).
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Appendix C
The results of these correlational analyses will be discussed in the following order. The
first table (Tables C-l) compares the partial correlations (controlling for chronological
age) between reading and writing measures for grade 3 ENG and ESL students. The
following table (Table C-2) compares grade 5/6 ENG and ESL students on those same
measures. Using the Bonferroni approach to control for Type 1 error across the many
correlations, ap- value of less than .005 (.05/10) was required for significance. In the
table the correlations that reached this level of significance are bolded.
98
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Appendix CTable C-l. Partial Correlations (controlling for chronological age) of Reading Measures with Writing Measures for Grade 3 ENG and ESL Students
Grade 3
Writing Measures
Spelling ContextualConventions
Productivity ContextualLanguage
StoryConstruction
Story Schema
Reading Measures
Word Attack ENG .74 .30 .25 .34 .38 .09
ESL .77 .45 .15 .53 .36 .20
WRAT Reading ENG .71 .40 .18 .52 .50 .20
ESL .74 .46 .17 .53 .33 .15
Fluency (Reading Time) ENG -.51 -.29 -.19 -.37 -.25 -.09
ESL -.48 -.32 -.20 -.46 -.21 -.01
Reading Comprehension ENG .59 .30 .18 .38 .30 .06
ESL .68 .51 .28 .62 .53 .20
Note: For ENG students df= 52, r = .30,/? < .05; r = .34, p < .01; r = .50,/? < .001; For ESL students df= 55, r - .28,/? < .05; r = .33,/? < .01; r - .45,/? < .001; Based on Bonferroni adjustment, p < .001 in bold.
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The Relation between Reading and Writing for Grade 3 ENG and ESL Students
The results of the correlational analysis presented in Table C-l show that 18 of the partial
correlations (controlling for chronological age) between reading and writing measures in
grade 3 were statistically significant, with a larger number of significant correlations for
ESL (12) than ENG (6 ) students. The strongest correlations for both ENG and ESL grade
3 students were between spelling and all four reading measures, ranging from r = .48 to
•77,/? < .001. The correlations between these reading measures and spelling were
comparable for both ENG and ESL.
For ENG, the only significant correlations beyond reading and spelling were found
between WRAT Reading and Contextual Language (r = .52, p < .001), and WRAT
Reading and Story Construction (r = .50,/? < .001). In contrast, ESL students had several
significant correlations between different reading and writing measures, such as Word
Attack and Contextual Language (r - .53,p < .001), and Fluency (Reading Time) and
Contextual Language (r = -.46, p < .001). In addition, for ESL higher-level Reading
Comprehension was significantly correlated with all three writing measures: lower-level
Contextual Conventions (r = .51 ,P < .001); Contextual Language (r = .62, p < .001); and
higher-level Story Construction (r = .53, p < .001). For ENG students, Reading
Comprehension was, as previously mentioned, correlated with Spelling (r= .59, p<
.001).
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Table C-2.
Partial Correlations (controlling for chronological age) of Reading Measures with Writing Measures for Grades 5/6 ENG and ESL Students
Grades 5/6
Writing Measures
Reading Measures
Spelling ContextualConventions
Productivity ContextualLanguage
StoryConstruction
Story Schema
Word Attack ENG .72 .46 .21 .50 .37 .34
ESL .52 .40 .29 .43 .12 .05
WRAT Reading ENG .78 .47 .19 .54 .36 .26
ESL .58 .31 .09 .41 .13 .09
Fluency (Reading Time) ENG -.65 -.34 -.24 -.46 -.38 -.18
ESL -.69 -.17 -.11 -.31 -.20 -.05
Reading Comprehension ENG .63 .24 .29 .53 .51 .18
ESL .34 .36 .21 .14 .35 .20
Note: For ENG students df= 123, r = .21, p < .05; r = .24, p < .01; r = .34, p < .001; For ESL students d f = 4 8 , r = .31, p < .05 ; r = .40, p < .01; r = .52, p < .001;Based on Bonferroni adjustment, p < .001 in bold.
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The Relation between Reading and Writing for Grade 5/6 ENG and ESL Students
The results of the correlational analysis presented in Table C-2 show that 19 of the partial
correlations (controlling for chronological age) between reading and writing measures in
grade 5/6 were statistically significant, with more for ENG (16) than for ESL (3). As was
found in grade 3, the strongest correlations were between the four reading measures and
spelling, for both grade 5/6 ENG and ESL, with the exception of higher-level Reading
Comprehension for ESL.
For ENG, every reading measure was significantly correlated (ranging from r = .3 - .5,
p < .001) with the higher-level writing measure, Story Construction. In addition, almost
every other writing measure was significantly correlated (ranging from r = .5 to .6,P<
.001) with the higher-level reading measure, Reading Comprehension, (with the
exception of Productivity and Story Schema). Furthermore, the higher-level reading and
writing skills themselves, Reading Comprehension and Story Construction, were
moderately correlated, r - .51, p < .001.
In contrast, there were no significant correlations beyond reading and spelling for ESL
students in grade 5/6. This finding is somewhat surprising given that, for ESL students in
grade 3, this was where the largest number of significant correlations was found.
In view of the pattern of correlations between reading and writing skills across Grade (3,
5/6) and Language (ENG, ESL), it is important to highlight how the lower- and higher-
level reading and writing measures correlate to address the second part of question 2
directly.
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Appendix D
Correlating cognitive and language processes with lower- and higher-level reading
and writing skills
Tables D-l-4 present the partial correlations (controlling for chronological age) between
the cognitive and language processing measures and the lower- and higher-level reading
and writing skills. Tables D-l and D-2 show this relation with the cognitive measures
and Tables D-3 and D-4 show this relation with the language measures by Grade (3, 5/6)
and by Language (ENG/ESL). The results of the correlational analyses will be discussed
in the following order. First, the partial correlations (controlling for chronological age)
between the cognitive measures and the lower- and higher-level reading and writing skills
will be presented by Language (ENG/ESL) in grade 3 (Table D-l) and then grade 5/6
(Table D-2). Second, the partial correlations (controlling for chronological age) between
the language measures and the lower- and higher-level reading and writing skills will be
presented by Language (ENG/ESL) in grade 3 (Table D-3) and grade 5/6 (Table D-4).
Using the Bonferroni approach to control for Type 1 error across the many correlations, a
/?-value of less than .001 was required for significance. The correlations that reached this
level of significance are bolded in the tables.
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Table D-l
Partial Correlations (controlling for chronological age) between lower- and higher-level Reading and Writing Measures and the underlying Cognitive Processing Measures for Grade 3 ENG and ESL students
Grade 3
Cognitive Measures
Lower- and Higher-TAAS RAN Sequences
#Forward
#Backward
VerbalLearning
SentenceMemory
StoryMemory
Level Measures
Word Attack ENG .58 -.48 .47 .28 .40 .06 .44 .24
ESL .54 -.35 .44 .19 .27 .18 .38 .06
Spelling ENG .41 -.43 .39 .11 .39 .09 .29 .22
ESL .55 -.35 .51 .36 .36 .24 .42 .08
Reading ENG .39 -.36 .47 .38 .46 .31 .54 .49Comprehension
ESL .32 -.42 .42 .35 .35 .18 .45 .40
Story ENG .19 -.17 .15 .13 .00 .33 .39 .29Construction
ESL .18 -.25 .41 .17 .32 .22 .25 .22
Note: For ENG students, r =.28-.33, p<.05; r =.36-.42, p < .01; r = ,46-.58, p < .001; For ESL students, r = .21-31, p < .05; r = .34 -.40, p < .01; r = .42-.55, p < .001; Based on Bonferroni adjustment, p <.001 in bold
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The Relation Between the Lower- and Higher-Level Reading and Writing Skills and the
Cognitive Processes for ENG and ESL students in Grade 3
The results of the correlational analyses presented in Table D-l show that 13 of the
partial correlations (controlling for chronological age) between Word Attack, Spelling
and Reading Comprehension and cognitive processes in grade 3 were statistically
significant, ranging from r = .46 - .59,/? < .001. There were a comparable number of
significant correlations for both ENG (7) and ESL (6 ).
Lower-level Word Attack was significantly correlated with cognitive measures (with the
TAAS and Sequences) for both ENG (r = .59,/? < .001; r = .47,/? < .05) and ESL (r =
•54,/? < .001; r = .44,/? < .05). In contrast, lower-level Spelling was significantly
correlated with cognitive measures for ESL only with the TAAS (r = .55, p < .001);
Sequences (r = .51 , P < .05); and Sentence Memoiy (r = .42, p < .001). Higher-level
Reading Comprehension was significantly correlated with four cognitive measures for
ENG and with one for ESL. There were no significant correlations with Story
Construction for either ENG or ESL.
Thus, at grade 3, lower-level Word Attack is the only measure that shows consistent
significant correlations with cognitive measures for both ENG and ESL students. Lower-
level Spelling has significant correlations with cognitive measures for ESL students only,
and Reading Comprehension has significant correlations with cognitive measures
predominantly for ENG students.
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Table D-2
Partial Correlations (controlling for chronological age) between lower- and higher-level Reading and Writing Measures and the underlying Cognitive Processing Measures for Grade 5/6 ENG and ESL students
Grade 5/6
Cognitive Measures
Lower and Higher-
TAAS RAN Sequences #Forward
#Backward
VerbalLearning
SentenceMemory
StoryMemory
Level Measures
Word Attack ENG .56 -.52 .59 .38 .42 .29 .39 .18
ESL .56 -.35 .39 .27 .33 .07 .44 .12
Spelling ENG .43 -.46 .59 .32 .33 .30 .39 .24
ESL .25 -.43 .43 .12 .05 .11 .25 .20
Reading ENG .42 -.43 .42 .26 .28 .28 .47 .47Comprehension
ESL .37 -.17 .09 .01 .14 .31 .42 .49
Story ENG .29 -.29 .36 .22 .23 .21 .38 .21Construction
ESL .12 -.23 .14 .12 .17 .17 .07 .28
Note: For ENG students, r =. 21-.29, p < .01; r - .30-.58, p < .001; For ESL students, r = .30-.33, p < .05; r = .35-.44, p < .01; r = ,48-.56, p < .001Based on Bonferroni adjustment, p < .001 in bold
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The Relation Between the Lower- and Higher-Level Reading and Writing Skills and the
Cognitive Processes for ENG and ESL students in Grade 5/6
The results of the correlational analyses presented in Table D-2 show that 22 of the
partial correlations (controlling for chronological age) between lower- and higher-level
reading and writing skills and cognitive measures in grade 5/6 were statistically
significant, ranging from r — .30 - .59, p < .001. There were many more significant
correlations for ENG (20) than ESL (2).
For ENG, there were significant correlations between all four reading and writing
measures and the majority of cognitive measures. However, the pattern did show a larger
number of significant correlations with the lower- than the higher-level reading and
writing skills. For ESL, there were only two significant correlations, lower-level Word
Attack was significantly correlated with the TAAS (r = .56, p < .001) and higher-level
Reading Comprehension was significantly correlated with Story Memory (r =. 49, p <
.001) in contrast to the many significant correlations for ENG students.
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Table D-3
Partial Correlations (controlling for chronological age) between lower- and higher-level Reading and Writing Measures and the underlying Language Processing Measures for Grade 3 ENG and ESL students
Grade 3
Language Measures
Reading and WritingLower- and Higher- Level Measures
PPVT EVT Syntax ListeningComprehension
OLPComposite
Word Attack ENG .24 .28 .34 .30 .41
ESL .27 .13 .21 .04 .20
Spelling ENG .23 .29 .34 .17 .37
ESL .28 .23 .41 .18 .36
Reading Comprehension ENG .39 .45 .54 .46 .66
ESL .56 .50 .42 .33 .56
Story Construction ENG .18 .14 .42 .25 .39
ESL .39 .28 .29 .22 .22
Note: For ENG students, r =.28-.30,/><05; r =.34-.42,/? < .01; r = A5-.66,p < .001;For ESL students, r =.26-.29 p < .05; r =.33-.41,/? < .01; r =.50-.56 , p < ,001;Based on Bonferroni adjustment,/? <.001 in bold
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The Relation Between the Lower- and Higher-Level Reading and Writing Skills and the
Language Measures for ENG and ESL students in Grade 3
The results of the correlational analyses presented in Table D-3 show that the 7 partial
correlations (controlling for chronological age) in grade 3 that were statistically
significant, ranging from r = .45 - .66, p < .001, were between the language measures and
higher-level reading comprehension. There were a comparable number of significant
correlations for both ENG (4) and ESL (3).
All of the significant correlations were between higher-level Reading Comprehension and
the language measures for both ENG and ESL. For ENG, there were significant
correlations between Reading Comprehension and Expressive Vocabulary (r = .45, p <
.001), Grammatical Judgment of Syntax (r = .54, p < .001), Listening Comprehension (r
= .46, p < .001), and the OLP composite (r = .66, p < .001). For ESL, there were
significant correlations between Reading Comprehension and Receptive Vocabulary (r -
.56,p < .001), Expressive Vocabulary (r = .50, p < .001), and the OLP composite (r =
.56, p < .001).
There were no significant correlations between lower-level Word Attack or Spelling, or
higher-level Story Construction and the language measures in Grade 3 for either ENG or
ESL students.
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Table D-4
Partial Correlations (controlling for chronological age) between lower- and higher-level Reading and Writing Measures and the underlying Language Processing Measures for Grade 5/6 ENG and ESL students
Grade 5/6
Language Measures
Reading and WritingLower- and Higher- Level Measures
PPVT EVT Syntax ListeningComprehension
OLPComposite
Word Attack ENG .45 .36 .26 .31 .44
ESL .19 .16 .25 .13 .25
Spelling ENG .43 .45 .23 .28 .44
ESL .35 .26 .22 .11 .29
Reading Comprehension ENG .64 .63 .41 .54 .71
ESL .43 .51 .55 .59 .69
Story Construction ENG .36 .38 .28 .34 .44
ESL .17 .11 .04 .12 .13
Note: for ENG students, r = 2 3 -2 1 , p < .01; r =.31-.71, p < .001; For ESL students, r = .35, p < .01; r = .42-.69, p < .001Based on Bonferroni adjustment,/? <.001 in bold
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The Relation Between the Lower- and Higher-Level Reading and Writing Skills and the
Language Measures for ENG and ESL students in Grade 5/6
The results of the correlational analyses presented in Table D-4 show that 19 of the
partial correlations (controlling for chronological age) between lower- and higher-level
reading and writing skills and language measures in grade 5/6 were statistically
significant and ranged from r = .34 to .71 ,P< .001. As with the cognitive measures in
grade 5/6, there were a larger number of significant correlations for ENG (16) than ESL
(3).
For ENG, there were significant correlations between all four lower- and higher- level
reading and writing measures and the language measures. For ESL, there were only
significant correlations between higher-level Reading Comprehension and the language
measures.
Summary of the correlations between Lower- and Higher-Level Reading and Writing,
and Cognitive and Language Measures for ENG and ESL students
One of the most predominant patterns seen in these partial correlations between reading,
writing, cognitive and language measures was that Word Attack was the one measure for
which the cognitive measures were correlated for both ENG and ESL students in grade 3.
In addition, Reading Comprehension was the one measure for which many of the
language measures were significantly correlated for both ENG and ESL across grade (3
and 5/6). For ENG, the largest number of significant correlations was present in grade
5/6 with both cognitive and language measures. For ESL, the largest number of
correlations was present in grade 3, predominantly with the cognitive measures.
Given these differences in the correlations between the lower- and higher-level reading
and writing measures and the cognitive and language measures for ENG and ESL
students, it is valuable to examine how much of the variance is accounted for by these
underlying cognitive and language measures.
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Appendix EFactor Analysis by Grade
Further exploration was undertaken within Grade (3, 5/6) to determine if the cognitive
and language factors that were used to create the composites were stable across
development. Factor loadings are presented by grade in Table 1 (Grade 3) and Table 2
(Grade 5/6).
Table 1 - Factor Loadings of the Cognitive and Language Processing Measures in Grade 3
Principal Component Analysis with Varimax Rotation
Components
Measures 1 2 3
Expressive Vocabulary .830
Receptive Vocabulary .807
Story Memory .749
Listening Comprehension .638
Syntax .621 .309
Sequences .747
Sentence Memory .515 .676
Working Memory .610
TAAS .670
RAN -.677
Short-term Memory .876
Note: Values in boldface represent the highest loadings for each factor.
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Table 2 - Factor Loadings of the Cognitive and Language Processing Measures in Grade 5/6
Principal Component Analysis with Varimax Rotation
Components
Measures 1 2 3
Receptive Vocabulary .813
Syntax .737
Expressive Vocabulary .717
Listening Comprehension .650
Sentence Memory .619 .408
Working Memory .699
TAAS .658
RAN -.610
Short-term Memory .652
Sequences .524
Story Memory .368 .6 6 6
Verbal Learning .637
Note: Values in boldface represent the highest loadings for each factor.
These analyses indicate that the factors identified for the combined group are relatively
stable across development when split by Grade (3, 5/6).
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Appendix F
Sequential Regression Split by Language (ENG/ESL) with OLP entered before Cognitive Ability
Since one could argue that the cognitive measures are confounded to some extent with
OLP, particularly for the ESL group, further exploration was undertaken with the OLP
composite entered before the Cognitive Ability composite. It is important to note
however, that the ability to develop language skills also partly depends on cognitive
ability. A comparison of the two methods indicates that OLP, as would be expected,
accounted for more of the variance when entered first, particularly for reading
comprehension, although word attack remained similar. In terms of writing measures,
spelling remained similar for ENG, and the two composites evened out in their
contribution for ESL. For story construction, the contribution of OLP was larger for
ENG, and both OLP and Cognitive Ability contributed for ESL. The pattern changed for
ENG story schema, but remained similar for ESL.
Table 1. Summary of the Percentage of Variance Accounted for by the Composites on the Lower- and Higher-Level Reading Skills for ENG (n = 179) and ESL (n = 110) Learners
Word Attack Reading ComprehensionR2 change________________ R2 change______
ENG ESL ENG ESLGrade 4 7 ** 6.3 ** 0 .1 0.11OLP 2i \ *** 7 2 * * 50.8 *** 36.2 ***Cognitive Ability j 2 q *** 20.3 *** 1.3 * 4 4 **Total Variance 37.7 33.8 52.2 40.7* p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001
1 The fact that Grade did not account for any of the variance is not surprising given that two different tests were used for Grade 3 and 5/6. Thus, the difference between the two cannot be meaningfully compared.
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Table 2. Summary of the Percentage of Variance Accounted for by the Composites on the Lower- and Higher-Level Writing Skills for ENG (n = 179) and ESL (n = 110) Learners
Spelling Story ConstructionR2 change________________ R2 change
ENG ESL ENG ESLGrade 22.7 *** 40.2 *** 2 .6 * 9.8 **OLP 7̂ 4 *** 7 g *** 2 2 .8 *** 5.3 **Cognitive Ability 6 .6 *** 7 9 *** 0 .8 4.0*Total Variance 46.7 55.8 26.2 19.1* p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001
Table 3. Summary of the Percentage of Variance Accounted for by the Composites on Story Schema for ENG (n = 179) and ESL (n = 110) Learners
Story Schema R2change
ENG ESLGrade 1 .8 7.9 **OLP 5.1 ** 6 .2 **Cognitive Ability 2 .0 0 .0
Total Variance 8.9 14.1* p < .05, * * p < .01, ***p < .001Sequential Regression by Language for Story Schema with the Cognitive Ability composite entered before OLP
Table 4. Summary of the Percentage of Variance accounted for by the Composites on Story Schema for ENG (n = 179) and ESL (n = 110) Learners
Story Schema R2change
ENG ESLGrade 1 .8 7 9 **Cognitive Ability 4 4 ** .5OLP 2.7* 5.7*Total Variance 8.9 14.1*p < .05, * * p < .01, ***p < .001
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Appendix G
Accounting for variance on the lower- and higher-level reading and writing
measures in the combined sample
Table 1 presents the results of the sequential regressions for the four lower- and higher-
level reading and writing measures. Cognitive Ability accounted for the most variance in
lower-level Word Attack, Grade (followed by Cognitive Ability) accounted for the most
variance in lower-level Spelling, while OLP accounted for the most variance in both
higher-level Reading Comprehension and Story Construction.
Table 1.
Summary of the Percentage of Variance Accounted for by the Composites on the Four Measures of Lower- and Higher-Level Reading and Writing Skills
Word Attack
R2change
Reading Comprehension
R2change
SpellingR2
change
Story Construction
R2changeGrade ̂2 *** 0 .0 27.0 *** 5 i ***
Language 0 .2 0.9 1.9 ** 0 .0
Cognitive Ability 2 4 .4 *** 1 2 .8 *** 13.8 *** ^ 4 ***
OLP 6 .0 *** 32.0 *** y 4 *** q 4 ***
Interactions 0.4 0 .1 0 .0 0 .6
(Lang X Cognitive Ability)(Lang X OLP)
Total Variance 36.0 45.8 49.1 21.5
* p < .05, **p < .01, *** p < .001
Lower-level reading measure - Word Attack
Both Cognitive Ability and OLP contributed significantly to the regression for Word
Attack. Grade (3, 5/6) contributed 5.2 percent of the explained variance (p < .001) while
Language did not. Cognitive Ability accounted for 24.4 percent of the variance in Word
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Attack, and Oral Language Proficiency (OLP) accounted for a further 5.3 percent.
Cognitive Ability made the most overall contribution to Word Attack, accounting for
24.4 percent of the total 36.2 percent of the variance ip < .001). There were no
significant interaction effects for Language. These results were not surprising given that
Word Attack is a lower-level reading skill with demands on many cognitive skills such as
phonemic awareness, working memory, and sequencing needed to manipulate the sounds
of language in order to read phonemic approximations of pseudowords.
Higher level reading measure - Reading Comprehension
For higher-level Reading Comprehension, both Cognitive Ability and Oral Language
Proficiency composites contributed significantly to the regression. Grade and Language
did not account significantly for any of the explained variance. However, Cognitive
Ability accounted for 12.8 percent of the variance (p < .001) while the OLP composite
made the largest contribution, accounting for a further 34.2 percent (p < .001). There
were no significant interaction effects with Language. These results were not surprising
given that Reading Comprehension is a higher-level reading skill with complex language
and cognitive demands.
Lower-level writing measure - WRAT Spelling
Grade (3, 5/6) significantly accounted for 27 percent of the total variance (p < .001) in
lower-level Spelling. Language accounted for only 1.9 percent of the variance. Both
Cognitive Ability and OLP composites contributed significantly to the regression, with
the Cognitive Ability composite accounting for most of the variance, at 13.8 percent
(p < .001), and OLP a further 6 .6 percent (p <.001). No interaction effects with Language were found. It was not surprising that the Cognitive Ability composite
explained the most variance for Spelling, as it did for Word Attack, both of the lower-
level reading and writing skills. As with Word Attack, the speller was required to
manipulate, remember and sequence the sounds of language in order to spell both new
and already acquired words.
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Higher level writing measure - Story Construction
For higher-level Story Construction, Grade accounted for 5.1 percent of the variance and
Language did not contribute significantly. The Cognitive Ability and OLP composites
contributed a further 6.4 percent, and then 9.9 percent. No interaction effects with
Language were found. The OLP composite explained the most variance in the higher-
level writing skill, as it did for the higher-level reading skill - Reading Comprehension.
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Appendix H
Stepwise Regression Split by Language (ENG/ESL) on Story Construction
Further exploration was undertaken to explore how ESL students were able to achieve
comparably with ENG students on higher-level story construction despite significantly
lower OLP.
Table 1. Summary of the Percentage of Variance Accounted for by the Composites on Higher-Level Story Construction for ENG Learners
Story Construction R2change
ENGOLP 23.2 *Grade 2 .2 *Total Variance 25.4* p < .05, **p < .01, *** p < .001
Table 2. Summary of the Percentage of Variance Accounted for by the Composites on Higher-Level Story Construction for ESL Learners
Story ConstructionR2change
ESLOLP 13.3 *Cognitive Ability 4.0*Total Variance 17.3* p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001
These results indicate that OLP accounted for less of the variance for ESL story
construction than it did for ENG. Oral Language Proficiency still accounted for more of
the variance overall in story construction for both ENG and ESL students. However, for
ENG students, grade accounted for the remainder of the explained variance, while for
ESL students, Cognitive Ability accounted for the remainder of the explained variance.
It may be the contribution of Cognitive Ability, and the smaller contribution of OLP that
distinguishes ESL from ENG students, thus allowing for comparable results on story
construction despite significant differences in OLP favoring ENG students.
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Stepwise Regression Split by Language (ENG/ESL) on Story Schema
Table 3. Summary of the Percentage of Variance accounted for by the Composites on Story Schema for ENG Learners
Story Schema R2change
ENGOLP 6 .8 *Total Variance 6 .8 ** p < .05, * * p < . 01, ***/?<.001
Stepwise Regression Split by Language (ENG/ESL)
Table 4. Summary of the Percentage of Variance Accounted for by the Composites on Story Schema for ESL Learners
Story Schema R2change
ESLOLP 13.0*Total Variance 13.0* p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001
These results indicate that OLP actually accounted for more of the variance for ESL story
schema than it did for ENG. This higher-level writing task tapped a different skill than
story construction.
Further exploration was initially attempted to determine the contribution of the various
components within the Cognitive Ability and OLP composites, however, given the
number of regressions undertaken and the small sample size, the analyses were not
included.
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Appendix I
Sequential Regression Split by Grade (3,5/6) and Language (ENG/ESL) with
Cognitive Ability entered before OLP
Exploratory regressions were undertaken in order to determine if the structure of
predictors was stable across Grade. However, given the small sample size when presented
by Grade, the results of these regressions should be interpreted with caution. No firm
conclusions can be drawn.
Table 1. Summary of the Percentage of Variance Accounted for by the Composites on the Lower- and Higher-Level Reading Skills for ENG (n = 52) and ESL (n = 55) Learners in Grade 3
Word Attack R2change
Reading Comprehension R2change
ENG ESL ENG ESLCognitive Ability 24 3 *** 2 7 2 *** 29 4 *** 2 5 7 **OLP 9.5 ** 1 .2 32 5 *** 219 ***Total Variance 33.8 28.4 50.9 37.7* p < .05, * * p < .01, *** p < .001
Table 2. Summary of the Percentage of Variance Accounted for by the Composites on the Lower- and Higher-Level Writing Skills for ENG (n = 52) and ESL (n = 55) Learners in Grade 3
Spelling R2change
Story Construction R2change
ENG ESL ENG ESLCognitive Ability 14.2 ** 34.8 *** 1.1 14.6**OLP 5.5 5.0* 20.6 *** 6.4 *Total Variance 19.7 39.8 2 1 .6 2 1 .0* p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001
Table 3. Summary of the Percentage of Variance accounted for by the Composites on Story Schema for ENG (n = 52) and ESL (n = 55) Learners in Grade 3
Story Schema R2change
ENG ESLCognitive Ability 0.3 2 .8
OLP 4.2 7.5 *Total Variance 4.5 10.3* p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001
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Sequential Regression Split by Grade (3,5/6) and Language (ENG/ESL) with
Cognitive Ability entered before OLP
Table 1. Summary of the Percentage of Variance Accounted for by the Composites on the Lower- and Higher-Level Reading Skills for ENG (n = 123) and ESL (n = 48) Learners in Grade 5/6
Word Attack R2change
Reading Comprehension R2change
ENG ESL ENG ESLCognitive Ability 25.3 *** 28.7*** 1 0 7 *** 9.1 *OLP 1 0 l *** 3.5 42.5 *** 38.6 ***Total Variance 35.4 32.2 53.1 47.8* p < .05, * * p < .01, *** p < .001
Table 2. Summary of the Percentage of Variance Accounted for by the Composites on the Lower- and Higher-Level Writing Skills for ENG (n = 123) and ESL (n = 48) Learners in Grade 5/6
Spelling R2 change
Story Construction R2change
ENG ESL ENG ESLCognitive Ability 22.2 *** 7.7 9.8*** 1.6OLP 13.0*** 7.5 16.3 *** .3Total Variance 35.2 15.2 26.2 1.9* p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001
Table 3. Summary of the Percentage of Variance accounted for by the Composites on Story Schema for ENG (n = 123) and ESL ( n = 48) Learners in Grade 5/6
Story Schema R2change
ENG ESLCognitive Ability 11.5*** .6
OLP 2.0 3.8Total Variance 13.5 4.5* p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001
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Sequential Regression Split by Grade (3,5/6) and Language (ENG/ESL) with OLP entered before Cognitive Ability
Table 1. Summary of the Percentage of Variance Accounted for by the Composites on the Lower- and Higher-Level Reading Skills for ENG (n = 52) and ESL (n = 55) Learners in Grade 3
Word Attack R2change
Reading Comprehension R2change
ENG ESL ENG ESLOLP 2 i 9 *** 6.5 * 46 8 *** 31 7 ***Cognitive Ability 2 i 9 *** 4.1 * 6.0 *Total Variance 33.8 28.4 50.9 37.7* p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001
Table 2. Summary of the Percentage of Variance Accounted for by the Composites on the Lower- and Higher-Level Writing Skills for ENG (n = 52) and ESL (n = 55) Learners in Grade 3
Spelling Story ConstructionR2 change________________ R2 change
ENG ESL ENG ESLOLP 12.7 ** 14.8 ** 2 i 3 *** 13.4 **Cognitive Ability 7.0* 25.0 *** 0.3 7.6*Total Variance 19.7 39.8 2 1 .6 2 1 .0
* p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001
Table 3. Summary of the Percentage of Variance accounted for by the Composites on Story Schema for ENG (n = 52) and ESL (n = 55) Learners in Grade 3
Story Schema R2 change
ENG ESLOLP 3.1 9.9*Cognitive Ability 1.4 0.4Total Variance 4.5 10.3* p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001
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Sequential Regression Split by Grade (3,5/6) and Language (ENG/ESL) with OLP entered before Cognitive Ability
Table 1. Summary of the Percentage of Variance Accounted for by the Composites on the Lower- and Higher-Level Reading Skills for ENG (n = 123) and ESL (n = 48) Learners in Grade 5/6
Word Attack R2 change
Reading Comprehension R2change
ENG ESL ENG ESLOLP 22.7 *** 10.4 * 52.5 *** 45.4 ***Cognitive Ability j 2 7 *** 218 *** 0 .6 2.4Total Variance 35.4 32.2 53.1 47.8* p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001
Table 2. Summary of the Percentage of Variance Accounted for by the Composites on the Lower- and Higher-Level Writing Skills for ENG (n = 123) and ESL (n = 48) Learners in Grade 5/6
Spelling Story ConstructionR2 change________________ R2 change
ENG ESL ENG ESLOLP 25.6 *** 1 0 .8 * 24 i *** 0 .8
Cognitive Ability g 7 *** 4.4 2 .1 1.1
Total Variance 35.2 15.2 26.2 1.9* p < .05, **p < .01, *** p < .001
Table 3. Summary of the Percentage of Variance accounted for by the Composites on Story Schema for ENG (n = 123) and ESL (n = 48) Learners in Grade 5/6
Story Schema R2 change
ENG ESLOLP 6.3 ** 3.0Cognitive Ability 7.2 ** 1.5Total Variance 13.5 4.5* p < .05, **p < .01, *** p < .001
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These results indicate that there was basically no difference in the structure of the
predictors for word attack between grade 3 and 5/6 regardless of whether Cognitive
Ability or OLP was entered first. However, for reading comprehension, there was a larger
contribution of OLP in grade 5/6 than in grade 3, again, regardless of whether Cognitive
Ability or OLP was entered first. There were differences in the structure of the predictors
for both spelling, story construction and story schema, with no significant contributions
for ESL in grade 5/6 on these measures. It is important to note that caution must be taken
when interpreting these results given the small sample size when presented by grade.
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