THE DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGE AND READING SKILLS

IN EMERGING BILINGUAL CHILDREN

by

Dana David

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements

for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Department of Applied Psychology and Human Development

Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

University of Toronto

© 2013 by Dana David

ii

THE DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGE AND READING SKILLS

IN EMERGING BILINGUAL CHILDREN

Doctor of Philosophy, 2013

Dana David

Department of Applied Psychology and Human Development

Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

University of Toronto

Abstract

This dissertation examined language and literacy development in English-Hebrew

emerging bilinguals. During their senior kindergarten year, one group of children participated

in a bilingual English-Hebrew program (“early” group; n = 17) while another participated in

an English-language program with minimal Hebrew instruction (“late” group; n = 19). Both

groups were merged in Grade 1 and continued to receive a partial Hebrew immersion

program. The first part of this dissertation explored longitudinally how an early partial

Hebrew immersion program contributes to literacy (word reading, pseudoword reading,

reading comprehension), language (vocabulary and morphological awareness (MA)),

phonological awareness, and rapid automatized naming in English and Hebrew. Similar

improvement from senior kindergarten to Grade 1 was noted for both groups across all

measures, however the early group displayed significantly stronger Hebrew vocabulary

skills. Literacy and language inter- and cross-linguistic correlation patterns were not

significantly different between the two groups.

iii

The second part examined the relevance of the Simple View of Reading framework

(SVR; Gough & Tunmer, 1986) in Grade 1 (N = 36). The contribution of word reading and

language proficiency was examined within and between languages. Two aspects of MA

(derivational awareness and inflectional awareness) were considered as additional

components of oral language. Word reading, vocabulary and both MA measures were used as

predictors. The SVR model significantly explained English reading comprehension based on

a combination of word reading and derivational awareness (but not vocabulary), and Hebrew

reading comprehension based on word reading and vocabulary. In English, derivational

awareness contributed unique variance to reading comprehension above word reading

although this was not the case in Hebrew. In addition, English word reading and inflectional

awareness predicted Hebrew reading comprehension, thus supporting the SVR model cross-

linguistically, although the reverse was not true.

Overall, the children attending the Hebrew early immersion programming had an

advantage for Hebrew vocabulary skills with no negative repercussions on their English

language and literacy skills. The study supports the relevance of the SVR framework for

young emerging bilinguals, and underscores the importance of considering aspects of MA as

components of oral language proficiency that contribute to reading comprehension in these

learners.

iv

Acknowledgements

First and foremost, I would like to express my sincerest thanks to Dr. Esther Geva,

my doctoral supervisor, for her patience, guidance, wisdom, and support throughout the

duration of my program. You watched me mature over the years and significantly contributed

to my development as a researcher, clinician and person. You have always been, and

continue to be, an inspiration and model of how to make a career based on love and passion

in a meaningful way. Todah!

My gratitude also extends to my committee members, Dr. Hélène Deacon and Dr.

Rhonda Martinussen. Your insightful approaches throughout the dissertation process have

been beyond valuable. Your intelligence, warmth, and constructive feedback will always be

incredibly appreciated.

Thank you to my external examiner, Dr. Patrick Proctor, and my internal examiner,

Dr. Judy Wiener, for devoting the time to thoughtfully challenge my thinking and provide me

with valuable feedback and questions to ponder.

I have also been so lucky as to have had the continuing mentorship of Dr. Lesly

Wade-Woolley. Thank you for your never-ending support and always being there, both when

a milestone was achieved and when tears were shed. You continue to be a source of guidance

and insight.

Receiving the Israel Travel Award from the University of Toronto School of

Graduate Studies/ Canadian Friends of Hebrew University allowed me to have very fruitful

discussions with Dr. David Share and Dr. Michal Shany, faculty members of the University

of Haifa. Many thanks for your time, thoughts and feedback.

v

Furthermore, I must extend my appreciation to the clinical supervisors I have had

over the years. It was an honour to work under and learn from a brilliant group of clinicians

who served as positive role models with endless support when it came to completing my

program and lending a sympathetic ear when times were challenging. Thank you to Drs. Jan

Gouse-Sheese, Marla Bigel, Sheri Turrell, Mary Stewart, Rosemary Waxman, Janine Hay,

Doug Schmidt, Andy Cancelliere, and Laura Janzen.

I have also had the opportunity to work with many clever and wonderful people while

at OISE. To my labmates who have been incredible mentors and reminders of what we can

achieve: Dr. Marcus Benayon, Dr. Chanthalone Smith, Dr. Todd Cunningham, Dr. Fataneh

Farnia, Adrian Pasquarella, and Mahshid Azimi - I look forward to being your colleague and

maintaining the shared ties from our lab. I am forever grateful for the friendships I have

made over the years with such talented people who have made my experience that much

more enjoyable: Nathalie Conn Krieger, Rachel Gropper, Ilana Goodman, Danielle Pignon,

Kelly Nash, Jessica Cooper, Brooke Fletcher, Annie Leroux, Lauren Sangster, Maggie

Hewitt, and Ardith Baerveldt.

This dissertation would not have been possible without the assistance and support

from the enthusiastic children, parents, teachers and administrators at Associated Hebrew

Day School- Posluns campus. Thank you for your cooperation and participation. Moreover,

this research would also not have been possible without the extraordinary group of bright and

energetic research assistants that I was fortunate to have on my team.

I have the most remarkable group of friends that one could ask for. Lenore Rotenberg

Lanel, Jill Teplitsky, Nicki Bedard, Jamie Britton, Patty Zimmerman, Joanne Sallay, and

Risa Goldbergז"ל

: Thank you for your never-ending support, confidence, moments of laughter

vi

and shoulders to cry on, as well as for our shared appreciation of wine and mojitos. You are

my best friends and have been a huge part of this accomplishment.

Aba, Ima, Joel, Aaron, Orlee, Savta & Aunyu: You have been my foundation from

the onset, instilling only motivation, drive, excitement, and confidence in me. You kept me

standing through the challenges, only to remind me that I can accomplish whatever I set my

mind towards. Loving and believing in me the way that you do is why I have been able to get

to this point. I genuinely and sincerely know that I could not have accomplished this

significant personal achievement without all of you.

vii

Table of Contents

Chapter One: Introduction & Literature Review 1

Introduction 1

Literature Review 7

Context for Language Learning: Understanding Second Language Acquisition 7

Second language learners in Canada 7

Second language acquisition and linguistic aspects 8

Bilingualism and second language proficiency considerations 9

Immersion Programs 11

Parochial day-schools 16

Investigating Early Hebrew Immersion for Native English Speakers 18

Metalinguistic Skills and Typology 19

Morphological awareness 20

English morphology and its development 21

Hebrew morphology and its development 23

Morphological awareness and literacy 26

Phonological awareness 32

Phonological awareness and reading in monolinguals 32

Phonological awareness and reading in bilinguals 34

Naming Speed and Reading in Monolinguals 37

RAN and reading in bilinguals 38

Orthographic Depth and Reading 40

Early Literacy Development in Bilinguals 42

Reading Comprehension 44

Reading comprehension in bilinguals 44

Cross-Linguistic Transfer 45

Theories of language transfer 46

Role of oral language proficiency in cross-linguistic transfer 51

Morphological awareness and cross-linguistic transfer 53

Cross-linguistic transfer of MA in English-Hebrew bilinguals 55

viii

The Simple View of Reading 58

Considering the Simple View of Reading from a bilingual perspective 61

The Present Study 66

Question 1 67

Question 2 69

Question 3 73

Question 4 76

Summary of the present study 78

Chapter Two: Method 79

Participants and Procedure 79

Participants 79

Data collection 82

Measures 85

Cognitive Processing Measures 85

Nonverbal reasoning 85

Rapid automatized naming 85

Phonological awareness 85

Language Proficiency Measures 86

Vocabulary 86

Morphological Awareness 87

Inflectional Awareness 87

Derivational Awareness 88

Reading Measures 89

Word Reading 89

Nonword Reading 90

Reading Comprehension 90

Chapter Three: Results 92

Introduction 92

ix

Question One 92

Question Two 96

Question Three 105

Predicting English (L1) Reading Comprehension with English Variables 110

Predicting Hebrew (L2) Reading Comprehension with Hebrew Variables 111

Question Four 113

Chapter Four: Discussion 118

The Development of Language and Literacy Skills in Early and Late

Partial Immersion 119

Impact of early Hebrew immersion programming: Language skills 120

Impact of early Hebrew immersion programming: Reading skills 122

Impact of early Hebrew immersion programming: The relationship

between language and reading skills 125

Emergent Bilingualism, the Simple View of Reading, and Cross-linguistic

Transfer 127

The Simple View of Reading and young emergent bilinguals 128

The Simple View of Reading within English as a first language 129

The Simple View of Reading: The case of emerging Hebrew as a

second language. 131

Considering MA as a unique aspect of oral language within the Simple

View of Reading 133

Examining the Simple View of Reading cross-linguistically for young

emergent bilinguals 139

Including MA as a cross-linguistic measure of oral language within the

Simple View of Reading 141

Final Discussion and Summary 145

Limitations and Future Directions 148

Sample 148

Measures 151

x

Study duration 154

Transfer 155

Conclusions 156

References 158

Appendices 173

xi

List of Tables

Table 1 Measures Collected at Each of the Three Time Points 83

Table 2 Language and Literacy Descriptive Statistics (mean (SD), minimum/maximum; raw

scores) for the Early (n = 17) and Late (n = 19) Groups at each Testing Wave 93

Table 3 The Effects of Time and Group (Early/Late) on Language and Literacy Measures -

Repeated Measures ANOVA and t-test Summary Results 95

Table 4 Descriptive Statistics (mean, SD, minimum and maximum scores) and t-test Results

(df = 34) for the Early (n = 17) and Late (n = 19) Groups at Time 3 99

Table 5 Skewness and Kurtosis Results for the Early (n = 17) and Late (n = 19) Groups

at Time 3 100

Table 6 Correlational Results for Age and Nonverbal Reasoning with the

Variables of Interest in the Full Sample (N = 36) at Time 3 102

Table 7 Partial Correlations, Controlled for Nonverbal Reasoning, for the

Early (n = 17; below diagonal) and Late (n = 19; above diagonal)

Groups 103

Table 8 Descriptive Statistics for Literacy and Language Skills in English and Hebrew

(Time 3) 106

Table 9 Distribution Statistics for Literacy and Language Skills in English and

Hebrew 107

Table 10 Correlational Results for Age and Nonverbal Reasoning with English

and Hebrew Word Reading and Reading Comprehension (N = 36) at Time 3 108

Table 11 Inter-Correlations among Reading Comprehension, Word Reading,

Vocabulary, and Morphological Awareness Tasks, within English

(below diagonal) and Hebrew (above diagonal) 109

Table 12 Hierarchical Linear Regression Examining the Role of English Word

Reading, Receptive Vocabulary, Inflectional Awareness, and Derivational

Awareness in Predicting English Reading Comprehension Within a 3-step

Model 111

xii

Table 13 Hierarchical Linear Regression Examining the Role of Hebrew Word

Reading, Receptive Vocabulary, Inflectional Awareness, and Derivational

Awareness in Predicting Hebrew Reading Comprehension Within a 3-step

Model 112

Table 14 Cross-linguistic Inter-correlations among Literacy and Language Skills 114

Table 15 Hierarchical Linear Regression Examining the Role of English Word

Reading, Receptive Vocabulary, Inflectional Awareness, and Derivational

Awareness in Predicting Hebrew Reading Comprehension (a 3-step

Model) 116

xiii

List of Appendices

Appendix A. Parent Information Letter 173

Appendix B. Consent Form 174

Appendix C. Child Assent Script 176

Appendix D. Test Batteries 177

Appendix E. Hebrew Receptive Vocabulary Task 178

Appendix F. Hebrew Word Reading Task 179

Appendix G. Hebrew Nonword Reading Task. 180

Appendix H. Hebrew Reading Comprehension Task 181

Appendix I. English Inflectional Morphology Task. 185

Appendix J. Hebrew Inflectional Morphology Task 186

Appendix K. English Derivational Morphology Task 187

Appendix L. Hebrew Derivational Morphology Task 188

xiv

Dedication

This dissertation is dedicated to:

The memory of my two grandfathers,

Aupu- Eugene (Yehuda) David ז"ל

Saba- Samuel (Shmuel) Levinson ז"ל

FOREVER AND ALWAYS MY MENTORS AND IN MY HEART

And

The honour of my mother,

Miriam David

YOU ARE MY INSPIRATION

1

Chapter One

Introduction & Literature Review

Introduction

In recent years, questions pertaining to the role of cognitive skills, such as

phonological awareness (PA) and rapid automatized naming (RAN), in reading development

in emerging bilinguals have been at the forefront of developmental language and literacy

research (Dressler & Kamil, 2006; Geva, 2006a). PA, RAN, and other aspects of cognition

(e.g. working memory, phonological short term memory) are thought to be related to word

reading and reading comprehension outcomes (e.g., Genesee & Geva, 2006; Wolf & Bowers,

1999).

Morphological awareness (MA) has recently emerged as another important oral

language factor related to reading skill (e.g., Carlisle, 2000; Deacon, Wade-Woolley &

Kirby, 2007; Fowler & Liberman, 1995; McBride-Chang et al., 2005; Saiegh-Haddad &

Geva, 2007). Investigating MA, PA and RAN within the context of children developing

language and literacy skills (i.e., word reading and reading comprehension) concurrently in

two typologically different languages is theoretically important. This type of analysis can

identify those processing components that are universal and those that are language specific,

while also addressing important questions pertaining to first (L1) and second language (L2)

development.

Universality refers to the cognitive and neurological processes that are assumed to be

similar across languages regardless of typological differences in the orthography or elements

of the spoken language (Geva, 2006a; Geva & Siegel, 2000). Languages vary in the structure

2

of the oral and written language, and the objective of understanding developmental impacts is

to “identify language-specific constraints and describe similarities and differences in

learning-to-read experiences systematically across languages” (Koda & Zehler, 2008, p. 5).

In this respect, investigating the development of language and literacy skills in English-

speaking (L1) children learning Hebrew as a second language (L2) provides an opportunity

to observe the roles that MA, PA and RAN might play in the development of word reading

and text comprehension skills in these alphabetic languages with different orthographies and

language structures in the context of early literacy development. Investigating aspects of

universality and typologically sensitive processes contributes to a model of language

development, with knowledge on how to best enhance bilingual and multilingual oral and

literacy skills.

Koda and Zehler (2008) point out that, before learning how to read, individuals

require an understanding of language elements. Metalinguistic awareness is a term used to

refer to the ability to attend to these specific language elements, such as morphological,

syntactic and semantic awareness (e.g., Proctor & Silverman, 2011). Once a basic

understanding of language exists, the relationships between children’s metalinguistic

awareness and literacy skills become reciprocal (Koda & Zehler). It is through this

reciprocity that L1-L2 transfer can be traced. Determining the ways in which an introduction

to a second language through bilingual educational programming at different points in

schooling may influence the relationships among MA, PA, RAN and orthography is crucial

because this information can lead to important developmental and educational considerations

with respect to literacy development and instruction. Specifically, understanding how

proficiency in one language relates to proficiency on similar elements in the second

3

language, as well as the factors associated with such linguistic relationships, has considerable

developmental and educational implications for both language and literacy skills.

The Simple View of Reading (SVR; Gough & Tunmer, 1986) is one model of reading

comprehension which has received ample attention and criticism in recent years (e.g., Kirby

& Savage, 2008). It suggests that reading comprehension is a product of access to the printed

word (i.e., pseudoword (or nonword) reading and word recognition) and the ability to

understand language (i.e., oral language proficiency). This model has recently been shown to

be generally relevant to English language learners (Gottardo & Mueller, 2009; Proctor,

Carlo, August, & Snow, 2005; Zadeh, Farnia, & Geva, 2012) as well as to French immersion

students (Erdos, Genesee, Savage & Haigh, 2010), and considered to appropriately explain

reading comprehension across different alphabetic orthographies, although to different

degrees (Florit & Cain, 2011). Indeed, as argued by Kirby and Savage (2008), this is a very

simple view, possibly even too simple a view for explaining the complex range of skills

involved in reading comprehension. This may be especially true when considering reading

comprehension in emerging bilinguals and the potential impact of first language oral and

literacy skills as well as language typologies on the development of second language and

literacy skills.

The models used to conceptualize bilingual development, or language and literacy

development in different languages, have been based, to a large extent, on English language

and literacy research (Share, 2008). These models are often used to inform practice and

research in languages that drastically differ from English with respect to linguistic and

orthographic structure, and until recent years have not considered social and political context

and typological differences, especially for bilingual development (Saiegh-Haddad & Geva,

4

2010; Share, 2008). Share emphasized the importance of addressing the “anglocentricities”

of current language and literacy research based on English as the gold standard. While Share

acknowledged that there are commonalities among alphabetic languages and most likely

universalities, researchers also need to consider language-specific elements when conducting

research and making generalizations. For example, there is evidence that developing

decoding skills in vowelized Hebrew may be less demanding than developing accurate

decoding skills in English (Geva & Siegel, 2000). At the same time, Hebrew is

morphologically more complex than English (see below). This may mean that the role of

language comprehension components may be more substantial when reading in Hebrew than

in English. Investigating cross-linguistic contributions to language and literacy skills in

bilinguals is one way of examining universal and language-specific processes, including the

relevance of the SVR.

When considering the validity of theoretical frameworks such as cross-linguistic

contributions (i.e., transfer) and typological effects on universal and language specific

processes, it is important to take into account developmental aspects as well. Developmental

aspects can be conceptualized both in terms of age of the learners and in terms of how much

exposure learners have had to the first and second languages. As suggested by Cummins

(1981) in his interdependence hypothesis, “To the extent that instruction in the first language

is effective in promoting proficiency in the first language, transfer of this proficiency to the

second language will occur provided there is adequate exposure to the second language

(either in school or environment) and adequate motivation to learn the second language”

(1981, p. 29). That is, according to Cummins, one condition for transfer to take place is that

the learners have achieved some threshold of proficiency in the second language (for a

5

critique see Genesee & Geva, 2006; Wade-Woolley & Geva, 1999). In the context of

emerging bilinguals whose proficiency in the second language is minimal, one might find

that “transfer” does not occur because it may be that the second language skills are still

underdeveloped. Developmentally, this might mean that positive transfer (often

conceptualized as positive correlations between relevant first and second language skills)

may not be noticed in the first year of exposure to the second language because a minimal

threshold of proficiency has not yet been attained. Accordingly, positive correlations between

relevant first and second language skills may be detected at some later point, when the

emerging bilinguals have had more exposure or more intensive exposure to the second

language, and therefore more opportunities to develop some proficiency in the second

language.

This dissertation seeks to explore issues pertaining to oral language (i.e., vocabulary,

MA), word reading and reading comprehension development of bilingual children in the

context of emergent bilingual skills. Specifically considered are children whose home

language is English and who are acquiring English and Hebrew literacy skills in a partial

immersion context. This dissertation has two main objectives. The first targets developmental

aspects, examining whether English-speaking children exposed to early Hebrew immersion

programming display different rates of growth on measures of vocabulary knowledge and

components of literacy (i.e., word reading, nonword reading, and reading comprehension) in

both languages, when compared to children who did not receive early Hebrew immersion

programming. The objective here is to establish the areas where there are differences

between a group that received earlier immersion exposure to a second language and a group

that received later exposure to the second language. It was hypothesized that these

6

differences in time of onset and extent of exposure would not have an impact on first

language skills but that the group with early immersion would obtain higher level language

(vocabulary) and literacy (reading comprehension) skills in the second language.

The second objective of this dissertation is to examine whether components of the

SVR model (i.e., word reading skills and language proficiency) can predict reading

comprehension at the end of Grade 1 in English-speaking children learning Hebrew as a

second language. Given that Hebrew and English differ in terms of their morphology and

writing system and that the children in this study already have age appropriate command of

their home language, it was hypothesized that different components of language proficiency

might explain variance in reading comprehension in each of the languages. In particular, it

was hypothesized that MA, a component of language proficiency, would play a unique role,

above and beyond the contributions of word reading and vocabulary, in English and Hebrew.

Lastly, the SVR model is used to examine whether cross-linguistic contributions to reading

comprehension exist for this population of emerging bilingual children at the end of Grade 1.

7

Literature Review

This section begins by addressing the educational context for language instruction

and immersion programming in Canada. Aspects of metalinguistic skills and typology are

then briefly reviewed, along with research literature on literacy development and second

language acquisition. Special attention is given to studies involving English and Hebrew

language and orthography structures to provide a context for the research conducted in this

dissertation. This literature provides the theoretical context for the first set of research

questions and hypotheses, which target the development of emerging English-Hebrew

bilinguals through early immersion programming and the inter-relationships of language,

literacy and metalinguistic skills.

Next, the Simple View of Reading (SVR; Gough & Tunmer, 1986) model and cross-

linguistic transfer are considered within a second language framework. This latter part of the

literature review provides the context for addressing the second set of research questions.

These questions examine the adequacy of the SVR model when studying young English-

speaking children learning Hebrew as an L2. While English and Hebrew are both alphabetic

languages, given the differences between them in terms of the structure of the orthography

and the morphological complexity of words, special attention is given to the role of MA as a

component of language proficiency.

Context for Language Learning: Understanding Second Language Acquisition

Second language learners in Canada. There are several related social, political and

demographic contexts that explain why a child might learn to speak more than one language

in Canada (Bialystok, 2005). Considering current levels of immigration, much attention has

8

been directed towards L2 learning of immigrants learning English as a second language

(ESL) in Canada. A significant number of families from non-English speaking countries

begin to learn English upon arrival in Canada (Census Canada, 2006) so that they can

communicate in the majority language. Children of immigrant families are often enrolled in

public English-speaking schools and receive additional support and accommodations for

several years until they are considered to have “caught up” to their native English-speaking

peers (Francis, Lesaux, & August, 2006; Ontario Ministry of Education, 2008) with respect

to mastering the English language.

Children born in Canada may be raised in homes that mostly communicate in a

foreign language, a combination of the foreign language and English, or they may speak

English at home with their parents, and the language associated with the country of origin

with their grandparents or within their cultural and/or religious community. Thus, second

language acquisition is not only a result of recent immigration, but may stem from a family’s

country of origin and/or cultural roots. Further, many families opt to enrol their children in

heritage language programs that emphasize heritage maintenance (Baker, 2001; Bindman,

2004; Francis et al., 2006). These classes usually take place after school hours or on

weekends, and often include instruction and conversation in the group’s native language,

providing a means of continued education and proficiency as either a first or second

language. Children in these programs are typically fluent in English already.

Second language acquisition and linguistic aspects. Proficiency in more than one

language is not unique to Canada. A significant body of research exists on second language

and bilingual development (e.g., August & Shanahan, 2006; Bhatia & Ritchie, 2006; Kroll &

de Groot, 2005). Literacy research with bilingual children began with investigations of the

9

role of PA skills and alphabetic knowledge (e.g., Durgonoglu, Nagy & Hancin-Bhatt, 1993;

Verhoeven, 1994). Investigators have examined how skills in one language relate to the skills

in another (e.g., Durgunoglu et al., 1993; Geva & Siegel, 2000) or how they impact each

other bi-directionally (Deacon et al., 2007). For example, one of the many areas of

investigation in bilingual language development is how vocabulary knowledge in a child’s

native language relates to the development of literacy skills in the second language (e.g.,

Dressler & Kamil, 2006). Other studies have focused on the relationships between linguistic

aspects in two languages (e.g., Durgunoglu, 2002), with recent investigations considering

specific aspects of linguistic development, such as prosodic sensitivity (Goetry, Wade-

Woolley, Kolinsky, & Mousty, 2006) and the role of MA in second language word reading

and reading comprehension (e.g., Bindman, 2004; Deacon, Wade-Woolley, & Kirby, 2009;

Kahn-Horwitz, Shimron, & Sparks, 2005; Pasquarella, Chen, Lam, & Luo, 2011; Ramirez,

Chen, Geva, & Kiefer, 2010; Saeigh-Haddad & Geva, 2008).

Bilingualism and second language proficiency considerations. Gottardo and Grant

(2008) emphasized the complexity of defining bilingualism, especially when interpreting

research findings that are based on various contexts. They highlighted the importance of

understanding the degree to which a group is bilingual in different contexts and the nature of

language and literacy skills that may be supported. Wade-Woolley and Geva (1999)

cautioned that second language proficiency is difficult to quantify and requires researchers’

attention. In particular, researchers commonly make reference to bilingualism but do not

report on participants’ L1 and L2 language proficiency relative to the populations in other

studies. In the same vein, Oller (2008) noted that speaking and comprehending two

languages often involves different language proficiencies within the languages for different

10

people. That is, one may have strong command of the first language and weaker command of

the second language, or one may have command in certain domains (e.g., receptive language)

and not others (e.g., expressive language). For example, a significant difference in

proficiency may exist between a child raised in a Cantonese-speaking home, learning English

as a second language in school, and a child of Chinese descent who speaks English at home

and learns Cantonese in an after-school program. Both children may be considered bilingual,

yet each child has different levels of mastery in the English and Cantonese languages. For the

purpose of this dissertation, the term “emerging bilinguals” will be used to refer to children

who are significantly more proficient in their first language which is used at home, in the

community and at school, and are also developing second language skills through

educational programming on a daily basis.

Different levels of language proficiency may relate to literacy skills in the respective

languages of a bilingual child (Oller, 2008). That is, a child who is learning to converse in

two languages cannot be assumed to be literate in both. Biliteracy, for the purpose of this

dissertation, refers to being literate in two languages as measured through both word reading

and comprehending written text. Reading requires instruction, learning and practice (either

guided or individually). Similarly, a child may have acceptable everyday language

conversational skills in two languages but may only be literate and have command of more

demanding aspects of language in one of them (Cummins, 1979). For example, a child raised

in a Canadian Cantonese-speaking home may be fluent in using everyday language in both

Cantonese and English, yet may only be literate in English as it is the language of instruction

at school. This would mean that the student may not be exposed to academic language in

Chinese. Thus, when discussing research and theory of second language development in

11

children, description of the second language learning context, program and history (e.g., the

extent and nature of exposure to language and literacy) should be provided. On the whole, it

is crucial to be aware of the intensity and the contexts within which second language

development is being supported.

Immersion Programs

Canadian educational programming is discussed in this section with a focus on

French Immersion programs, which set the stage for varying types of immersion

programming in different languages as well as parochial day schools. Research on French

Immersion programming provides a solid context within which to consider the impact of

second language and literacy education for emerging bilinguals, such as English-speaking

children learning Hebrew as a second language through partial-immersion programming.

Understanding the different types of immersion programs is necessary in order to appreciate

the impact of differences in the intensity of programming on skill attainment in different

programs targeting the development of first and second oral language proficiency and

literacy skills. Thus a brief review of French Immersion programs provides a foundation for

making hypotheses about other language immersion programs in Canada (e.g., Hebrew

immersion) and about the potential impact of these programs on language and literacy skill

development.

Genesee (2005) defined bilingual education as “education that aims to promote

bilingual (or multilingual) competence by using both (or all) languages as media of

instruction for significant portions of the academic curriculum ... integrating language and

academic instruction is the hallmark of bilingual education” (p. 548). Genesee further defined

12

bilingual competence as “the ability to use the target languages effectively and appropriately

for authentic personal, educational, social, and/or work-related purposes” (p. 549). Different

versions of immersion programs exist and the terms “bilingual” and “second language”

education are often used interchangeably as the definition for both involve the development

of skills in two languages.

Genesee (2005) summarized Met’s (1998) explanation of the continuum for bilingual

education where language and content instruction are integrated. Simply put, language-driven

instruction falls at one end, with content-driven instruction at the other. Language-driven

approaches to second language development rely on content as a means by which to teach

targeted language structures and skills. Thus, the primary goal of this approach is

conversational, using non-academic material, such as holidays or activities of daily living, to

support and develop these language-based communication skills. Content-driven approaches

hold language and academic material as equally important for developing strong language

proficiency. Most bilingual and second-language immersion education programs follow the

content-driven approach (Genesee).

Second language immersion programs vary in the amount of time spent on the first

and second languages, and the age when children begin to attend these programs (Genesee,

2005). Typically, Canadian immersion programs contain between 50% and 100% of

instruction in the second language (Genesee & Jared, 2008). The variation in the amount of

time spent on developing proficiency in the second language, methods of instruction, and

individual differences likely lead to variations in language proficiency, as noted previously.

Total immersion refers to educational programs where close to 100% of the content is

taught in the second language. This is the more popular model for French immersion in

13

Ontario, Canada, where English is introduced only as an isolated core subject in later years.

Partial immersion refers to contexts where approximately 50% of classroom time is spent

using the second language and the remainder using the societal (often the home) language.

This latter program is more typical of bilingual programs involving other languages (e.g.,

Arabic, Armenian, and Hebrew), often offered in private, parochial schools. It is reasonable

to assume that the more time a child spends exposed to the second language, the more

proficient he/she will become in that language. Genesee (1987) and Lapkin, Swain, Kamin &

Hanna (1982) point to the importance of “time on task,” or intensity of exposure, in terms of

attaining L2 proficiency, and others have pointed to pedagogical considerations (e.g.,

Stevens, 1983) which may also contribute differentially to the development of second

language proficiency.

Simultaneous bilinguals are exposed to both languages concurrently, as is the case

when, for example, children are exposed to two languages delivered consistently by the same

people from infancy. Children who begin to learn their second language in school after

having developed command of the societal or home language from infancy are referred to as

sequential bilinguals. Children attending immersion programs are typically sequential

bilinguals. It is important to note the differences in terminology related to age of introduction

in immersion programming. Early immersion is commonly used to refer to programs that

typically begin instruction in kindergarten. Thus, early immersion is likely more oral

language-driven (Met, 1998) at this point, given that formal content and literacy instruction

have not yet begun. Most immersion programs begin at the onset of Grade 1, with late

immersion programs typically beginning in Grades 5 to 7 (Genesee, 2005; Oller, 2008).

These distinctions are important to make when considering and conducting research on

14

immersion programming and comparing results pertaining to both language and literacy

development on both short-term and long-term scales.

Aside from the amount of time spent immersed in a second language, age of onset of

exposure to the L2 has been the topic of much discussion. It has been argued that the age

when children begin their exposure to L2 learning can significantly impact the development

of their language proficiency. This argument is the subject of ongoing debate (Oller, 2008).

While some believe that earlier introduction to a second language through immersion leads to

greater gains in second language proficiency (e.g., Birdsong, 1999), Genesee (2005) has

noted that the results with respect to age of onset for French immersion programs are mixed.

In this case, English or French are the L1 for the children with French being introduced as the

sole instruction for language and literacy. Generally, formal English language and literacy

instruction is introduced later on. However, children who begin in English programming and

switch to French immersion programming in later grades may have established different

underlying skills in their language and reading.

Genesee (2005) summarized research supporting both sides of the argument: that

early immersion yields better proficiency than immersion beginning in middle school, and

that students who began immersion in middle school achieved the same levels of French and

English proficiency as those who began in Grade 1. For example, several studies evaluating

literacy outcomes in total French immersion students in the primary grades found that the

children’s English skills were far below those of their monolingual peers (e.g., Geva &

Clifton, 1994; Swain & Lapkin, 1982). However, once English was introduced to the French-

immersion program, the students demonstrated English skills (e.g., vocabulary knowledge)

that were comparable to their monolingual peers (e.g., Geva & Clifton, 1994; Swain &

15

Lapkin, 1982) or better than their peers (Lapkin, Hart, & Turnbull, 2003). Thus, early total

French-immersion students were able to catch up with respect to their English language skills

(Cashion & Eagan, 1990). These findings suggest that regardless of whether children are

introduced to immersion education, at least in French, prior to or during Grade 1, they are

able to make appropriate gains in English within a few years of formal English instruction

without negative effects occurring over the long run (i.e., no negative impact on their English

language proficiency) when compared to monolingual peers. Similarly, Oller (2008)

concluded that there is no difference in the long run between a student who begins immersion

in Grade 1 and a student who begins in Grade 5 with respect to language proficiencies in

either French or English, within a French immersion setting.

How children who begin late immersion programming are able to perform

comparably to their peers who have earlier immersion instruction on language and literacy

tests in both languages after only a few years is perplexing, given that their counterparts have

had several more years of formal bilingual instruction. Genesee (2005) argues for “reverse

transfer” of skills from English to French. That is, the children in late immersion

programming have more time to develop their English skills and thus are able to use those

first language skills to progress more rapidly in learning French as a second language once

they are introduced to the French immersion setting. This explanation is commensurate with

the interdependence framework offered by Cummins (1981). At the same time, it might also

be that the linguistic similarities between English and French play a positive role in

enhancing transfer of skills. It is not clear whether these results can generalize to other types

of immersion programming or similar programming with alphabetic languages that are less

comparable typologically in terms of the language or orthography of the languages involved.

16

Genesee (2005) highlighted the importance of environment and context in terms of

educational resources and learning commitment, not only with respect to the students, but

also to the school, family, and community. He noted that bilingual education has three

features: “linguistic goals, pedagogical approaches, and levels of schooling” (p. 548).

Further, variability in research findings regarding bilingual and second language education

has been indicated as resulting from a mix of contextual and methodological factors (e.g.,

Lapkin et al., 1983). Thus, when drawing conclusions from research on immersion program

success, it is important to be mindful of the mixed findings with respect to age of onset that

must be considered in light of external variables.

Parochial day-schools. Across Canada one can find parochial day-schools in various

linguistic/ethnic communities (Statistics Canada, 2009). In English speaking Canada,

parochial day-schools provide the mandatory provincial educational components in English,

as well as second-language instruction and religious and/ or cultural education. This latter

curriculum often involves the heritage language, and can be characterized as a content-driven

partial immersion program (Genesee, 2005; Met, 1998).

Jewish parochial day schools can be found in Canadian cities where there is a

substantial Jewish population (e.g., Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Vancouver, Calgary, and

Winnipeg). They are an example of parochial schools that provide combined instruction in

English (often the home language) and Hebrew, the second language. While most French-

immersion programs at the elementary level are total immersion, Hebrew day schools should

be characterized as partial immersion. This is done in order to meet provincial requirements

of instruction in one of the two nationally recognized languages (English, in this case).

Typically, children in these schools are introduced to formal Hebrew language and literacy

17

instruction in Grade 1 at approximately the same time that they are introduced to formal

literacy instruction in English (though some children may have had earlier English

instruction in their senior kindergarten year, prior to Grade 1). That is, Hebrew partial-

immersion students typically receive formal instruction in English and Hebrew language and

literacy simultaneously. These children mostly speak English outside of school with some

potential (though often minimal) exposure to Hebrew through community and/ or religious

events. Some parents who send their children to these schools are Israeli immigrants who

may speak Hebrew or may even be native speakers of Hebrew, however, most parents who

send their children to these English-Hebrew day schools do not speak Hebrew and are native

speakers of English.

Because Hebrew day schools provide partial immersion in Hebrew, they provide a

unique framework for studying bilingual development in languages that are alphabetic, yet

typologically different. There has been ample research on the development of language and

literacy skills in French-immersion programs. While this research has strong implications for

bilingual education, policy and child development (e.g., Genesee, 2005), French and English

are typologically much more similar than Hebrew and English. They share the Latin alphabet

and the Greek and Latin base of vocabulary. Hebrew and English are dissimilar in terms of

lexical structures, morphology, syntax, and orthography, yet are both alphabetic.

Investigating the language and reading skills of native speakers of English attending Hebrew-

immersion provides an interesting context for studying the development of second language

acquisition and biliteracy. Thus, considering similarities and differences allows for

clarification regarding which aspects of bilingual development relating to language and

literacy development within an immersion setting may be universal, independent of language

18

and orthographic structure, and which may not. Lastly, investigating early Hebrew

immersion can add useful information regarding age of exposure and its impact on language

and literacy skills.

Investigating Early Hebrew Immersion for Native English Speakers

The first question in this dissertation considers how early Hebrew partial-immersion

programming impacts language and literacy skill development of native English-speaking

children in both Hebrew and English, in comparison with later exposure. That is, do children

who receive early immersion programming in SK show greater or similar overall skill growth

relative to children who did not receive the early Hebrew immersion programming? To

answer this question, two groups of children attending the same parochial Hebrew day-

school were tested on measures of language and literacy in both English and Hebrew. One

group participated in an early immersion program during their SK school year (the year prior

to Grade 1), while another group participated in an English-language SK program with

minimal Hebrew language exposure. Both groups received partial Hebrew immersion

programming during their Grade 1 year. Testing the children across time points during their

SK and Grade 1 school years provided for an opportunity to investigate the impact of early

Hebrew immersion programming on language (vocabulary, MA) and literacy (word reading,

pseudoword reading, reading comprehension) skill development as well as on measures of

underlying cognitive skills.

It was hypothesized that children in the early Hebrew immersion program would

display stronger oral Hebrew-language skills given the significant amount of time they spent

immersed in the language (Genesee, 1987, 2005; Met, 1998). Specifically, it was

19

hypothesized that children receiving early Hebrew immersion would have stronger Hebrew

language skills (i.e., vocabulary knowledge, MA) than those who were exposed to immersion

programming later, and would keep those gains through to the end of Grade 1, given

continued instruction (Oller, 2008).

With respect to English-language skills, it was hypothesized that there would be no

significant impact from Hebrew immersion programming during the SK and Grade 1 years,

given that English is the primary language for both groups of children. That is, no negative

impact on English-language skill was expected for the early Hebrew immersion group versus

the late group. Hypothesizing on the impact of early Hebrew language exposure on literacy

skills in each language requires an understanding of how Hebrew typology differs from that

of English as well as differences in the development of literacy skill (e.g., resulting from

differences in orthographic depth) in each language.

Metalinguistic Skills and Typology

Two aspects of metalinguistic skills have been discussed in relation to the

development of reading: MA and PA. This section provides an overview of the literature on

the relationships between these two components of metalinguistic skills and reading, with a

focus on alphabetic orthographies and more specifically, English and Hebrew.

The roles of lexical and MA skills in literacy development have been investigated in

studies involving both typically developing and language-impaired children (Carlisle, 2000;

Scott & Windsor, 2000). This section discusses metalinguistic skills that are related to and

predictive of word reading and reading comprehension skills while also considering

typological differences in language and orthography, as well as the role they play in

20

understanding these relationships. Children’s MA within two different orthographies

(English and Hebrew) is first reviewed with consideration of how these orthographies might

impact language and literacy development differently for young bilingual and second-

language children. Research related to PA and RAN and their role in reading development in

monolingual and bilingual children is also reviewed and followed by a discussion of the role

of oral language proficiency in literacy (word reading, pseudoword reading, and reading

comprehension).

Morphological awareness. Morphology is a linguistic component of language that

concerns the rules for word formation and meaning and provides one of the organizing

principles of the mental lexicon (Aitchinson, 2003). It may also contribute to the

development of language and literacy in a second language (Wade-Woolley & Geva, 1999).

Morphemes are parts of words (sometimes full words), representing the smallest units in

language that contain meaning (Carlisle, 2000). Morphological form-to-meaning mappings

assist in the expansion of children’s vocabularies (Anglin, 1993). MA refers to the ability to

reflect on and manipulate morphemic structures within words (Carlisle, 1995) and can be

considered a deeper aspect of oral language proficiency. MA is complex and involves

phonological, semantic, and syntactic knowledge (Ravid & Malenky, 2001), but also needs to

be considered on its own.

There are two main types of morphemes: free standing morphemes and bound

morphemes. A free standing morpheme is generally a morpheme that can stand on its own

and is thus a complete word as well (e.g., I) while a bound morpheme includes most prefixes

and suffixes: parts of words that cannot stand on their own (e.g., pro, ism). There are three

main ways to make morphologically complex words: inflections affect the grammatical

21

function of the word (e.g., play + ing = playing; play + ed = played); derivations alter the

word class or the meaning of the base (e.g., play + ful = playful; re + play = replay); and

compounds join two bases in one word to reflect a new meaning that is often, though not

always, related to the meaning of each compound (e.g., play + mate = playmate vs. fire +

man = fireman). As complex as MA appears to be, English-speaking children process

components of unfamiliar words in a very automatic and fast manner, with little overt

awareness (Carlisle, 2007). Alphabetic orthographies, such as English and Hebrew, preserve

morphological relatedness in the spellings of words (Verhoeven & Perfetti, 2003), but they

vary in morphological transparency, or the degree to which the sound and the meaning of a

complex word can be recovered from its internal morphological structure (Elbro & Arnbak,

1996). This latter point is described below in more detail for both English and Hebrew.

In terms of development of morphological skills in children learning two languages,

Kuo and Anderson (2006) concluded that overall, across several languages, children appear

to develop inflectional morphology skills in their home or first language (L1) before

derivational and compound morphology skills, with the latter two continuing to develop

throughout the elementary school years. This is an important point when considering young

emerging bilinguals as it suggests that in such a population MA skills, an aspect of oral

language proficiency, are likely stronger in their native language than in their second

language.

English morphology and its development. English, a concatenative language, utilizes

linear morphological processes (prefixing or suffixing) to generate new words from free

stems (McCarthy, 1981). In English, complex words typically retain the unique phonological

and orthographic identity of the stem, thus preserving morphological transparency (e.g., care

22

–careless - carelessness). English stems may further undergo phonological and/or

orthographic shifts, which can also be apparent in spelling (e.g., solve-solution; complete-

completion).

Different aspects of morphology are believed to develop at different ages in English-

speaking children. Early research initially noted that children as young as four years of age

demonstrated inflectional awareness based on their ability to add the suffix “s” to the noun

“wug” in order to note plurality (Berko-Gleason, 1958). In Berko-Gleason’s study, children

were shown a picture of an unfamiliar bird-like creature and told that that there is “one wug.”

They were then shown pictures of multiples of this creature and asked to fill in the sentence,

“there are two ____ [wugs].” Aside from plurals, this format was used to further demonstrate

children’s awareness of past tense and possessives. Current research has indicated that MA

might develop at even younger ages at a verbally expressive level. Indeed, by age two or

three years, prior to beginning formal schooling, children understand the concept behind

compounding words (Carlisle, 2007). For example, with the understanding that the word

“toothbrush” refers to a brush used for teeth, children can often infer words of similar

structure such that the word “dishbrush” would be used for a brush used to clean dishes.

While inflections are generally learned prior to the onset of formal schooling, children

have some knowledge of derivations by that time that mainly includes words ending in “er”

and “y” (Berko-Gleason, 1958; Clark, 1982). Brown (1973) noted that knowledge of the

present progressive (e.g., the suffix “ing”), and plural suffix sound of “s” are two of the

earliest developed forms of inflectional awareness, around the age of two and a half years.

Irregular inflections for past tense are more complex and the awareness of them depends on

the frequency of the word (Shipley, Maddox, & Driver, 1991). Further, while children tend to

23

acquire the high frequency irregular words by rote at young ages, they tend to over-

generalize past tense endings inappropriately later on (Stemberger, 1993), with such errors

often being corrected by age five (Shipley et al., 1991). As noted earlier, typically developing

monolingual speakers of English tend to develop sensitivity to inflectional morphology prior

to derivational morphology (Carlisle, 2003). After approximately Grade 3, a significant

amount of children’s vocabulary development stems from deriving words (Anglin, 1993).

Nagy and Anderson (1984) estimated that 60% of new words that children encounter in text

are understood through deriving the meaning from the morphological structure and

considering how it was used in the passage being read.

Hebrew morphology and its development. Word derivation in non-concatenative

languages, like Hebrew, is non-linear and complex (Ravid & Malenky, 2001). Verbs are

inflected for number, gender, tense, and aspect. Word formation involves the simultaneous

affixation of two linguistic units: a consonantal root (e.g. L-M-D) that signals the core

meaning or the semantic family of the word (learn), and a word-pattern (“mishkal”), which is

a fixed and primarily vocalic template or pattern that instantiates the root as a unique lexical

item. Both the root and the word-pattern are bound morphemes that cannot stand on their

own as independent words. The concurrent affixation of the consonantal root within fixed

slots in the word-pattern often leads to discontinued phonological and/or orthographic

representations of the root. For instance, applying the consonantal root L-M-D onto the word

pattern CiCuC (where C represents the slots intended for the insertion of the root consonants)

results in a disrupted representation of the root L-M-D in the word limud (study, i.e., “the

study of”; noun). However, the vocalic pattern CaCCan, yields lamdan (scholar; noun,

masculine). This example illustrates the resultant morphological opacity of Hebrew.

24

Morphologically, what constitutes a word in Hebrew is different from what

constitutes a word in English. For example, Hebrew allows for the affixation of prepositions.

In Hebrew, adding the preposition “in” and the definite article “the” to the word “house”

involves adding the syllable /ba/ to the beginning of the word house /bayit/, thus changing

the meaning of the word bayit (house) to babayit (in the house). In other words, unlike

English, in Hebrew, dense morphologically- syntactic information is embedded within a

word (e.g., Geva & Wade-Woolley, 2004). By comparison, the word “husband” /ba-al/ starts

with the same syllable /ba/ but here it is part of the morpheme. Proficient readers need to be

efficient at distinguishing simple words from complex words that contain multiple

morphemes. There is evidence that this is a source of difficulty for adults learning Hebrew as

a second language (Geva & Wade-Woolley, 1998).

Children or second language learners who begin to learn to read in Hebrew are

exposed to voweled texts. In these texts, vowels (“nekudot” or diacritics) are placed below or

within the consonants, providing for a one-to-one grapheme-phoneme correspondence. This

means that voweled Hebrew is extremely orthographically shallow (Geva & Siegel, 2000).

However, common practice is for the gradual removal of the diacritics as reading skills

become more proficient, around Grade 4. Many unvowelized Hebrew words are homographs

that can have multiple meanings (Geva & Siegel, 2000). For example, the unvowelized

cluster “lmd” could mean both “(he) learned” (/lamad/) and “(he) taught” (/limed/).

Awareness of the orthographic code provides children with clues to the morphological

infrastructure of Hebrew. The removal of the vowels coupled with the morphological

complexity of words and the prevalence of homographs means that the orthography becomes

25

“deep” and more demanding, and readers need to rely on contextual sentence clues to

disambiguate the pronunciation of words.

Ravid (1995) and Shimron (2006) stress the complexity of Modern Hebrew and

emphasize that experience with and exposure to oral Hebrew is essential for MA to develop.

Hebrew can be characterized as a synthetic language that is rich in morphological structures.

Ravid (1995) demonstrated that different aspects of MA develop at different ages and in

different socio-economic status (SES) groups, thus demonstrating the effect of Hebrew oral

language knowledge and richness of exposure. Recent research evidence suggests that from a

young age, native Hebrew speakers are influenced by Hebrew’s typology and root base,

using its characteristics, including information about the root as a core morphological entity,

when they read and spell in Hebrew (e.g., Ben-Dror et al., 1995; Gillis & Ravid, 2006; Levin

et al., 2001; Ravid & Bar-On, 2005). Given the complexity of Hebrew morphology, it is

perhaps not surprising that difficulties with MA are especially detrimental to Hebrew readers

(Ben-Dror, Bentin, & Frost, 1995). In the same vein, Ravid, Levie and Ben-Zvi (2003) report

that monolingual Hebrew-speaking children who are weak readers are poorer in MA than

their stronger reading peers. Reading has been shown to be an especially daunting task for

adult Hebrew as second language learners (Wade-Woolley & Geva, 1999).

Ravid (2001) suggested that because Hebrew is morphologically complex, children are

attentive to Hebrew’s internal word structure from quite a young age. She argued that in the

development of morphological skills, native Hebrew-speaking children first mark inflections (such

as gender and number) around the age of two years (e.g., Ravid 1995, 1997), with derivations (for

nouns, verbs and adjectives) appearing between the ages of three and six years (e.g., Berman,

1985). With respect to Hebrew compounds, Ravid and Zilberbauch (2003) noted that

26

approximately one third of Modern Hebrew is made up of bound compounds. Unlike in English,

compounding is not typically a preferred or innovative method of early language development

among native Hebrew-speaking children, yet it occurs most frequently in child-directed speech for

familiar objects and events (Ravid & Zilberbauch, 2003). The use of compounding for productive

purposes emerges around the age of four and continues to develop through to the age of about six

years (Berman, 1987; Clark & Berman, 1987).

Hebrew compounds can undergo a morphological shift, such as when a plural word is

combined within a compound. This aspect develops closer to the age of six or seven years in

monolingual children (Levin et al., 2001; Ravid & Zilberbauch, 2003). For example, in Hebrew,

bathing suits (plural) are called “bigdey-yam,” literally, “clothes for the sea”, yet clothes (plural) in

Hebrew is “b’gadim”. There are several morphological and stress shift changes within the

compound that need to be learned and developed so that they can be applied properly. Further

mastery of Hebrew morphology, however, begins with formal reading and writing instruction

(Ravid, 1995). With the exception of research from Bindman’s (2004) doctoral thesis (see below),

no empirically published studies have investigated MA development in English-speaking children

learning Hebrew as a second language.

Morphological awareness and literacy. Research involving monolingual English as

L1 and Hebrew as L1 children has shown that the ability to manipulate morphemes within

complex words continues to develop through the school years (e.g., Carlisle, 2007; Ravid,

1995). In Hebrew and English alike, MA makes independent contributions to reading and

spelling over and above PA (Aram, 2005; Fowler & Liberman, 1995; Kirby, et al., 2012;

Levin, Ravid, & Rapaport, 1999, 2001; Ravid, 2001; Singson, Mahony, & Mann, 2000).

Performance on MA tasks tends to correlate with various linguistic and reading tasks,

27

including phonemic awareness (Muter, Hulme, Snowling, & Stevenson, 2004; Singson et al.,

2000), pseudoword decoding (Deacon & Kirby, 2004; Nagy, Berninger, & Abbott, 2006;

Singson et al., 2000), various measures of vocabulary knowledge (Carlisle, 2000; Deacon &

Kirby, 2004; Ku & Anderson, 2003; Nagy et al., 2006; Singson et al, 2000), spelling (Levin,

Ravid, & Rapaport, 2001; Ravid, 2001), word reading tasks (Deacon & Kirby, 2004; Kirby et

al., 2012; Muter et al., 2004; Ravid & Schiff, 2004; Singson et al, 2000), reading of

morphologically complex words (Carlisle, 2000; Saiegh-Haddad & Geva, 2008), and reading

comprehension (Carlisle, 2000; Carlisle & Fleming, 2003; Deacon & Kirby, 2004; Kirby et

al., 2012; Ku & Anderson, 2003; Mahony, 1994; Mahony, Singson, & Mann, 2000; Muter et

al., 2004; Tong, Deacon, Kirby, Cain, & Parrila, 2011).

Within English, numerous studies have investigated the relationship between MA and

word reading, as indicated above. Importantly, Kirby et al. (2012) pointed out that the MA

measures used across studies have been inconsistent, making it difficult to draw direct

conclusions. Measures have also been inconsistent with respect to which aspects of MA were

measured. For example, in a study that is highly relevant to the present thesis, Bindman

(2004) measured MA in young children whose home language was English and who were

attending a partial Hebrew immersion program in the UK. She used a combination of

measures that combined inflectional and derivational awareness skills, making it difficult to

determine whether one of those two aspects of the children’s MA was more relevant than the

other, when considering relationships with other language measures such as vocabulary.

Further, as indicated above, studies examining the relationship of MA with different

components of reading, including word reading, pseudoword reading, and reading

comprehension, have been evaluated using different outcome measures (e.g., passage

28

comprehension with open-ended or multiple choice questions, cloze tasks, etc.). Kirby et al.

question whether MA makes an independent contribution to reading or whether it overlaps

with other cognitive processes. They indicated that it is not clear from the available research

whether the contribution of MA to word reading increases over the school grades and

whether MA is more important for reading comprehension than for word reading.

In their recent, well-controlled longitudinal study, Kirby et al. (2012) controlled for

Kindergarten nonverbal intelligence, vocabulary, and Grade 1 PA (composite of blending

and elision tasks). They investigated whether MA skills (word analogy task) in Grades 1, 2

and 3 contributed unique variance to Grade 3 pseudoword reading, word reading, and reading

comprehension (cloze task). Grade 1 MA did not uniquely contribute to Grade 3 pseudoword

reading and word reading, although Grade 2 and 3 MA skills did. Indeed, the strongest

unique contributions from MA to pseudoword reading and word reading occurred in Grade 3.

Lastly, the authors found that Grade 3 MA performance contributed to Grade 3 reading

comprehension above and beyond the control variables, inclusive of Grade 3 word reading.

Interestingly, Kirby et al. (2012) also found that in predicting Grade 3 pseudoword

reading and word reading, Grade 2 MA items that required both phonological and

morphological shifts uniquely predicted pseudoword reading ability (more dependent on

grapheme-phoneme rules with phonetic “sounding out” of words and less dependent on

vocabulary knowledge), while items requiring only morphological shifts uniquely predicted

word reading ability (more dependent on vocabulary knowledge). By Grade 3, however, both

types of items uniquely predicted performance on both reading measures as well as on

29

reading comprehension1. Similarly, Carlisle (1995) found that MA (an expressive task

measuring both inflectional and derivational awareness), measured with 85 Grade 1 children,

uniquely predicted their Grade 2 performance on reading comprehension (receptive and

expressive tasks) and phonetic analysis tasks (receptive phonetic task). The contribution of

MA to reading comprehension was indicated to be much stronger (p = .004) than its

contribution to phonetic analysis (p = .018). PA was significantly predictive of performance

on the phonetic analysis task, but not of reading comprehension ability. Overall, these results

corroborate those of Kirby et al. (2012), suggesting that in English, MA may be more directly

relevant for reading comprehension skills than for word-level reading skills.

Within Hebrew, two seminal research studies have been conducted. Aram (2005)

measured MA ability, word reading (auditory discrimination) and reading comprehension

(cloze task) in Grade 2 children. For the MA tasks, she used a written production task which

was analogy based and asked the child to write the missing derived word. She also included

an oral production task which assessed both inflectional and derivational awareness. In this

task the child was asked to orally provide more words that matched the root word stated (up

to four words for each item were counted). Performance on the MA tasks significantly

correlated with both reading measures in Grade 2. Further, word reading and reading

comprehension, assessed in kindergarten, significantly correlated with performance on the

oral MA production task in Grade 2. While, within this dissertation, MA is being investigated

as a predictor variable of reading ability, results from Aram’s study support the general

1 It is of course possible that MA skills contributed to reading skills concurrently in grades 1 and 2 as well,

however outcome variables in this study were measured in Grade 3 only.

30

notion that MA correlates with reading in young monolingual native Hebrew-speaking

children.

The complex relations among oral language, writing and morphological skills were

explored by Levin et al. (1999) with regard to Hebrew as a first language. Their findings

suggest a “bootstrapping” model, according to which writing skills enhance oral morphology

skills, and in turn oral morphology skills further enhance writing skills. In the Levin et al. study

the researchers investigated inflectional, derivational and compounding awareness using

expressive measures with kindergarten and Grade 1 native Hebrew-speaking children. A

spelling test was given to the children as well. It included 32 words that equally fell into

categories of syntax (i.e., nouns and adjectives), gender (i.e., masculine and feminine), and

phonological ending (i.e., words ending in open and closed syllables). Each item on the spelling

test was composed of four words. Results revealed that children’s MA and spelling improved

significantly between senior kindergarten and Grade 1. Furthermore there were positive

relationships between spelling and expressive MA in senior kindergarten and in Grade 1. That

is, MA and spelling were mutually interrelated within and between senior kindergarten and

Grade 1. Specifically, MA in kindergarten significantly predicted Grade 1 spelling after

controlling for kindergarten spelling, and kindergarten spelling ability significantly predicted

Grade 1 MA skill after controlling for kindergarten MA. Levin et al. (2001) explain that

becoming aware of common spelling features of semantically related words contributes to an

awareness of the morphemic connection between these words and vice versa. Thus, exposure

to printed text impacts MA and MA impacts spelling ability.

Anglin (1993) studied vocabulary growth from Grades 1 to 5 in monolingual English

speakers and found significant development with respect to base and derived words,

31

supporting the importance of MA for vocabulary development and thus, for comprehension.

His research specifically revealed that there is significant growth for knowledge of derived

words in children between Grades 3 and 5. It is important to note that as children progress in

school they are exposed to more derived words in the texts they read (Carlisle, 2007; White,

Power, & White, 1989), and this exposure assists them in understanding the meaning of new

words (Nagy & Scott, 2000), likely through reasoning and problem-solving about internal

word structure. In turn, not only does MA assist with reading new words, but knowledge of

morphology also helps children determine the meaning of new words when reading text

(Nagy & Anderson, 1984; Wysocki & Jenkins, 1987). Kirby et al. (2012) also highlighted the

importance of inflectional awareness for reading comprehension given its role in forming

syntax. They suggest that, based on research to date, MA may explain individual differences

in various aspects of reading such as word reading (i.e., analysis of multimorphemic words),

decoding of pseudowords (pronunciation of plausible morphemic units), reading fluency and

reading comprehension.

Carlisle (2007) highlighted three aspects of morphology and its relationship with

context and comprehension: a) the extent to which context clues provide information that

supports the meaning, b) the familiarity of word parts and transparency of word structure,

and c) the degree to which the word’s morphemes reinforce a concept already known. That

is, using the meaning of the sentence/concept within which a new word is found assists with

deriving its meaning, especially when presented within a familiar framework and/or when

there are already known morphemes within the full word. In sum, understanding

morphological structure may work alongside context in helping the reader figure out the

meaning of unknown words.

32

Phonological awareness. Phonology refers to the sound system of a language while

PA is defined as the conscious understanding that words can be broken down into smaller

units of sound and the awareness of these sounds can be manipulated (Castles & Coltheart,

2004; Wagner & Torgesen, 1987). With respect to development, Goswami (2002) argued

that children speaking English as a first language initially develop an awareness that words

are comprised of syllables, followed by an awareness of onset and rime (within a syllable),

and lastly, an awareness that spoken words are comprised of individual sounds (i.e.,

phonemes).

The syllable is a unit of spoken language consisting of a single uninterrupted sound

formed by a vowel, diphthong (two articulated vowels as in the word “loud”), or syllabic

consonant alone, or by any of these sounds preceded, followed, or surrounded by one or more

consonants (Pearsall, 1998). The onset refers to the initial single phoneme or consonant

cluster in a word while the rime refers to the remaining vowel plus the consonants that

follow. The phoneme is the smallest unit that constitutes spoken language and distinguishes

one word from another. For example, the first phonemes /l/ vs. /n/ differentiates the words

“light” and “night.” Phonemic awareness is a fundamental element of the language system

and a building block for all spoken and written words. This component of PA takes place at

the smallest unit of sound. It involves an awareness, for example, that the word “cat” has

three phonemes: /k/, /a/, and /t/, and that likewise, the word “thought” has three phonemes as

well: /Ɵ/, /o/, and /t/.

Phonological awareness and reading in monolinguals. English has 26 letters

(graphemes) but approximately 41 to 44 phonemes (Shaywitz, 2003; National Reading Panel

(NRP), 2000). Hebrew has 22 letters and 5 vowels, each of which can be long or short. In

33

addition, four of the consonants also function as vowel letters ("mothers of reading" - /imot

hakriah/). These letters represent the oldest voweling system in Hebrew (Levin et al., 2001).

For example, the /o/ phoneme in /balon/ (balloon) is represented by the grapheme /w/, but the

grapheme “w” can also represent the phoneme /v/ as in /vered/ (rose).

There is a strong relationship between PA and reading ability. Children who are poor

decoders perform significantly worse than their peers on tests of PA (Wagner & Torgesen,

1987; Wagner, Torgesen, & Rashotte, 1999). Studies have also noted a correlation between

PA and reading comprehension (e.g., Stanovich & Siegel, 1994), though this relationship

appears to be mediated through word reading skills for monolinguals (Tunmer & Nesdale,

1985) as well as for ESL learners (Zadeh et al., 2012). Children who demonstrate difficulty

on tests of PA prior to or at the onset of formal schooling are at risk for becoming poor

readers while those who do well on such tasks are likely to become stronger readers (Bradley

& Bryant, 1983). Researchers have shown that the relationship between PA and reading

continues throughout the school years (e.g., Castles & Coltheart, 2004; Kirby, Parrila, &

Pfeiffer, 2003; Schatschneider, Fletcher, Francis, Carlson, & Foorman, 2004), and PA is one

of the strongest predictors of word reading ability, playing a causal role in its development

(e.g., Stanovich, 2000; Wagner & Torgesen, 1987). Importantly, this longitudinal

relationship has also been replicated in monolingual Hebrew speakers (e.g., Bentin &

Leshem, 1993; Kozminksy & Kozminsky, 1993/ 1994; Share & Blum, 2005). However,

Wesseling and Reitsma (2001) clarify that, while early kindergarten skills in PA are

significantly predictive of primary school reading ability, individual differences in

underlying cognitive (i.e., nonword repetition) and vocabulary knowledge impact this

relationship as well.

34

Phonological awareness and reading in bilinguals. In the same way that PA is

predictive of literacy skills in monolingual children, it is similarly predictive of reading in

bilingual children for each language they are proficient in (Durgunoglu et al., 1993).

Bialystok (2005) reviewed several studies involving bilingual children with mixed results as

to whether they performed better on tasks of PA (e.g., Campbell & Sais, 1995) or

comparably to monolingual peers (e.g., Bialystok, Majumder, & Martin, 2003), with most

differences disappearing by first grade. That is, by first grade, there was very little difference

between monolingual and bilingual children with respect to performance on PA tasks. It is

important to note that the studies reviewed used different combinations of measures of PA

and examined bilinguals proficient in languages with both similar and different orthographic

patterns. In light of the general notion of the universality of PA, there remain language-

specific components that may not be quite so universal. A systematic review concluded that

components of PA that are considered to be language-specific account for insignificant cross-

language transfer (Genesee, Geva, Dressler & Kamil, 2006). PA and cross-linguistic transfer

are discussed further on.

Bialystok (2005) noted that when comparing alphabetic and non-alphabetic (i.e.,

logographic) scripts, PA contributes differently to children’s literacy in each type of script.

Specifically, PA ability contributes more significantly to children’s reading in alphabetic

scripts than non-alphabetic scripts. However, when considering how PA accounts for

variance in literacy, it is possible that even within an alphabetic script, the complexity of the

orthography may determine to what extent PA and word reading are related. That is, one’s

need to have a deeper understanding of orthographic structure may mediate a stronger

relationship between PA and word reading skills. Further, considering that PA reflects

35

aspects of the language, writing system and instruction, greater proficiency in one of the two

languages may mediate how PA and literacy are related. For example, English-speaking

children with different levels of proficiency in Hebrew as a second language may

demonstrate different degrees of relationships between PA skill and word reading ability.

While English is considered to have a deep orthography, vowelized Hebrew has a

direct one-to-one grapheme-phoneme mapping, making it a much more shallow orthography

(Geva & Wade-Woolley, 2004). This means that children learning to decode vowelized

Hebrew can master accurate decoding faster in Hebrew than in English, results Geva and

Siegel (2000) demonstrated in a study investigating reading development in English-speaking

children learning Hebrew as a second language. They found that young primary school

children learned to read pseudowords in vowelized Hebrew with ease and accuracy when

compared to their pseudoword and word reading skills in English.

With respect to the universality of PA, such skills in English-Hebrew bilinguals have

been examined within bootstrapping models. For example, with respect to Grade 2 native

English-speaking children learning Hebrew as a second language, Wade-Woolley and Geva

(2000) found performance on a Hebrew PA discrimination task to be highly correlated with

both Hebrew and English word reading. They further pointed out at the same time that

specific novel phonemic elements, not present in their first language, provide a specific

challenge for L2 learners (i.e., “negative transfer”; see discussion of transfer below).

Significant correlations between PA and word reading were also found by Geva and Siegel

(2000) for children attending an English-Hebrew day school and by Kahn-Horwitz et al.

(2005) with regard to native speakers of Hebrew learning English as a foreign language in

Israel. Clearly the relationships between PA and word reading skills hold true for English-

36

Hebrew bilinguals though, as pointed out by Share (2008) and Geva and Siegel (2000), the

role of PA in learning to decode words in Hebrew may dissipate faster than in English

because vowelized Hebrew has a more shallow orthography in comparison with English.

A question left to examine is how PA contributes to reading comprehension in young

developing English-speaking children learning Hebrew as a second language. The

universality of PA with respect to word reading and pseudoword reading has been

established for children learning languages with alphabetic orthographies. However, does PA

contribute differently to reading comprehension in these two alphabetic languages, which

differ in terms of linguistic and orthographic characteristics? Given the difference in PA’s

contribution to word reading between the two languages (Geva & Siegel, 2000), a difference

in its contribution to reading comprehension is quite possible within each language. Previous

findings indicate that PA’s contribution to reading comprehension tends to be mediated

through word reading ability (Tunmer & Nesdale, 1985) and that Hebrew is not as dependent

on PA skills for word reading given its shallow orthography (Geva & Wade-Woolley, 2004).

Thus, it is likely that PA might be more important for English reading comprehension than

for Hebrew reading comprehension (through word reading skill).

Another related question concerns the role of second language proficiency in how PA

relates to word reading and pseudoword reading in either language. As alluded to earlier, it is

not known whether English-speaking children with greater proficiency in Hebrew as a

second language would show similar patterns of association between PA skill and word

reading and pseudoword reading abilities as children with less proficient Hebrew language

skills. This is one of the questions explored in the present research.

37

Naming Speed and Reading in Monolinguals

Naming speed is an underlying component of cognition that refers to the ability to

name serially presented simple stimuli as fast as possible. Naming speed is mostly measured

by tests of rapid automatized naming (RAN) (Denckla & Rudel, 1974; Wagner et al., 1999).

These tests involve presenting a subset of highly familiar visual symbols from a certain

category (i.e., alpha-numeric, colours, objects) in a randomized serial array and asking

individuals to name the items across the rows as quickly as possible. RAN has been found to

relate directly to word reading ability, after controlling for PA and other underlying cognitive

abilities (i.e., nonverbal reasoning) (Wolf & Bowers, 1999). It has also been suggested that

low performance on tests of RAN has a causal effect on reading disability (Wolf & Bowers),

and that RAN speed is related to reading fluency in ESL and monolingual children alike

(e.g., Zadeh, Farnia & Geva, 2012).

Functional magnetic resonance imaging has shown that both PA and RAN activate

neurological networks in the brain that are related to reading (Misra, Katzir, Wolf, &

Poldrack, 2004). Some researchers have suggested that RAN and PA measure the same

construct, in that RAN is primarily a phonological task (Wimmer, Mayringer, & Landerl,

2000). Many have referred to this notion as the “retrieval of phonological codes from a long-

term store” (Wolf & Bowers, 1999). Evidence supporting the notion that RAN and PA form

one construct are somewhat inconsistent; some researchers have found strong correlations

between PA and RAN (e.g., Wagner, Torgesen, & Rashotte, 1994) while the majority have

found only moderate ones (e.g., Morris et al.,1998; Savage, 2004). Furthermore, Wagner et

al. (1994) found that the strong correlations between PA and RAN diminish over time.

38

There are several sources of evidence that support the argument that PA and RAN are

not the same construct. First, PA and RAN each contribute uniquely to reading ability

(Morris et al., 1998; Savage, 2004; Wolf & Bowers, 1999). More specifically, PA is

correlated with decoding tasks such as reading pseudowords, while RAN is generally

correlated with regular word reading and fluency (Lesaux, Koda, Siegel, & Shanahan, 2006;

Wolf, Bowers, & Biddle, 2000). Moreover, studies have further documented relationships

between RAN and reading comprehension in school-age children, controlling for underlying

skills which included PA and nonverbal reasoning (e.g., Arnell, Joanisse, Klein, Busseri, &

Tannock, 2009; Georgiou, Manolitsis, Nurmi, & Parrila, 2010; Johnston & Kirby, 2006). At

this point children are reading longer passages as opposed to focusing on single-word

decoding. Additional insight regarding PA and RAN as different constructs comes from

longitudinal studies. A longitudinal study that followed monolingual children from Grade 1

to 5 found RAN to be highly predictive of reading skill in Grade 5 when fluency becomes

relevant, though the contribution of PA was stronger in the earlier grades, when reading skill

is more focused on single-word reading (David, Wade-Woolley, Kirby, & Smithrin, 2006).

Interestingly, in shallow orthographies such as (vowelized) Hebrew, German and Dutch,

RAN appears to be a consistent underlying cognitive skill that correlates with reading even

when children have reached high levels of accuracy and PA is no longer a significant

predictor of word reading (Share, 2008).

RAN and reading in bilinguals. RAN is an important predictor of word reading and

reading fluency for L2 learners as well. For example, Geva, Yaghoub-Zadeh and Schuster

(2000) found that both monolingual and ESL children who were poor readers performed

more poorly on tasks of RAN (and PA) than good readers. More recently, Zadeh, Farnia and

39

Geva (2012) have reported on the important role of RAN in predicting text reading fluency in

both monolingual and ESL school children. Based on a systematic review of studies of ESL

children, Geva (2006a) concluded that RAN is an underlying cognitive process which,

regardless of whether it is measured in a child’s first or second language, remains a robust

predictor of word reading (e.g., Durgunoglu et al., 1993; Gholamain & Geva, 1999; Geva

&Yaghoub Zadeh, 2006; Gholamain & Geva, 1999). Geva further pointed out that the

relationship between RAN and word reading skills is apparent in studies of bilinguals

involving different groups of L2 learners (e.g. Chiappe & Siegel,1999; Wade-Woolley &

Geva, 2000). At the same time, evidence for the cross-linguistic contribution of RAN to early

literacy skills for preschool-age children, especially within alphabetic languages, has yet to

be illustrated (See Li, Kirby & Georgiou, 2011 and McBride-Chang & Ho, 2005 for studies

pertaining to Chinese-English bilinguals).

In summary, RAN is an important predictor of literacy skills across languages

although its association with these skills and their development may vary both within

bilingual populations and cross-linguistically. This lack of clarity regarding the role of RAN

in cross-linguistic contexts leads to several questions such as: How is RAN related to word

reading and pseudoword reading in young developing Hebrew as a second-language

learners? Does the role of RAN depend on language proficiency? Does RAN correlate with

word reading and reading comprehension cross-linguistically? These questions have been

addressed in the present study. Investigating such questions will contribute to the growing

understanding of the role of RAN in literacy development for children learning to speak and

read in more than one language and the extent to which its role is universal, sensitive to

language proficiency, and to language and orthographic depth variation.

40

Orthographic Depth and Reading

Frost, Katz and Bentin’s (1987) orthographic depth hypothesis proposes that word

reading skills in languages with shallow orthographies, such as vowelized Hebrew, are

primarily mediated phonologically by their straightforward grapheme-phoneme

correspondence with respect to lexical word recognition. However, in languages with deep

orthographies, such as English, word reading skills are more dependent on orthographic cues.

Thus, for accurate word reading, the degree of correspondence between phonology and

orthography is an important factor, impacting the rate at which fluent word reading skills are

achieved. For example, vowelized Hebrew has a one-to-one grapheme-phoneme

correspondence making written Hebrew quite straightforward to decode, while English has a

less shallow orthography making it more of a challenge (e.g., Geva & Siegel, 2000). That is,

differences in orthographic depth may have a significant impact on the development of

reading skill. To illustrate, in a cross-sectional study involving children in Grades 2 through

5, Geva and Siegel have shown that children whose L1 was English and who attended an

English-Hebrew day school were already more accurate decoders of vowelized Hebrew

words and pseudowords than of English words during their first year of formal literacy

instruction, in spite of their minimal command of the Hebrew language. This is the only

study that the present author is aware of where results with this population were interpreted

with respect to the orthographic depth hypothesis.

The orthographic depth hypothesis provides one explanation as to why different

patterns of relationships for developing bilingual readers are found between different

languages in studies investigating literacy constructs, as indicated above. More specifically,

this notion implies differing requirements, skills, and developmental timelines for learning to

41

read languages that differ in orthographic depth. For these reasons this theory is often used as

a framework for understanding cross-linguistic aspects of word reading (Geva, 2008). In the

same vein, Geva and Genesee (2006), who summarized studies investigating children

learning English as a second language, noted that the strength of the relationship between

oral proficiency in the first language and reading in English, the second language, appears to

be dependent on the similarity of orthographic structure between the two languages (e.g.,

consider Spanish-English versus Chinese-English). Importantly, as discussed earlier, the

authors noted that age likely plays a significant role in this relationship as well.

Building on Geva and Siegel’s (2000) study with native English-speaking children

learning Hebrew as a second language, questions concerning how the orthographic depth

hypothesis may apply to explain relationships between specific aspects of oral language

proficiency (i.e. MA) and literacy (i.e., word reading and reading comprehension) require

further investigation. With the noted differences in orthographic depth between English and

vowelized Hebrew, the two languages make for an interesting combination within which to

examine the role of oral language skills and word reading ability, when predicting reading

comprehension. Specifically, how are these constructs related to one another for each of the

two languages and how does second language proficiency impact on these relationships?

That is, would children with stronger second language skills (e.g., vocabulary knowledge)

display stronger relationships between oral language proficiency and word reading or reading

comprehension skills when compared to peers with weaker second language skills? Based on

studies investigating aspects of oral language and how they relate to word reading (e.g.,

Bindman, 2004; Geva & Genesee, 2006; Geva & Siegel, 2000) and reading comprehension

(Vellutino, Scanlon, Small & Tanzman, 1991), it was hypothesized that oral language

42

proficiency would be more important for English word reading and reading comprehension

than for Hebrew. These developmental questions are explored in this dissertation with

English speaking children learning Hebrew as a second language.

Early Literacy Development in Bilinguals

The course of learning to read depends on the development of oral language skills

such as vocabulary, metalinguistic skills such as PA, letter familiarity, exposure to print, and

the understanding of print concepts (NRP, 2000). These skills continue to expand during the

course of literacy instruction and development, with direct causal links to subsequent literacy

skills (e.g., Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998). Lesaux et al. (2006) reviewed studies that, as a

whole, found the prerequisites for second language word reading (i.e., decoding)

development to be the same as for reading in a first language. The factors include: PA,

knowledge of grapheme-phoneme correspondence rules, letter knowledge, and working

memory. Importantly, oral language proficiency was indicated to have a somewhat weaker

role (Lesaux & Geva, 2006). Further, based on a systematic review of the literature, Dressler

and Kamil (2006) concluded that non-linguistic skills pertaining to general cognition (e.g.,

RAN, phonological short term memory) may be common factors for L1 and L2 reading that

underlie L1-L2 correlations of parallel measures (Genesee & Geva, 2006). Thus, underlying

cognitive skills pertaining to general cognition that relate to literacy development in the L1

may also be relevant for the L2.

In this regard, research has shown that a strong correlation exists between word

reading in a child’s first language and word reading in their second language (e.g.,

Durgunoglu et al., 1993; Geva & Siegel, 2000). Bilingualism may have some of the greatest

43

impacts on children’s early literacy skills development with respect to the enhancement of

language and literacy development (Bialystok, 2005). While there is evidence for cross-

linguistic correlations between parallel L1 and L2 measures, it is important to remember that

for children learning a second language, including majority language children whose second

language is not spoken in the home (e.g., Hebrew and French immersion programs in

Canada), reading instruction is occurring while their second-language oral proficiency is still

limited.

Bialystok (2005) proposed that bilingual children who first learn to read in their

native language might only need to learn the skill of decoding in one language and then be

able to apply it to reading in their second language. This suggests that once a child

understands the concepts of grapheme-phoneme correspondences and orthographic patterns

in one language, applying these skills to another language would be more straightforward,

possibly with a faster learning curve. What remains to be documented is how early second-

language exposure and proficiency, compared to later exposure, (e.g., early versus late

immersion programming) impact literacy development in bilingual children who are learning

to read concurrently in two alphabetic languages with different orthographic and linguistic

structures. This aspect of early L2 exposure, in comparison to later L2 exposure, is one of the

areas addressed in this dissertation.

Reading Comprehension

Reading comprehension refers to the ability to understand passages of text and

involves the general ability to understand written language (Dressler & Kamil, 2006). An

important framework for reading comprehension is the Simple View of Reading (SVR;

44

Gough & Tunmer, 1986). The SVR will be presented later in this literature review and

examined in the context of bilingual readers. For monolingual readers, important precursors

to reading comprehension include skills such as vocabulary, PA and word reading

(Cunningham & Stanovich, 1998, National Reading Panel, 2004). However, in a study with

first grade children, Tunmer and Nesdale (1985) demonstrated that PA contributes to reading

comprehension indirectly through word reading. Further, Vellutino, Scanlon, Small and

Tanzman (1991) note the importance of having command of various aspects of language

comprehension, including syntactic, morphological, and pragmatic skills.

Reading comprehension in bilinguals. Systematic reviews of research with English

language learners (ELLs) have shown that oral language proficiency is strongly related to

reading comprehension skill (Geva & Genesee, 2006). Similarly, Geva (2006b) summarized

studies investigating children learning English as a second language, finding that English oral

language proficiency, including vocabulary and grammatical knowledge, played a major role

in English reading comprehension. Geva highlighted how precursor literacy skills in either a

first or second language likely contribute to reading comprehension skills in a second

language and that cognitive ability and working memory are important factors as well. She

further emphasized that differences in instructional methods and educational experiences

may also account for additional variance in reading comprehension skill.

While, as explained above, reading comprehension in a first language tends to

correlate with reading comprehension in a second language, Dressler and Kamil (2006)

reported that there are mixed findings regarding the degree to which second language reading

comprehension is correlated with mediating factors (e.g., vocabulary, word reading), in that

these correlations appear to be dependent on second language proficiency. Thus, within a

45

developing bilingual population, similar to monolingual populations, reading comprehension

skill may be dependent on several linguistic, cognitive and instructional factors. This

dissertation explores the role of cognitive, language-related factors (e.g., vocabulary and

MA) and word level reading skills that might provide a foundation for understanding the

meaning of written text comprehension in young emerging bilinguals.

Cross-Linguistic Transfer

Previous sections of this review have examined how skills in one language impact the

development of skills in a second language, and whether such relationships may be bi-

directional. Specifically, the literature looks at how proficiency in a first language might

guide the development of proficiency in a second language, or how the development of two

languages simultaneously might enhance one another. This notion is often referred to as

“transfer.” The definition of transfer used this dissertation is taken from Genesee et al.

(2006), who combined aspects from both the contrastive analysis and interdependence

hypotheses (discussed below). Thus, transfer refers to “cross-language relationships found in

the structures that belong exclusively to the linguistic domain (e.g., morphology) as well as

skills that involve cognitive and language abilities (e.g., reading comprehension)” (p. 157).

Although cross-linguistic transfer may have a positive effect on language development, it is

also possible that interference may occur. For example, having one language might slow

down the acquisition of a second language (Gottardo & Grant, 2008).

Theories of language transfer. Koda and Zehler (2008) explained that

understanding theories of language transfer is necessary as they cover how first language

literacy skills interact with and impact second language reading development, thus providing

46

for an explanation of developmental variations. Genesee et al. (2006) argue that there are two

key relevant theories of cross-language transfer that pertain to reading in L2: Lado’s (1964)

contrastive analysis and Cummins’ (2000) interdependence hypothesis.

The crux of the contrastive analysis (Lado, 1964) relies on similarities and differences

in language structure between a first and second language that are expected to explain

positive and negative transfer between L1 and L2. At issue is the extent to which specific

linguistic or cognitive skills developed in the context of one’s first language influence the

development of parallel linguistic skills in the L2. Researchers have been studying specific

typological differences between the L1 and L2 that may enhance or impede the development

of language or reading elements in the L2. Certain types of errors in the L2 may reflect

structures in the L2 that differ considerably from those in the L1 (i.e., negative transfer).

When the L1 and L2 are similar, fewer errors will be made in light of these common features,

and learners may thus be able to rely on structures from the L1 when acquiring the L2 (i.e.,

positive transfer).

For example, Bialystok, Majumder and Martin (2003), in a study with kindergarten-

Grade 2 children, report that Spanish-English bilinguals outperform Chinese-English

bilinguals on English PA tasks. They argue that this finding reflects the fact that the relative

similarity of the phonemic structures of Spanish and English contrast with that of Chinese.

Another type of positive transfer concerns the ability to use cognates. For example, English,

French, and Spanish speakers may all comprehend Latin-based words such as expedition

(English), expedición (Spanish), and expédition (French). However, if children’s home

language (e.g., English) does not share cognates with the L2 (e.g., Hebrew), learners cannot

rely on cognates in deriving possible word meaning.

47

An example of the co-occurrence of negative transfer and positive transfer comes

from a study (Wade-Woolley & Geva, 2000) that involved Grade 2 children whose home

language was English and who were studying in a bilingual English-Hebrew day school

similar to the one where the current research was conducted. A phonological task designed to

tap sensitivity to the phonemic contrast /ts/ vs. /s/ that occurs in Hebrew but is

phonotactically constrained in English was administered, along with word level reading tasks

in both languages. Children experienced more difficulty discriminating the contrast in onsets

than in rimes which was predicted, as /ts/ does not occur in the initial parts of words in

English. Accurate performance on this measure was related to word reading ability in both

Hebrew and English (evidence for “positive transfer”). At the same time, evidence of

linguistic interdependence was seen in the cross-linguistic relation of phonological tasks to

word reading ability in both languages. The results suggested that a general level of

phonological ability is required for word reading skills to develop in both languages, but that

at the same time, phonological elements specific to the L2 present additional challenges to

beginning L2 readers. Similar results are reported in a study conducted by Wang and Geva

(2003) that focused on Grade 1 and 2 ESL learners whose home language was Cantonese. In

this study, the Cantonese children experienced difficulties on an auditory discrimination task

when they needed to discriminate /s/ from /Ɵ/ in various words (the latter does not occur in

Cantonese). This difficulty was noted in Grade 1 but by Grade 2 the children’s oral

proficiency in English improved and concomitantly they did not experience difficulty in

discriminating /s/ from /Ɵ/ or spelling it correctly in words such as “teeth” or “think”.

Examples of both positive and negative “transfer” at the morphological level come

from a recent study by Ramirez, Chen, Geva, and Luo (2011), who found that ESL children

48

from Mandarin and Cantonese backgrounds performed similarly to monolingual English

speakers on a task asking them to generate nonsense compound words using a structure that

exists in both languages, but ESL children from Spanish speaking backgrounds performed

more poorly. On the other hand, due to the commonalities between English and Spanish on

derivational structures, the Spanish speakers performed better than the Chinese ESL children.

That is, the Spanish speakers’ performance was rather similar to that of monolingual English

speakers on a derivational awareness task in which children were asked to generate the

correct structure of words in a sentence (e.g., “Locate. The birds migrated to a new _____

[location]”) (Ramirez et al.). This study demonstrates that depending on the morphological

similarity of the languages in relation to the task, L2 learners could draw on L1 linguistic

resources, and therefore demonstrated positive or negative transfer. This research suggests

that the interpretation of errors noted in L2 learners needs to be based on careful

consideration of the languages involved.

Bialystok (2005) suggested that the transfer of skills across languages with different

writing systems may not be automatic. This is based on the notion that different writing

systems rely on different phonological and linguistic models. Importantly, the

correspondence of letters and sounds within languages that provide for shallow or deep

orthographies may have a direct impact on the degree of transferability of skill (Bialystok,

2005; Durgunoglu, 2002; Liow & Poon, 1998; Verhoeven, 1994). That is, similar to Lado’s

(1964) theory, the greater the similarity in orthographic patterns, the more likely transfer of

skills may occur (e.g., English and French vs. English and Hebrew).

The more features such as phonology or cognates that are shared between two

languages, the easier it may be to learn these feature in the second language. Thus, a

49

consideration of commonalities and differences between specific features of different

languages is important. Genesee et al. (2006) point to other non-structural factors that do not

directly relate to grammar and may enhance positive transfer. This has to do with

individuals’ perception of similarities and differences between the languages. The more one

is able to view similarities between languages, the more likely transfer is to occur. For

example, the authors note that, while cognates should provide for transfer and enhancement

in inferring word meanings between languages with a common source, the individual must

also have an appreciation and awareness of the similarities between the languages. Genesee

at al. (2006) point out that the contrastive analysis framework cannot account for cross-

language transfer related to literacy constructs, which have more of a psychological

underpinning (e.g., metacognitive strategies), where an individual may need to use reasoning

strategies in order to make the connections.

The interdependence hypothesis (Cummins, 2000) is another major theory that deals

with the notion of cross-linguistic transfer. It proposes that all languages have distinct surface

features with underlying proficiencies, the latter being universally common. For this reason,

second language acquisition can be facilitated by a first language. Cummins (2000)

differentiated between two aspects of language proficiency: cognitive academic language

proficiency (CALP) and basic interpersonal communicative skills (BICS). CALP, used in

academic situations with limited context, includes aspects of second language development

that are interdependent such as literacy-related language skills. As discussed earlier,

Cummins emphasized that cross-language transfer is evident when a certain threshold of

language proficiency within both languages is established. Specifically, a certain level of

proficiency in the L2 is required before cross-linguistic transfer can occur from the L1 to the

50

second language. Thus, a child may not make gains in a second language as a result of cross-

linguistic transfer without sufficient skill in the L1 or L2. According to this framework,

students with stronger first language skills will make larger gains in the development of their

second language knowledge (Cummins, 2012).

Genesee et al. (2006) raise an important question with respect to the threshold

hypothesis, in terms of the proficiency level required in either language before transfer can

occur. Elaborated further, this question considers how language proficiency and language

experience might act as moderator variables within cross-linguistic transfer for both language

and literacy skills. Cummins theorized that a certain level of proficiency is necessary, while

Genesee et al. question what that level may be, and how it may differ across different

languages. Koda and Zehler (2008) emphasize that transfer is difficult to validate, especially

with young children whose literacy skills are only beginning to develop.

Genesee et al. (2006) critique Cummins’ (2000) theory, arguing that the construct of

“proficiency” in Cummins’ theory is rather vague. They differentiate between language

proficiency arising from either underlying cognitive abilities or structural features in order to

clarify the definition. CALP, as described by Cummins (2000), is thought to be acquired and

dependent on developmental, instructional, and daily experience. Dressler and Kamil (2006)

argue that the contrastive analysis hypothesis (Lado, 1964) best accounts for transfer related

to spelling, vocabulary and word reading while the interdependence hypothesis (Cummins,

2000) explains transfer related to higher order literacy skills that rely on cognitive reasoning,

and the use of strategies. In other words, it may be beneficial to consider the interdependence

and contrastive analysis hypotheses as complementary.

51

Bialystok (2005) maintains that being bilingual is not enough to explain patterns of

results related to literacy (e.g., relationships between word reading and vocabulary), but that

the nature of the language, type of writing system, and task all have important roles in

explaining when and why relationships occur. However, explaining how bilingualism affects

the development of metalinguistic skills requires investigation of the mediating factors and

the context within which they take place. Specifically, considering the orthographic depth of

the languages in conjunction with educational programming and exposure are key factors

within the equation.

Role of oral language proficiency in cross-linguistic transfer. In their research,

Durgunoglu (1998) and Durgunoglu et al. (1993) found that PA skills transfer between

languages, providing for general transferability of metalinguistic skills for reading. That is, if

a child has strong PA skills in one language, they are likely to have strong PA skills in their

second language, with PA ability positively relating to reading ability in both languages. The

first studies confirming cross-linguistic transfer were conducted with measures of PA (e.g.,

Comeau, Cormier, Grandmaison, & Lacroix, 1999; Lafrance & Gottardo, 2005; for reviews

see Genesee & Geva, 2006; Koda, 2007) with research continuing to support these findings

(e.g., Laurent & Martinot, 2010). Moreover, PA is currently thought to be a universal

component of word reading skills (Ziegler & Goswami, 2005). To illustrate, Saiegh-Haddad

and Geva (2008) reported that PA correlates with word reading in alphabetic languages that

differ in orthographic features such as English and Arabic. PA contributes to literacy

differently in alphabetic and logographic typologies. For example, stronger relationships of

PA with reading were reported with English than with Chinese word reading (Tong &

McBride-Chang, 2010).

52

Saiegh-Haddad and Geva (2010) caution that most studies investigating cross-linguistic

contributions are correlational in nature and unable to confirm the direction of causality with

respect to transfer of skill between two languages. Likewise, Ramirez et al. (2010) indicated

that there is no direct evidence suggesting that strong oral language skills in one language are

causally related to strong oral language skills in a second language. However, Haigh, Savage,

Erdos and Genesee (2011) investigated the contribution of PA to French Immersion

children’s word reading in both English and French (typologically related languages) through

regression analyses, noting a causal contribution of PA to word reading based on their

controlled, longitudinal study.

While early vocabulary development in young children learning a second language

has not been related to vocabulary knowledge in their first language (Davis, Carlisle, &

Beeman, 1999), positive relationships of this nature tend to be found in older children. In

addition, it has been predicted that the relationships between first and second language oral

vocabulary knowledge would be stronger between those languages that share cognates

(Dressler & Kamil, 2006). In a longitudinal study of Spanish-English bilingual kindergarten

students, Lindsey, Manis and Bailey (2003) found a positive relationship between children’s

Spanish vocabulary in kindergarten and their English vocabulary in Grade 1. Indeed, these

are two languages that share cognates and the children were receiving increasingly more

instruction in English than in Spanish. A likely explanation for this is that a certain level of

reasoning is required to make the connection between cognates, and younger children might

be unable to make such connections.

In their meta-analysis, Melby-Lervåg and Lervåg (2011) found an overall correlation

between first and second languages with respect to oral language skills (comprehension and

53

vocabulary). The correlation was stable across age groups (age 4:1 to 13:6 years) with no

apparent moderators to explain the relationship. The authors related this finding to the

children’s underlying proficiencies shared to their two languages and within their common

knowledge base. Indeed, these authors also speculated that the degree of correlation might be

a function of shared cognates, and indicated that the nature of the measure may impact such

relationships as well. Most of the correlations noted were when both languages were

alphabetic as opposed to one language being alphabetic and the other being ideographic,

pointing again to the importance of considering typological similarities in the spoken and

writing systems.

Morphological awareness and cross-linguistic transfer. Research has demonstrated

that the MA of monolingual children in the elementary grades makes a significant

contribution to their word reading ability (e.g., Carlisle, 2000, 2003; Leong, 2000). While it

is known that MA supports literacy skills in the elementary grades for monolingual speakers

of alphabetic languages (Fowler & Liberman, 1995; Nunes, Bryant, & Olsson, 2003), it has

also been investigated within bilingual populations (e.g., Deacon et al., 2007; Ku &

Anderson, 2003; Ramirez et al., 2010).

Deacon et al. (2007) demonstrated that there were both within contributions

(controlling for PA, vocabulary and intelligence) and cross-language contributions

(controlling for intelligence, PA, and MA in the counter language) of MA to English and

French word reading in a study involving French immersion children. In a study investigating

Spanish-speaking children in Grades 4-7 learning English as a second language, Ramirez et

al. (2010) found within language contributions of derivational MA to word reading in both

languages, after controlling for memory, intelligence, PA and vocabulary; however, only

54

Spanish MA contributed to English word reading after the control variables were considered.

Saiegh-Haddad and Geva (2008), in a study investigating derivational MA with English L1

children learning Arabic as an L2 in Grades 3-6, further suggested that the relationships of

two-way cross-linguistic transfer may not be universal. They found a contribution from

Arabic MA to English word reading and fluency (controlling for English MA), but not vice

versa, and MA performance between English and Arabic was not correlated. Instead, they

found that MA in the second (or weaker) language (Arabic) contributed to reading skill in the

stronger language. However, Ramirez et al. noted contributions from MA in the stronger

language to reading ability in the weaker language. Saiegh-Haddad and Geva suggested their

unique results could partly be attributed to the morphological complexity of Arabic in

comparison with English.

The notion that cross-linguistic contributions of MA across languages may be more

dependent on shared cognates and word structure, with language proficiency as an additional

factor, needs to be further unravelled. Specifically, in Deacon et al.’s (2007) study, where an

analogy-based inflectional awareness task was administered, the bi-directional contributions

of MA to reading were apparent across Grades 1 – 3. However, they were strongest in Grade

3 (the oldest grade considered in the study), when language skills were stronger than in

Grades 1 and 2. In other words, this supports the notion that for more complex skills to

transfer, a certain threshold of language proficiency is essential, although this may not be a

prerequisite for lower level linguistic processes such as PA and RAN. At the same time, it is

important to point out that the languages that Deacon et al. (2007) and Ramirez et al. (2010)

investigated share a common root and alphabet (i.e., Latin alphabet with many Greek and

Latin words), and have similar morphological structures. On the other hand, the languages

55

researched by Saiegh-Haddad and Geva have different orthographic and morphological

structures with Arabic being notably more morphologically complex than English. These

studies are the beginning of necessary developmental cross-linguistic and bilingual research

investigating the relationship between MA and reading in order to determine which specific

aspects of MA are universal across alphabetic languages and which may be constrained by

particular language features. In order to investigate the extent to which MA transfers and

contributes across alphabetic languages, more research is warranted that compares English

with languages such as Hebrew that have different orthographic and morphological

structures. Considering such notions with groups that have different proficiencies in one of

the two languages will further assist in teasing out how language proficiency may impact on

such cross-linguistic relationships.

Cross-linguistic transfer of MA in English-Hebrew bilinguals. Geva and Siegel

(2000) investigated native English speaking children learning Hebrew as a second language

in a day school, and found cross-language correlations in performance on an oral cloze task

(a measure of syntax that required knowledge of morphological aspects). The results of this

task provide indirect support for a relationship between MA across the different languages.

These authors did not control for vocabulary knowledge (or working memory), which might

have assisted with explaining how general language comprehension may impact the

relationships. Vocabulary is highly implicated in oral language and morphological (and

syntactic) knowledge (Carlisle, 2000), making it possible that this unmeasured construct may

explain much of the variance.

Bindman (2004) also found positive relationships between Hebrew and English MA

in English speaking children learning Hebrew as a second language in a day school in the

56

UK. Bindman conducted regression analyses to determine whether Hebrew MA could predict

variance in English MA. After controlling for age and verbal ability (vocabulary),

performance on both a Hebrew oral cloze task (language comprehension) and a Hebrew root

morphemes measure (combination of derivational awareness and inflectional awareness)

accounted for significant variance in English word analogy and English sentence analogy

(MA measures), but not with respect to English language comprehension (oral cloze task).

When Bindman limited her analyses to a subgroup of children who were more proficient in

conversational Hebrew, she found that Hebrew language comprehension accounted for

significant variance in English language comprehension with the same control variables.

These results suggest that the nature of the relationships between MA in the first and second

languages may depend on children’s language proficiency in each language, and that

correlations strengthen once they pass a certain proficiency threshold in the weaker, or “new”

language. In essence, this is also the argument made by Saiegh-Hadded and Geva (2008)

with regard to English-Arabic speaking children.

Additional nuance comes from Kahn-Horwitz et al. (2005). Based on a study

investigating Grade 4 Hebrew-speaking children in their first year of learning English as a

second language, Kahn-Horwitz et al. suggested that there is a common core of

metalinguistic and linguistic skills that may underlie first and second language reading

acquisition. Through structural equation modelling they found that Hebrew MA was one of

several metalinguistic awareness components that predicted the children’s English word

reading abilities. Specifically, a factor analysis indicated that Hebrew MA, along with other

Hebrew variables (word reading, reading speed, orthographic awareness, and PA),

independently predicted English pseudoword reading and English letter-sound knowledge.

57

Through these two English reading measures, the Hebrew variables significantly contributed

to English word reading and English reading comprehension. Schiff and Calif (2007)

investigated derivational MA and reading ability with Grade 5 Hebrew-speaking children in

their fourth year of learning English as a second language. They found significant positive

relationships between MA tasks in English and Hebrew as well as cross-linguistic

relationships between Hebrew MA and English reading, controlling for English MA and PA

in the latter analysis. These findings support the notion of cross-language contribution of MA

to word reading skills from the more proficient language to the less proficient language, even

when the languages are typologically different.

In order to clarify the extent to which MA is universal and exerts its role on reading

cross-linguistically, additional research is needed. Not enough is known about the extent to

which MA exerts a cross-linguistic role longitudinally and the extent to which this is

mitigated by language proficiency. Specifically, demonstration of a bi-directional and

longitudinal relationship between MA and reading that also accounts for differences in

language proficiency (e.g., differences in educational programming) is needed. Ideally, this

research would compare groups of children with differing proficiency levels and examine the

role of various aspects of MA (e.g., inflectional and derivational awareness) on reading (i.e.,

word reading and reading comprehension) in these groups. Based on the available cross-

linguistic research it appears that typological differences are important to consider, and that

language proficiency and underlying cognitive processes contribute to the noted positive

relationships between MA and literacy in different languages. Future research needs to

explore whether children’s MA performance is related to their performance on other reading-

related cognitive processes. Whether different aspects of MA contribute to literacy (i.e., word

58

reading and reading comprehension) in young children who are emerging bilinguals is also

unclear. These research questions and hypotheses are considered in more detail below. The

present dissertation addresses these questions and will hopefully assist in teasing out the roles

of language proficiency, language structure, orthography, and morphology with respect to

where differences may occur in explaining bilingual literacy development within alphabetic

languages.

The Simple View of Reading

The SVR is a useful framework for studying the complex process of reading

comprehension. It was posited by Gough and Tunmer (1986), who proposed that reading

comprehension is a product of word decoding and linguistic comprehension. Within this

broad framework, linguistic comprehension refers to various aspects of oral language

comprehension and processing, while word decoding refers to the specific aspects pertaining

to sounding out words and letter-sound patterns. Gough and Tunmer indicated that linguistic

comprehension involves the ability to answer questions about text content (i.e., at the

sentence level). Indeed, Gough and Tunmer and Hoover and Gough (1990) highlighted the

use of parallel constructs for measuring reading comprehension and linguistic

comprehension. Specifically, they suggested using cloze tasks as measures for both

constructs: one involving listening to the text (language) and one involving reading the text

(literacy). While initial studies used such sentence (i.e., cloze tasks) and paragraph tasks,

numerous subsequent studies using word-level vocabulary tasks as a measure of the construct

of linguistic comprehension, and yielded similar findings in support of the SVR model (e.g.,

Florit & Cain, 2011; Ouellette & Beers, 2010). Thus, discourse, syntactic, and lexical

59

measures appear to be measures of language comprehension that in conjunction with word

reading explain substantial variance in reading comprehension (Florit & Cain, 2011). The

SVR is a theoretical framework which accounts for skill in reading comprehension across

various alphabetic orthographies (for a review, see Florit & Cain, 2011). It has implications

for reading instruction, the definition of reading disability, and for literacy in general (Gough

& Tunmer, 1986; Hoover & Gough, 1990; Lervag &Aukrust, 2010).

Gough and Tunmer (1986) and Hoover and Gough (1990) acknowledged that a

component of this theory must include how decoding and oral language skills contribute to

reading comprehension developmentally. They suggested that, in the early stages of literacy

development, decoding plays a stronger role with the importance of differences in oral

language skills gradually increasing. In the same vein, Ouellette and Beers (2010), in a study

with English-speaking children in Grade 1, found that receptive vocabulary (the authors’

measure of oral language) did not contribute additional unique variance to reading

comprehension (measured with a cloze task) after controlling for word-level reading skills.

In a meta-analysis of the research investigating the SVR model in alphabetic

orthographies, Florit and Cain (2011) concluded that decoding (i.e., word reading and

pseudoword reading) and linguistic comprehension do not play the same role in the

emergence of reading comprehension in different orthographies. For young monolingual

English speakers, decoding was found to be more influential for reading comprehension than

was linguistic comprehension. Furthermore, when decoding was assessed with real words

(vs. pseudowords), it remained a strong predictor of reading comprehension for up to five

years of formal literacy instruction. In contrast, for beginner monolingual readers (i.e.,

Grades 1 -2) of languages with shallower orthographies, linguistic comprehension was a

60

more significant predictor of reading comprehension than was decoding. Thus, in line with

Share’s (2008) argument for the anglocentrism of some reading theories, it appears that

linguistic comprehension may be more predictive of Hebrew reading comprehension in the

early school grades (when decoding is less challenging as it is extremely transparent) but

decoding may be more predictive of English reading comprehension than linguistic

comprehension at this level.

Several critics have suggested that explaining reading comprehension is not as simple

as Gough and Tunmer (1986) proposed. Tunmer and Chapman (2012) revisited the model,

questioning whether oral language proficiency and word reading were mutually exclusive

predictors of reading comprehension for 7 year-old children (Grade 3). Through factor

analysis, this study created two core factors: oral language proficiency, which included

receptive vocabulary knowledge and oral listening comprehension skill (the latter being a

task that directly paralleled their measure of reading comprehension), and decoding, which

included letter-sound knowledge and two measures of word recognition. The authors

illustrated that, while both factors significantly contributed to reading comprehension, oral

language proficiency also influenced reading comprehension through decoding, a result

supporting Perfetti’s (2007) argument for the quality of lexical representations and their role

in reading comprehension. Thus, this study suggests that the relationships between the

constructs are not independent as initially suggested, and that the SVR may need to be

revised to illustrate potential interactions among the components.

Aside from the possible anglocentricity of the model, Kirby and Savage (2008)

pointed to several ways that the SVR is too broad and does not capture additional cognitive

and linguistic factors that are relevant for reading comprehension and literacy skill (e.g., MA,

61

working memory (Cain, Oakhill & Bryant, 2004)). Kirby et al. (2012) investigated whether

MA (inflectional and derivational awareness analogy tasks) predicts additional variance in

English-speaking Grade 3 children’s reading comprehension ability. Indeed, after controlling

for vocabulary knowledge (kindergarten), nonverbal reasoning (kindergarten), PA (Grade 1)

and word reading (Grade 3), MA measured in Grade 3 contributed additional and significant

variance to reading comprehension ability measured in Grade 3. This study suggests that

there may be other aspects of oral language proficiency (e.g., MA) that are important and

should be considered when explaining variance in reading comprehension ability. At present,

this is the only known controlled study to include MA as a unique measure of oral language

proficiency (i.e., controlling for word reading and receptive vocabulary, among other

variables).

Considering the Simple View of Reading from a bilingual perspective. Recent

studies have further extended the SVR to an examination of English reading comprehension

in young ELLs (Gottardo & Mueller, 2009; Proctor et al., 2005; Zadeh, Farnia, & Geva,

2011; Geva & Farnia, 2012) and children in French Immersion programming (Erdos, et al.,

2010). With Grade 3 English reading comprehension (story retell) as the dependent variable,

Zadeh et al. found that Grade 1 English listening comprehension (an aspect of oral language

proficiency, measured by story retell and comprehension questions) contributed directly to

reading comprehension assessed in Grade 3, while the contribution of Grade 1 PA was

mediated through Grade 2 English word reading. RAN did not contribute unique variance to

reading comprehension, but did contribute to Grade 3 English reading fluency. The findings

also suggested the relevance of including reading fluency as an outcome within the SVR

framework. Florit and Cain (2011) also recognized the importance of considering reading

62

fluency within this model, especially for languages with shallow orthographies where reading

fluency indices are more robust predictors of reading comprehension than reading accuracy.

The study by Zadeh at al. further serves as an example of where the SVR model may better

explain reading comprehension when other reading-related constructs are included.

Gottardo and Mueller (2009) examined the SVR model in predicting English as a L2

reading comprehension (cloze task) with native Spanish-speaking children who were being

educated in an English language school (Grade 2). They tested the model using both English

and Spanish measures of oral language proficiency and PA as predictors that were measured

in Grade 1, while English word reading and English reading comprehension were measured

in Grade 2. While cross-linguistic correlations between predictors existed, the authors found

that the best structural-equation model for explaining English reading comprehension

involved English constructs (word reading, oral language proficiency and phonological

awareness), despite the children having stronger oral language skills in Spanish, their first

language. That is, the best-fitting statistical model used to investigate their question did not

include cross-linguistic effects between Spanish and English. The results illustrated a model

very similar to that of Zadeh et al. (2011) whereby English oral language proficiency directly

predicted English reading comprehension, and English PA was mediated through English

word reading in predicting English reading comprehension.

Proctor et al. (2005) investigated the SVR model with Grade 4 native Spanish

speakers who were English language learners, a similar population to that of Gottardo and

Mueller (2009). All measures were in English, with reading comprehension as the outcome

variable. Their reading comprehension measure was the same cloze task used by Gottardo

and Mueller. Word reading was measured by a pseudoword reading task as well as a word-

63

level fluency task, and oral language proficiency was measured through listening

comprehension and expressive vocabulary knowledge tasks. Results indicated that alphabetic

knowledge uniquely contributed to reading comprehension while word reading fluency did

not. Listening comprehension uniquely predicted reading comprehension, with vocabulary

also directly contributing to reading comprehension independently and through listening

comprehension. While Proctor et al. (2005) took a different approach to investigating the

SVR model than did Zadeh et al. (2010) and Gottardo and Mueller (2009), their results do

indeed support the applicability of the model for second language and literacy acquisition in

young developing readers.

Three studies examined children whose native language was not English yet were

being formally schooled in English. Whether the children were literate in their native

languages was not reported. Erdos et al. (2010) applied the SVR model to young native

English-speaking children in a total French Immersion program. That is, English was their

dominant language at home and in the community, although they were being formally

schooled in French only. Standardized scores for language measures were not presented, thus

it is difficult to determine if the children were more proficient in one language over the other.

The authors examined the SVR model both within each language and cross-linguistically,

predicting Grade 1 French reading comprehension (a combination of receptive word and

sentence reading comprehension) from English and French Grade 1 reading-related skills.

Specifically, within-language analyses predicting French reading comprehension through a

step-wise regression revealed French word reading skills to contribute significant variance in

step 1, with the product of French word reading and French listening comprehension

(receptive sentence comprehension) contributing additional unique variance in step 2. Word

64

reading and pseudoword reading were individually entered into the above analyses and,

while each contributed significant variance to reading comprehension, word reading was a

stronger predictor of reading comprehension than pseudoword reading. When only English

predictors (pseudoword reading and listening comprehension) were entered into the

regression analyses predicting French reading comprehension, only English pseudoword

reading contributed significant variance. Thus, Erdos et al.’s study revealed that for this

Grade 1 total French Immersion group of students, the SVR model explained French reading

comprehension within-language but not cross-linguistically from English skills.

These studies add support to the SVR model while also highlighting additional

linguistic and cognitive details that need to be directly addressed within the model in order to

gain a more accurate and comprehensive picture of reading comprehension skills, especially

with respect to cross-linguistic contributions. Continuing to test the model with other

alphabetic languages would build support for the possible applicability of such a model in

explaining reading comprehension across alphabetic orthographies. Considering additional

language factors such as MA would also assist in determining whether the model may be too

simple. Including MA as a unique component of language comprehension in other second-

language populations would continue to build on the relevance of considering other

important literacy-related factors across different languages and orthographies.

In the above studies, reading skills were being taught in one language only (e.g.,

English or French). Another cross-linguistic question that has yet to be addressed is how

language skills within each language fit within the SVR model for emerging bilingual

children. For example, do word-level skills in the first language contribute to reading

comprehension skills in the second language and vice versa? What additional linguistic or

65

processing factors (i.e., vocabulary knowledge, MA) might explain variance on reading

comprehension cross-linguistically? Do the relations work both ways or are they stronger in

relation to one language?

With respect to these questions, Kirby and Savage (2008) pointed out that children

reading in a second language are likely to have weaker second language decoding and oral

comprehension skills in comparison to their first language skills. Relatedly, Deacon et al.

(2007) found that first language (English) MA skills positively correlate with second

language (French) word reading skills, even after controlling for second-language word-level

reading skills. Such results suggest that the SVR model may be nuanced by taking into

consideration language proficiency, especially in the weaker language which is likely to be

the second language (Kirby & Savage, 2008). An important question is how stronger oral

language skills in the first, more proficient, language can contribute to reading

comprehension in the second and less proficient language. As well, building from the above

consideration, examining specific aspects of oral language (e.g., MA) that better account for

variance in reading comprehension skill with an emerging bilingual population is important.

It is hypothesized that relationships between oral language in the L1 and reading

comprehension in the L2 would depend on language proficiency in both languages, with the

stronger L1 contributing more variance to reading comprehension in the L2 as opposed to the

other way around. Indeed, the role of L2 vocabulary knowledge would be implicated within

such a relation as text-specific vocabulary knowledge would likely assist with

comprehending text. More specifically, how might such a cross-linguistic model appear with

English and Hebrew, which are drastically different not only in terms of the orthography and

typology, but in the morphological underpinnings as well? Similar to the above hypothesis

66

and based on the review of the literature pertaining to predictors of reading comprehension in

different languages, the SVR model is expected to explain reading comprehension for both

English and Hebrew quite similarly. However, given the transparent orthographic nature of

vowelized Hebrew, one may hypothesize that oral language proficiency might play a more

significant role with regard to the Hebrew model than the English model for young children.

As indicated earlier, considering MA as an aspect of oral language proficiency within

the SVR model is warranted, given its unique and independent relationship to reading

comprehension (Kirby et al, 2012). Another more specific question concerns the extent to

which different aspects of MA (i.e., inflectional and derivational awareness) play a

differential role in understanding reading comprehension. Such a more nuanced

consideration may reflect developmental processes associated with the acquisition of

inflectional and derivational awareness as well as how they may relate to reading

comprehension in English and Hebrew differently. Previous research has suggested that both

monolingual Hebrew speakers and English speakers develop command of inflections before

derivations. It is likely that this may also be applicable to emerging English-Hebrew

bilinguals. Investigating these hypotheses would assist in testing the SVR model with

additional measures while determining its cross-linguistic applicability.

The Present Study

This dissertation seeks to address four core questions that, over a two-year period,

investigate the cognitive (i.e., PA, RAN), language (i.e., vocabulary, MA) and literacy skills

(i.e., word reading, pseudoword reading and reading comprehension) of English-speaking

children learning Hebrew as a second language within a partial immersion program. Special

67

focus is given to MA as a component of language proficiency and the extent to which MA

contributes cross-linguistically to the SVR model over and above the contribution of

vocabulary. Each question and relevant predictions are presented in turn.

Question 1: How does early partial Hebrew immersion impact language and literacy

development in both English and Hebrew?

Understanding the impact of early immersion programming assists in determining its

relevance to second language and literacy development while also considering its possible

impact on first language skills. An answer to this question would contribute to discussions on

the impact of early immersion with alphabetic languages that differ in morphological and

orthographic structure. Results would also assist in determining whether, and to what degree,

early immersion programming may make a difference in both first and second language and

literacy skills in comparison with later onset of immersion. As discussed earlier, Cummins

(1979, 2012) hypothesized that a certain level of second language proficiency is necessary in

order for skills to transfer between the L1 and L2 and prevent disadvantages, and that higher

levels of proficiency provide for further advantages; essentially, there is a language

proficiency threshold that needs to be met. Thus, this first research question addresses

whether early partial Hebrew immersion programming impacts language and literacy

development in both English and Hebrew, when compared to children who do not participate

in an early immersion program, and whether it allows for enough of a language competency

threshold to be met in order to see early gains.

In this study children were tracked from the end of senior kindergarten (SK) to the

end of their Grade 1 year. There were two groups of children: one which participated in early

68

Hebrew immersion (early group) during the SK year and one which did not (late group). For

administrative and budgetary reasons both groups were merged during their Grade 1 year,

such that all children received partial Hebrew immersion programming in Grade 1. The first

question targets the extent to which there are differences between the early and late groups in

the development of vocabulary, word reading, pseudoword reading, and reading

comprehension in English-Hebrew, as well as in underlying cognitive skills such as PA and

RAN. Multivariate ANOVAs, t-tests, and post-hoc analyses (as required) were used to

determine whether children who received early Hebrew immersion programming (early

group) performed differently from children who did not receive early exposure to immersion

(late group) on the variables described across three time points (i.e., end of SK, beginning of

Grade 1, and end of Grade1).

Based on the research literature it was hypothesized that the children who participated

in early Hebrew immersion programming would demonstrate significantly stronger Hebrew

language skills (i.e., vocabulary) at the end of SK and through to the end Grade 1 (Genesee,

1987, 2005; Met, 1998). This hypothesis was based on the notion that they would have had

significantly more practice with and exposure to spoken, communicative Hebrew than the

late group. However, whether early Hebrew immersion programming would yield higher

Hebrew word and pseudoword reading skills in the early group is debatable, given the

shallow orthographic nature of vowelized Hebrew and the ease with which decoding rules

can be learned and applied (Geva & Siegel, 2000). Thus, it was hypothesized that while there

would be no early versus late group differences on Hebrew word reading in Grade 1, at the

same time early-late differences were hypothesized on Hebrew reading comprehension at the

end of Grade 1. This hypothesis is commensurate with the rationale for the hypothesis that

69

the early immersion group would outperform the late immersion group on Hebrew oral

language skills. Lastly, it was hypothesized that early Hebrew immersion would have a

positive impact on PA in English. Developing oral language skills in two languages that

differ phonetically and structurally may require higher-level metalinguisitic awareness, more

phonological refined sensitivity and a deeper awareness of the sound structure of English,

their L1 (Metsala, 1999). Finally, given the underlying cognitive nature of RAN, an early-

late group difference was not expected on this cognitive measure.

With respect to the rate of growth over time for the early and late groups on the

language and literacy measures, it was hypothesized that growth for both groups would be

similar for all measures across time points. This hypothesis reflects the fact that both groups

received the same English and Hebrew instruction for the second and third data collection

points. Data collection began at the end of the SK year, following 7 months of partial Hebrew

immersion in the early group and 7 months of 30 minutes of weekly exposure to Hebrew in

the late group. That is, the first assessment wave occurred before the groups were merged.

The next two waves of data collection took place in Grade 1 when the groups were merged

and all children were exposed to the same amount of Hebrew (this is described in more detail

in the Method section). Change from Time 1(spring of the SK year) through to the end of

Grade 1 (Time 3) was examined. Most of the programming/ instruction (i.e., during Grade 1)

occurred after the early and late groups had been merged and were receiving the same

instruction. Given the short time span (7 months) in which the early immersion group

received more intensive instruction prior to the merger of the two classes, it was not expected

that noticeable differences in growth trajectories between the early and late groups would be

captured on any of the measures discussed above.

70

Question 2: This question focuses on the relationships among language, literacy and

cognitive skills within each language and cross-linguistically. Do the patterns of

relationships among literacy (i.e., word reading, pseudoword reading, and reading

comprehension), language (i.e., receptive vocabulary, MA), metalinguistic knowledge (i.e.,

PA) and RAN vary as a function of language (English vs. Hebrew), and program (early vs.

late)?

This second question evaluates patterns of relationships among the language, literacy

and cognitive measures in the early and late groups in English and Hebrew, as well as cross-

linguistically. The variables considered in this question were all measured at the end of

Grade 1, with the exception of PA and RAN, which were only measured at the end of SK.

Correlational analyses were used to investigate these relationships. Control variables

considered in these analyses included age and nonverbal intelligence. Of interest was

whether significant differences in the strength of the correlations existed. It was hypothesized

that the patterns of correlations between the early and late groups for English and Hebrew

(both within- and cross-linguistically), would be significantly different from each other.

More specifically, it was hypothesized that the children who participated in the early Hebrew

immersion programming would have stronger awareness of the typological differences

between English and Hebrew orthography, and would thus be able to make higher-level

associations between the two languages (Bialystok, 2005; Genesee, 2005). It was anticipated

that for both groups, in both languages, performance on the following measures would be

71

significantly and positively correlated with both word reading and reading comprehension:

vocabulary, MA (inflectional and derivational awareness) (Carlisle, 2000; Kirby et al., 2012)

and PA (Bradley & Bryant, 1983; Geva & Siegel, 2000). It was unclear how RAN would fit

into the picture given that the present author is unaware of cross-linguistic contributions of

RAN between alphabetic languages. However, performance on RAN was expected to

correlate with word reading in each language and for each group (Misra et al., 2004; Wagner

et al., 1999; Wolf & Bowers, 1999). Whether it would correlate with reading comprehension

in either English or Hebrew, for either group, was unknown. The children in the early

Hebrew immersion program were expected to show significantly stronger associations within

the above predictions for both English and Hebrew, in light of their anticipated higher-level

awareness of the internal structures of language and slightly more proficient Hebrew

language skills. As a result it was expected that there would be more variance in the late

group whereas the early group would be still performing closer to “floor” on language tasks.

Cross-linguistically, differences between the patterns of correlations were also

expected between the two groups of children, with those who participated in the early

Hebrew immersion program displaying more significant cross-linguistic relationships and

stronger relationships among the variables of interest2 (i.e., vocabulary, MA) with literacy

skill (word reading and reading comprehension). This was based on the hypothesis

(discussed above) that children in the early group would be somewhat more proficient in

Hebrew and that cross-linguistic correlations with Hebrew would therefore begin to emerge.

Both groups, however, were hypothesized to reveal significant correlations between English

2 PA and RAN are not considered in this part of the research question as both were measured in English only,

preventing a cross-linguistic examination of performance on those tasks.

72

word reading and reading comprehension with Hebrew word reading and reading

comprehension, given the research documenting bilingual relationships in this domain

(Durgunoglu et al., 1993; Geva & Siegel, 2000).

It was hypothesized that children who were exposed to early Hebrew immersion

programming would show correlations between performance on English word reading,

reading comprehension, vocabulary, inflectional awareness, and derivational awareness tasks

with Hebrew word reading and reading comprehension. It was expected that stronger

proficiency in Hebrew in the early immersion programming would allow for stronger

metalinguistic awareness (i.e., MA and PA) in both languages. English was also the more

proficient language for these children, so it was therefore expected that skills from English

would be used to assist the development of skills in Hebrew. Based on the literature, it was

hypothesized that for this group at this age there would be no significant correlations between

Hebrew language (vocabulary and MA) task performance with English word reading and

reading comprehension performance (Gottardo & Mueller, 2009; Kahn-Horwitz et al., 2005;

Ouellette & Beers, 2010; Saiegh-Haddad & Geva, 2008).

It was hypothesized that children who participated in the late Hebrew immersion

programming might show some significant but weaker cross-linguistic correlations between

Hebrew word reading and reading comprehension with English language performance.

Where differences in correlations of this nature would occur was unclear. From the literature

review, it was expected that English inflectional awareness may reveal a correlation with

Hebrew literacy tasks, given the similarity of inflectional structure in both English and

Hebrew (Geva, 2006a). Similarly, English vocabulary may also have been significantly

correlated with Hebrew literacy. Given vowelized Hebrew’s shallow orthographic nature and

73

the notion that Hebrew word reading should be less dependent on Hebrew vocabulary

knowledge (Geva & Siegel, 2000), a significant correlation was anticipated between English

vocabulary and Hebrew reading comprehension. Correlations between English literacy and

Hebrew language proficiency skills were not expected given the early stage of the children’s

language and literacy development.

Question 3: a) Do the key essential components of the Simple View of Reading (SVR) model

(word reading, oral language) account for unique variance in emerging bilingual children’s

reading comprehension in English and Hebrew?

b) Does MA skill contribute additional unique variance to reading comprehension, within

each language, over and above word reading and vocabulary?

The SVR model was used as the foundational theory for investigating the third set of

questions. Using the SVR framework within English and Hebrew separately, word reading

and vocabulary knowledge were first considered to be independent, but not mutually

exclusive, and significant predictors of reading comprehension. Using regression analyses,

and after controlling for age and nonverbal reasoning (as appropriate), these variables were

entered into the model first. Each MA task variable (inflectional and derivational awareness)

was independently entered on the last steps of the regression analyses to determine whether

ability on these tasks contributed unique variance to reading comprehension beyond word

reading and vocabulary knowledge. Regression models from these analyses were expected to

indicate whether the SVR framework can be applied to English and Hebrew reading

comprehension for this Grade 1 sample of English-speaking children learning Hebrew as a

second language. Results would also determine whether MA, a component of language

74

comprehension, would contribute additional unique variance to reading comprehension,

beyond word reading and vocabulary knowledge.

Based on the literature review, it was hypothesized that the model would apply to this

population in English and Hebrew (Florit & Cain, 2011; Gough & Tunmer, 1986). That is,

the SVR model (i.e., word reading and oral language) would explain a substantial proportion

of the variance in reading comprehension within each of the languages. The young age in this

study is a factor to consider, as the children are younger than those in the majority of other

studies investigating the SVR model (Florit & Cain, 2011). However, Erdos et al. (2010)

found that the SVR model applied to a same-aged bilingual population with English as an L1.

In light of the SVR model as it is commonly considered (i.e., with word reading vocabulary

knowledge as predictors), it was expected that the contributions of word reading and

vocabulary knowledge to reading comprehension within each language would differ. Given

the shallow orthography of Hebrew and the fact that it was the second language for the

population being considered, vocabulary knowledge was expected to be a stronger predictor

of reading comprehension than word reading in Hebrew (Florit & Cain, 2011; Geva &

Siegel, 2000). As for English, however, it was hypothesized that word reading would be a

stronger predictor of reading comprehension than vocabulary knowledge, given the need to

decode accurately in order to properly comprehend text. Given that English was the

children’s first language and they were in Grade 1, the finding that word reading would be a

stronger predictor than vocabulary knowledge of reading comprehension within the SVR

model was hypothesized, based on the findings of Gottardo and Mueller (2009) and Proctor

et al. (2005). This result was hypothesized despite the difference in the present study’s

75

measure of reading comprehension receptively, passage reading, while the studies noted

above measured reading comprehension with oral cloze tasks.

The second research component, as noted above, considered other measures of oral

language proficiency. Specifically, this model included MA as an additional component of

oral language proficiency. This question was concerned with the extent to which

performance on inflectional and derivational awareness tasks (MA) would account for

additional unique variance in reading comprehension in both English and Hebrew, above and

beyond word reading and vocabulary. Performance on the two measures of MA were entered

into the regression model independently (after first determining whether they correlated with

reading comprehension) to examine their contribution to reading comprehension above word

reading and vocabulary. It was hypothesized that, within English and Hebrew, performance

on measures of MA would explain unique variance in reading comprehension. Within

English, performance on MA tasks has been shown to be a robust predictor of word reading

(e.g., Carlisle, 2000, 2007; Deacon & Kirby, 2004) and reading comprehension (Kirby et al.,

2011). It was hypothesized that derivational awareness skills would uniquely predict English

reading comprehension, given the underlying relevance of that skill to deciphering word

meaning (Anglin, 1993; Kirby et al., 2012; Nagy & Anderson, 1984). For similar reasons,

and given the complex nature of Hebrew derivational morphology, it was expected to be a

unique predictor of Hebrew reading comprehension as well.

In summary, it was hypothesized that the SVR model, including MA as an additional

aspect of oral language proficiency, would explain reading comprehension in both English

and Hebrew. It was hypothesized that the model can include performance on derivational and

inflectional awareness tasks, as additional and unique predictors, above the variance

76

explained by word reading and vocabulary knowledge. Lastly, once MA was introduced as a

measure of oral language proficiency, it was hypothesized that the SVR model would explain

reading comprehension within both English and Hebrew in a comparable manner, through

word reading and oral language proficiency, given the literature summarizing predictors of

reading comprehension in each language, respectively.

Question 4: a) Do the key essential components of the Simple View of Reading model (word

reading, oral language) each account for unique variance in emerging bilingual children’s

reading comprehension cross-linguistically?

b) Does MA skill contribute additional unique variance to reading comprehension cross-

linguistically, above and beyond word reading and vocabulary?

The fourth set of questions targeted a cross-linguistic approach within the SVR

framework. Of interest was whether English variables contributed to Hebrew reading

comprehension, as well as whether Hebrew variables contributed to English reading

comprehension. Further assessed was whether performance on each of the MA measures

contributed additional unique variance over and above word reading and vocabulary

knowledge to reading comprehension cross-linguistically. Thus, this last set of questions

investigated whether it is important to include measures from each language in the SVR

model to best explain individual differences in reading comprehension.

As described above, cross-linguistic correlations determined which variables (i.e.,

word reading, vocabulary, inflectional awareness, and derivational awareness) were

significantly related to reading comprehension across languages. Next, Hebrew word

reading, vocabulary, and MA measures were each entered into a regression model, predicting

77

English reading comprehension cross-linguistically. MA (i.e., inflectional and derivational

awareness) was entered after word reading and vocabulary to determine whether it

contributes additional unique cross-linguistic variance. Similarly, English word reading,

vocabulary, and MA measures (inflectional and derivational awareness) were each entered

into a regression model, to examine how much of the variance in Hebrew reading

comprehension they each explained. This cross-linguistic approach was based on the work of

Erdos et al. (2010) who investigated L2 reading comprehension from L1 predictors within

the SVR framework. It was hypothesized that the SVR model would explain Hebrew reading

comprehension from both (i.e., word reading and vocabulary) English variables, while

Hebrew vocabulary would not predict English reading comprehension over and above

Hebrew word reading. Results reported in the literature have generally shown unidirectional

cross-linguistic transfer from the more proficient language to the less proficient language,

especially in the earlier grades (Gottardo & Mueller, 2009; Proctor et al., 2005; Zadeh, Farnia

& Geva, 2012). English word reading and vocabulary were expected to contribute unique

variance to Hebrew reading comprehension. The cross-linguistic contribution of the MA

variables to reading comprehension was questionable and believed to possibly be dependent

on the shared variance with both word reading and vocabulary. Cross-linguistic transfer of

MA has been illustrated in previous research (Bindman, 2004; Deacon et al., 2007; Ramirez

et al., 2010; Saiegh-Haddad & Geva, 2008). Thus, it was hypothesized that the contributions

of inflectional awareness may fit into the SVR model bi-directionally, given that it seemingly

has the most underlying morphological similarity between English and Hebrew. It was also

hypothesized that English derivational awareness may contribute additional unique variance

to Hebrew reading comprehension (Schiff & Calif, 2007), given the strength of its

78

predictions for English reading comprehension (Kuo & Anderson, 2006) and the fact that

English is the stronger language for this population of children.

Summary of the present study

By addressing these four questions, this dissertation was expected to add valuable

knowledge regarding bilingual language and reading development within the context of early

immersion programming with alphabetic languages that differ in orthographic and

morphological structure. With the ever-increasing bilingual population (Census Canada,

2006), understanding the development of children’s language skills in the context of early

introduction to dual-language programming will further assist with educational programming

in multilingual countries. Further, assessing the contributions of cross-linguistic skills within

the SVR model will add to our current knowledge regarding the identification of important

predictors of reading comprehension for bilingual children in immersion programming.

Exploring how the model varies for two different languages assists in reducing the possible

anglocentricity that the SVR model may hold (Kirby & Savage, 2008; Share, 2008). The

literature review suggests that the model changes according to whether linguistic features

pertain more to one language than to another, as well as children’s degree of language

proficiency. Lastly, a cross-linguistic study that uses the SVR as a framework will

contextualize, in a clear manner, how language and literacy skill might assist the

development of one another in different ways.

79

Chapter Two

Method

Participants and Procedure

Participants. Thirty-six typically developing children (16 males; 20 females) were

recruited from a private Hebrew day school in Toronto, Canada. This particular school

launched a pilot “early” Hebrew immersion program and this dissertation is based on the

evaluation of this program in comparison to their original “late” immersion program.

Importantly, at the time of this study, the school had one pilot “early” class running along

with one “regular” class (i.e., late immersion) that had little Hebrew language exposure

during the senior kindergarten school (SK) year. Because this was the only school known to

have an early Hebrew-immersion program in Canada, it would have been inappropriate to

collect data at other sites in the country, as results would not be comparable in light of the

differences in program and Hebrew exposure within Canadian Hebrew-school programming.

Based on conversations with school administrative and teaching staff, it was indicated that

the children participating in this study all spoke English as their first language and were

learning Hebrew as their second language. None of the children used Hebrew as a means of

communication outside of school.

Two groups of children participated in the study: (a) children who had participated in

an early Hebrew immersion program during the pilot when they were in their SK school year

(hereafter “early”; n = 17; see below for a detailed program explanation), and (b) children

who were introduced to the Hebrew immersion program only in Grade 1 (hereafter “late”; n

= 19) and who received minimal exposure to Hebrew in SK when they were enrolled in the

original school program (see below for a detailed program explanation). In SK there was one

80

classroom for each of the two programs, providing for a total of two SK classrooms involved.

All children enrolled in the SK program were invited to participate in the study through an

information letter and consent form sent by the school. Only children with returned parental

consent (72% for the early group and 86% for the late group) were included in this study.

There was no attrition over the three testing time points. Child assent was received at the

beginning of each testing session as well. See Appendix A for the study’s information letter,

Appendix B for the consent form, and Appendix C for the child assent script. During SK both

late and early groups received an identical morning program that covered the Ontario

provincial curriculum in English (approximately 15 hours/ week). The main difference

between the two groups in this study is that during the SK school year the early group

received Hebrew language exposure every afternoon, five days/ week while the late group

received a total of 30 minutes/ week of Hebrew language exposure. Details regarding the

programming differences are described next.

The “late” Hebrew group received two, 15-minute sessions (one half-hour/ week

total) of guided Hebrew language exposure during their SK school year. This Hebrew

language instruction was part of a program called “Chalav u’Dvash” (Milk and Honey) that

was developed for kindergarten children learning Hebrew outside of Israel by the Jewish

Agency for Israel (Ackerman-Simchovitch & Kavenstock, 2010). This program focuses on

simple conversational Hebrew skills through the use of flashcards, games, and songs. The

main program goals include connecting Hebrew to everyday social and life situations. While

formal literacy instruction was not given, children were exposed to Hebrew print within the

classroom (i.e., mostly through decorative wall boards: their Hebrew names on the walls, the

Hebrew alphabet on the wall, Hebrew-themed decorative walls). An itinerant teacher, who

81

only taught this specific program and travelled among several schools, came into the

classroom twice per week and would take half the class at a time for fifteen minutes each.

Lessons often took place with the children sitting in a circle and following the instructions of

the teacher. The majority of children in the late group went to a public school or daycare in

the afternoon where English was the language of instruction.

Children in the “early” group remained at the private school for an afternoon program

with a native Hebrew-speaking teacher who covered topics in Hebrew (approximately 15

hours/ week) with a focus on conversational Hebrew and vocabulary building (e.g., weather,

holidays, feelings, daily routines). Direct instruction and modelling were used as core

methods for Hebrew oral language development. For example, if a child asked a question in

English, the teacher would repeat the question to the child in Hebrew, in a friendly and

emphatic manner so that the child understood and could then ask the original question in

Hebrew. This modeling of Hebrew language and structure was a key component of language

instruction within this classroom. The teacher spoke Hebrew to the students at all times

unless disciplinary or emergency actions were required, in which case English was spoken.

Importantly, while the teacher spoke Hebrew with the children, the children tended to speak

English with each other while in this environment. This early immersion Hebrew program

was communication-based with no formal literacy instruction, although children gained

exposure to print within the classroom environment and within structured lessons and

activities that used text (e.g., seeing their names and peers’ names in Hebrew, seeing the

names of the weekdays on the wall and discussing them on chart paper when learning about

them). The Hebrew text in this early classroom was directly incorporated into lessons on a

82

daily basis while in the late classroom it was more for exposure (e.g., decorative bulletin

boards).

Parents chose whether to enrol their child in the early partial-immersion Hebrew

program (early group) or non-immersion program (late group) for the SK year. By Grade 1

both SK classes (early and late) were merged for a full-day, partial Hebrew immersion

program. This program entailed approximately 12.5 hours per week of the required English

provincial curriculum, including literacy instruction, and 12.5 hours per week of formal

Hebrew language and literacy instruction. More specifically, English literacy instruction

began in SK and continued into Grade 1, only in a more formal manner (e.g., children were

seated at desks and learning from a teacher at the front of the room instead of sitting in small

groups or on the carpet). As well, Hebrew literacy instruction was introduced to all children

in a formal manner for the first time. Both English and Hebrew literacy instruction was

phonics-based, with children learning how to identify letters and sounds before moving onto

letter-sound patterns and sounding-out words.

Data collection. Data were collected at three time points: spring of SK (Time 1), and

the fall and spring of Grade 1 (Times 2 and 3). The average age at Time 1 was 5.45 years (SD

= 0.48) for the early group and 5.77 years (SD = 0.43) for the late group, making the late

group approximately three months older, on average. A one-way ANOVA revealed that the

late group was slightly older than the early group, F (1,35) = 4.42, p = .043. Table 1

summarizes which measures were used in this study for each of the three time points.

83

Table 1

Measures Collected at Each of the Three Time Points

Construct Language Measure SK -

Spring

Grade1-

Fall

Grade 1-

Spring

Cognitive English

Nonverbal Reasoning

Phonological Awareness

Rapid Automatized Naming

Language English Vocabulary

Hebrew Vocabulary

Morphological

Awareness

English

Inflection Awareness

Derivational Awareness

Hebrew

Inflectional Awareness

Derivational Awareness

Literacy

English

Word Reading

Nonword Reading

Reading Comprehension

Hebrew

Word Reading

Nonword Reading

Reading Comprehension

These data are part of a larger study that included three individual testing batteries and two

group testing sessions at each testing point. Testing was conducted in a quiet room with a

window or in a quiet hallway where distractions were limited. While testing was done during

all hours of the school day, children were only removed from their classrooms at times that

were convenient to their teachers so as to minimize possible classroom interference. All

measures were given in the same order within each battery (see Appendix D). All

instructions for the Hebrew and English measures were given in English to ensure the child

understood what was required. Further, no measure was administered unless it was clear that

84

the child understood the task at hand (i.e., the child had no questions and was able to

appropriately complete trial items) and assented to participation.

Testing was done by the author of this study and research assistants trained by the

author. The research assistants were graduate and undergraduate registered university

students who were either volunteering to gain experience in this area of research, receiving

undergraduate course credit through the Faculty of Arts and Science at the University of

Toronto (research opportunity program), completing a graduate assistantship with the

Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto, or working as a paid

research assistant. All assistants were formally trained over the course of three days on how

to administer and score specific measures and work with young children in a school setting.

All assistants were fluent English-speakers and some were proficient in Hebrew as well. The

Hebrew-speaking assistants were either raised in Israel, speaking Hebrew as their first

language, or learned Hebrew as second language in a formal Hebrew Day School. Hebrew-

speaking assistants were able to converse and read fluently in Hebrew. Importantly, different

assistants were trained to administer certain measures only, mostly determined by their

Hebrew language proficiency, level of education and previous testing experience. For

example, two Hebrew-speaking assistants were trained to administer only Hebrew measures,

while assistants with little previous research experience were trained to administer only

English receptive language measures.

85

Measures

Cognitive Processing Measures

Nonverbal reasoning. The Matrix Analogies Test- Expanded Form (MAT; Naglieri,

1985) is a standardized measure that asks the child to point to the missing piece of a design

from a group of possible fillers. Four groups of 16 items provided a total of 64 items. The

task increases in difficulty within each of the four groups of items. Testing within each group

was stopped after four consecutive mistakes. Total scores from each group were added up to

create one final score. From the test manual, Cronbach’s alpha is reported to be .88 for five

year-old children.

Rapid automatized naming. Rapid automatized naming (RAN) was measured using

the Objects Rapid Naming subtest from the Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing

(CTOPP; Wagner et al., 1999). This task involves presenting the child with a matrix of

common objects and asking him/ her to name the objects as fast as possible. The pictures

were first presented to the child, independent of the matrix, to ensure they knew the names of

the objects. This task had two forms and was considered invalid if the child made more than

4 labelling errors during completion of either form. No participant within the study had an

invalid result on this task. The resulting speeds from both forms were combined to establish a

single measure raw score. The test manual reports a coefficient alpha of .82 for five year-old

children.

Phonological awareness. Phonological awareness (PA) was measured in English

using the Elision subtest from the CTOPP (Wagner et al., 1999). This is a standardized task

where the child hears a word and then repeats the word with a certain phoneme removed

(e.g., say “cat” [pause], now say “cat” without the “/k/” sound). The author of this study

86

administered this task, without the pre-recorded CD, to all the participants3. There was a total

of 20 items and administration was stopped when the child made three consecutive errors.

The test manual reports coefficient alpha of .90 for five year-old monolingual children.

Language Measures

Vocabulary. The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test – Third Edition (PPVT- III; Dunn

& Dunn, 1997) is a receptive measure of English vocabulary knowledge. This is a

standardized test where the child hears a word and is then asked to mark one of four pictures

that best correspond to the word. The items increase in difficulty as the task progresses with a

total of 204 items. This task was discontinued when the child made 8 errors within a set of 12

items. For ages 5 - 6 years, the manual reported alpha to be .95.

Receptive vocabulary knowledge in Hebrew was measured using a similar

standardized measure that is the Hebrew adaptation of the PPVT (Solberg & Nevo, 1979; see

Appendix E). As this test was designed for native speakers of Hebrew, only the first 39

items, out of a possible 110 items, were administered. This decision was made in

consultation with several Hebrew teachers at the school where data collection was taking

place, as the author and teachers believed that the words following item 39 would be

unfamiliar to children learning Hebrew as a foreign language. In fact, there were words

within the first 39 items which the teachers felt the children would have had no exposure to

3 Raw scores were used in all analyses for all measures. Thus, not using the CD, which is part of standardized

administration for this task, should not affect the overall findings on this task. Having only one person

administer this task served as a control as it prevented possible variance due to differences in test

administration.

87

while at school as well. Inter-item reliability (Cronbach’s alpha) for this shortened version of

the Hebrew PPVT was .80 at SK- spring, .76 at Grade 1- fall, and .83 at Grade 1 - spring.

Morphological awareness

Inflectional awareness. An experimental expressive word analogy task was

developed by the author and based on descriptions by Bindman (2004) and Nunes, Bryant

and Bindman (1997). The task measured the children’s ability to produce the inflected

version of a word, in a manner analogous to a pair presented first (e.g., “push-pushed, jump-

?? [jumped]”). Manipulated inflections included tense and plurality. Irregular items were

included as well (e.g., “walk-walked, shake -?? [shook]”; see Appendix I). Puppets were

used to clarify the task and make it more appealing. Specifically, the author held two puppets

to demonstrate how one puppet “said” one word while the other puppet “changed” the word.

The child was then asked to help the second puppet with changing the second (i.e., test) item.

There was one practice item and a total of 10 test items. Inter-item reliability (Cronbach’s

alpha) for this task in Grade 1- spring was .524.

The Hebrew version of this task, developed by the author, was administered in a

manner identical to the English version including the use of puppets, and included one

practice item and 17 test items. Manipulated inflections included tense, plurality, and gender

(see Appendix J). Inter-item reliability (Cronbach’s alpha) for this task during Grade 1-

spring was .72.

4 It is important to note here why reliability was slightly low. At this grade-level, it appeared that the majority of

children were knowledgeable with respect to regular inflections, while awareness of irregular inflections had

not been mastered yet. Specifically, children answered 7/10 items, which were regular inflections, with 68% -

96% accuracy, one item, “child-children” was answered with 35% accuracy, and the two irregular inflection

items were answered with 4% - 22% accuracy. Thus, there was not an appropriate amount of inter-item variance

distributed among the children for inter-item reliability to be fully meaningful. Further explanations and

implications of this response pattern will be considered within the discussion section.

88

Derivational awareness. Carlisle’s (2000) expressive derivations task was adapted

for younger children by the author through the deletion of several items that were felt to be

too advanced for this age group. This task measured the children’s awareness of both base

and derived forms of words (see Appendix K). The child heard a word in one morphological

form and was asked to derive or decompose the word so that it fit in a sentence that they

heard. For example, the child may have heard the following base and was asked to determine

its derivation: “farm. My uncle is a _________ . [farmer]” (see top half of Appendix K), or

the child may have heard the following derivation and asked to decompose the word to its

base form: “Improvement. My teacher wants my spelling to ________. [improve]” (see

bottom half of Appendix K). There were a total of four practice items (two each for deriving

and decomposing) and 30 test items. Inter- item reliability (Cronbach’s alpha) for the spring

of Grade 1 was .87.

The Hebrew version of this task, an experimental adaptation of Bindman (2004),

measured the child’s understanding of Hebrew’s three-consonant root (see Appendix L).

Importantly, Bindman examined the concept of root, but did not limit her task to derivations

only as she included inflectional changes within this testing format as well. The task in this

current study solely focused on awareness of derivational knowledge, with no other changes

to the words. In this task, the child heard a word and then two words with a similar

orthographic structure to the initial word. The child then chose one of the two words that

shared a meaning with the presented word. For example, the child would hear the word

“Lexem” (bread) and then be given the options of “Laxmania” (bun) or “Xalom” (dream).

The foil words (e.g., “Xalom” or “dream” in this case) kept orthographic patterns or

phonemes/graphemes that were similar to the target word initially presented. All words were

89

presented visually as well, in order to reduce the memory load. Having similar phonemes and

graphemes in the foil words prevented the children from choosing their answer based on

visual appearance of the word alone. There was one practice item and 9 test items. Inter-item

reliability (Cronbach’s alpha) for the spring of Grade 1 was .495.

Reading Measures

Word reading. Word reading in English was measured using the standardized

Woodcock Reading Mastery Tests – Revised Word Identification subtest (Woodcock, 1987).

The task required the child to read isolated words that increased in difficulty, for a total of

106 possible items. The child read the words at his/ her own pace and the task was

discontinued when six consecutive errors were made. The test manual reported reliability for

every other grade with alpha indicated to be .98 for Grade 1 students.

Word reading in Hebrew was measured using a task developed by Geva (see Geva &

Siegel, 2000). The task consists of 6 groups of 10 words for a total of 60 items. Each group

increases in syllable length and frequency, with group 1 containing high frequency

monosyllabic words. The first 30 words in the task were considered by Geva and Siegel to be

highly familiar to children learning Hebrew as a second language, while the remaining 30

were thought to be infrequent to everyday Hebrew and non-existent within the Hebrew

curriculum taught in the Canadian Hebrew day school they tested in their study (similar to

the school in this study). The child read the words at his/ her own pace and the task was

5 In this case it is not clear why reliability was low. Frequency analyses revealed one item which all but two

children answered correctly. Otherwise, the performance distribution was spread out evenly across participants.

Analyses of this task that consider its approach can be found in the Results section. Explanations and

implications of this finding will be considered within the Discussion section. Specifically, possible

methodological challenges and developmental patterns will be discussed.

90

discontinued when six consecutive errors were made (see Appendix F). Inter-item reliability

(Cronbach’s alpha) for this task was .92 for this sample.

Nonword reading. Nonword reading in English was measured using the standardized

Woodcock Reading Mastery Tests- Revised Word Attack subtest (Woodcock, 1987). The

child was asked to read pseudowords in isolation, through the application of phonic and

structural analysis skills. Words were read at the children’s own pace. There was a total of 45

items and the task was discontinued when six consecutive errors were made. The test manual

reported reliability for every other grade with alpha indicated to be .94 for Grade 1 students.

Nonword reading in Hebrew was measured using a task developed by Geva (see

Geva & Siegel, 2000). The test consisted of 44 double-syllable and voweled Hebrew

pseudowords. The task was discontinued when six consecutive errors were made (see

Appendix G). Inter-item reliability (Cronbach’s alpha) for this task was .95 for this sample.

Reading comprehension. Reading comprehension in English was measured using

the standardized Gray Oral Reading Test – Fourth Edition (GORT-4; Wiederholt & Bryant,

2001). Only the comprehension component of this task was used. The child read passages of

increasing difficulty, at his/ her own pace, and then answered multiple choice questions about

the passages. The child had the questions and answers in front of him/ her, however the test

administrator also read the questions and answers to the child so that errors were not a result

of difficulty with that component of the task. The child was not allowed to look back to the

story when answering the questions. Seven stories were administered and each had five

questions. No discontinue rule was implemented at the time of administration although

scoring was based on the standardized cut-off rules. The manual reports reliability to be .95

for six year-old children.

91

Hebrew reading comprehension was measured using a similar experimental task

developed by Geva, Wade-Wooley and Shany (1997). The task consisted of four short

passages, each of which was followed by four multiple-choice questions. Questions were

similar in nature to those administered in the English measure in that most questions were

explicit and factual. In a procedure similar to the English version, the test administrator read

the questions and possible answers to the child so that errors were not a result of difficulty

with that component of the task. All four passages and corresponding questions were

administered (see Appendix H). Inter-item reliability (Cronbach’s alpha) for this task was .66

for this sample.

92

Chapter Three

Results

Introduction

Alpha was set to .05 for all statistical tests. No outliers were indicated across any of

the analyses. The mean standard score on the nonverbal reasoning measure for the early and

late groups were 110.9 (SD = 14.30) and 113.2 (SD = 10.07), respectively. There was no

significant difference between the two groups, t (34) = -0.56, ns. Thus, both groups were

comparable with respect to underlying nonverbal problem-solving skills. The four main

questions this paper seeks to investigate will each be addressed in turn.

Question 1: How does early partial Hebrew immersion impact language and literacy

development in both English and Hebrew?

Descriptive statistics for both groups at each time point are presented in Table 2.

Analyses were conducted to examine whether differences exist between the early and late

groups with respect to overall performance on language and literacy measures at each time

point, and to determine whether differences in growth trajectories existed between each

group’s performances on these measures over time. Univariate repeated measures ANOVAs

were conducted for measures that were administered on two or three of the three testing

points, while t-tests were used to determine differences between groups on measures that

were administered at one time-point only. Results from these analyses are summarized in

Table 3. Importantly, both groups performed at “floor” on the Hebrew word reading and

nonword reading tasks in the fall of Grade 1. Given the extremely low means with standard

deviations that negatively surpass a score of 0, an ANOVA was considered to be

93

inappropriate and difference testing (i.e., t-tests) was conducted for this measure during the

spring of Grade 1 only.

Table 2

Language and Literacy Descriptive Statistics (mean (SD), minimum/maximum, raw scores)

for the Early (n = 17) and Late (n = 19) Groups at Each Testing Wave

Measure SK- Spring Grade 1- Fall Grade 1- Spring

Early min/

max

Late min/

max

Early min/

max

Late min/

max

Early min/

max

Late Min/

max

English

Receptive

Vocabulary

(/204)

89.3

(7.41)

80/

104

87.8

(10.39)

62/

100

94.8

(10.85)

75/

112

96.8

(9.80)

85/

121

100.5

(11.01)

86/

116

101.0

(10.94)

83/

121

Hebrew

Receptive

Vocabulary

(/39)

20.3

(5.07)

12/

28

11.4

(2.32)

8/

15

19.9

(5.38)

11/

29

13.2

(2.92)

7/

18

24.4

(5.64)

10/

33

16.7

(3.58)

9/

23

English Word

Reading

(/106)

14.7

(14.34)

1/

54

21.1

(13.77)

4/

53

23.4

(17.37)

3/

64

27.3

(13.21)

4/

55

43.5

(13.72)

22/

73

47.5

(10.55)

16/

63

English

Nonword

Reading

(/45)

4.8

(6.98)

0/

22

5.6

(5.68)

0/

23

7.9

(9.6)

0/

30

8.5

(6.01)

1/

24

18.5

(10.43)

4/

39

21.2

(6.67)

8/

33

Hebrew Word

Reading (/60)

3.8

(4.63)

0/

16

1.2

(1.43)

0/

5

34.2

(17.11)

9/

58

34.6

(15.30)

2/

50 Hebrew

Nonword

Reading (/44)

0.1

(0.24)

0/

1

0.0

(.00)

0/

0

19.7

(16.02)

0/

43

19.5

(15.00)

0/

40

English

Reading

Comprehension

(/35)

18.0

(6.04)

9/

27

18.0

(4.66)

10/

28

Hebrew

Reading

Comprehension

(/16)

7.9

(3.71)

2/

16

6.3

(2.41)

0/

10

94

Using the descriptive means (see Table 2), the participants’ literacy raw scores were

converted to grade equivalents as per the test manuals (based on combined groups). This

revealed that the children in this sample had English grade equivalent word level reading

skills higher than that of average English monolingual Grade 1 children. At time 3 (spring of

Grade 1) the mean English word level reading skills (Woodcock Word Identification and

Word Attack subtests) were at a grade equivalent of 2.3 to 2.5, respectively, and the mean

reading comprehension (GORT-4) was at a Grade equivalent of 2.7. English receptive

vocabulary was within the average range for their age range (mean standard score of 106.7).

Note that the standard deviation (SD = 8.77) was smaller than that reported in the general

population.

95

Table 3

The Effects of Time and Group (Early/Late) on Language and Literacy Measures - Repeated

Measures ANOVA and t-test Summary Results

Note. *p < .05, **p < .01; N = 17 for the early group and N=19 for the late group.

Pairwise comparisons and post-hoc analyses were run for measures that were

administered at all three time points where there was a significant time and/ or group effect.

There was a significant time effect with respect to English receptive vocabulary. Pairwise

comparisons for time revealed significant difference between Time 1 and Time 2, and

between Time 2 and Time 3 (p < .001). Likewise, there was a significant time effect on

Language Construct Measure Source df F / t

English

Language Receptive Vocabulary

Group x Time 2, 68 0.58

Group 1, 34 0.91

Time 2, 68 29.78**

Literacy

Word Reading

Group x Time 2, 68 0.37

Group 1, 34 1.25

Time 2, 68 163.02**

Nonword Reading

Group x Time 2, 68 0.50

Group 1, 34 0.37

Time 2, 68 97.09**

Reading Comprehension Group 34 0

Hebrew

Language Receptive Vocabulary

Group x Time 2, 68 1.29

Group 1, 34 42.71**

Time 2, 68 27.27**

Literacy

Word Reading Group 34 -0.08

Nonword Reading Group 34 0.02

Reading Comprehension Group 34 1.52

96

English word reading (p < .001). There was no significant group (early vs. late) or interaction

of time x group on these tasks. For English nonword reading, pairwise comparisons revealed

significant time effect, with significant differences between Time 1 and Time 2, and between

Time 2 and Time 3, p < .01. Lastly, with respect to Hebrew receptive vocabulary, pairwise

comparisons for time revealed significant growth between the fall and spring of Grade 1, p <

.001, and post hoc analyses for group revealed significant differences between the early and

late groups at each time point, p < .001.

In summary, results of the Univariate repeated measures ANOVA analyses revealed

significant differences between the early and late groups on Hebrew receptive vocabulary at

Time 1, Time 2 and Time 3, and both groups improved over time on this measure. In spite of

group differences on Hebrew vocabulary, the groups did not differ on Hebrew word level

reading or Hebrew reading comprehension. There were no differences between the groups

with respect to English vocabulary, English word and nonword reading, and reading

comprehension, and both groups showed significant development over time on each of the

measures.

Question 2: This question focuses on the relationships among language, literacy and

cognitive skills within each language and cross-linguistically. Do the patterns of

relationships among literacy (i.e., word reading, pseudoword reading, and reading

comprehension), language (i.e., receptive vocabulary, MA), metalinguistic knowledge (i.e.,

PA) and RAN vary as a function of language (English vs. Hebrew), and program (early vs.

late)?

97

The language (vocabulary, MA: inflectional and derivational awareness), literacy

(word reading, nonword reading, and reading comprehension), underlying processing (PA,

RAN), and cognitive (nonverbal reasoning) data collected at Time 3 (i.e., spring of Grade 1)

were used to address the question 2. Note that PA and RAN were assessed at Time 1 only

(spring of SK).

As noted earlier, ANOVA and t-test results revealed no significant differences in

English or Hebrew word and nonword reading between the early and late groups. Word

reading and nonword reading were highly correlated with one another in both languages.

Within each group correlations were strong between English word and nonword reading, r =

.94 for early, p < .001, and r = .85 for late, p < .001 groups. The inter-correlations among

Hebrew word and nonword reading, were strong as well, r = .90 for early, p < .001, and r =

.80 for late, p < .001. With the groups collapsed, the correlations were r = 0.90, p < .001 for

English word and nonword reading, and r = 0.85, p < .001 for Hebrew word and nonword

reading, respectively. Given these high correlations between word and nonword reading in

each language, concerns about sample size and the advisability of data reduction, word

reading and nonword reading were converted into Z-scores. The Z-scores were calculated for

the entire sample for each of the English and Hebrew tasks at Time 3 (i.e., Grade 1- spring).

The Z-scores for word and nonword reading were then added to create two word reading

composites: one for English and one for Hebrew. This provided for standardized composites

with means of 0, and standard deviations of 2 (as the standard deviations of 1, from both

word and nonword reading were added together).

Descriptive statistics for the early and late groups at Time 3 are presented in Table 4.

T-tests were conducted to determine whether any differences existed between the early and

98

late groups on these measures at Time 3 (see Table 4). Descriptive statistics presented in

Table 2 are repeated in Table 4 to assist with interpretation of the t-test results (i.e., only

means from receptive vocabulary and reading comprehension performance are repeated). In

addition to Hebrew vocabulary (reported above), the only additional significant difference in

performance between the early and late groups was on the Hebrew derivational awareness

task, where the early group performed significantly better than the late group, t (34) = 3.56, p

< .001. Importantly, this was a forced-choice task with a chance score of 4.5/9. One-sample t-

tests were performed for each of the two groups, comparing the group respective means to

the chance value of 4.5. The early group performed significantly above chance, t (16) = 3.75,

p <.01, while the late group performance was not different from chance, t (18) = -0.76, ns.

That is, most participants in the late group may have been guessing. Therefore, analyses with

the Hebrew derivational awareness measure for the late group are considered to be

inappropriate, and no further analyses of data pertaining to this measure in the late group

were carried out. Skewness and kurtosis results are presented in Table 5.

99

Table 4

Descriptive Statistics (means, SD, minimum and maximum scores) and t-test Results (df =

34) for the Early (n = 17) and Late (n = 19) Groups at Time 3

Measure Early Late

t Mean/ (SD) Min/ Max Mean/ (SD) Min/ Max

Word Reading

(composite)

English -0.3/

(2.29)

-3.56/

4.47

0.3/

(1.58)

-3.82/

2.95

-.98

Hebrew 0.0/

(2.07)

-2.87/

3.01

0.0/

(1.84)

-3.31/

2.25

-.03

Reading

Comprehension English (/35)

18.0/

(6.04)

9/

27

18.0/

(4.66)

10/

28

0

Hebrew (/16) 7.9/

(3.71)

2/

16

6.3/

(2.41)

0/

10

1.52

Receptive

Vocabulary

English (/204) 100.5/

(11.01)

86/

116

101.0/

(10.94)

83/

121

-0.11

Hebrew (/39) 24.4/

(5.64)

10/

33

16.7/

(3.58)

9/

23

4.97**

Morphological

Awareness

English

Inflections (/10) 6.9/

(1.17)

5/

8

6.8/

(0.96)

5/

9

.11

Derivations

(/30)

17.1/

(4.36)

8/

24

16.7/

(2.73)

11/

22

.32

Morphological

Awareness

Hebrew

Inflections (18) 6.5/

(2.18)

3/

10

5.6/

(1.71)

2/

8

1.29

Derivations (/9) 6.2/

(1.85)

3/

9

4.3/

(1.37)

2/

7

3.56**

Phonological Awareness (Time 1)

(/20)

6.2/

(3.97)

2/

15

7.3/

(2.31)

3/

14

-1.07

RAN (Time 1)

93.5/

(30.70)

62/

192

86.4/

(17.54)

62/

127

.87

Note. *p < .05, **p < .001

100

Table 5

Skewness and Kurtosis Results for the Early (n = 17) and Late (n = 19) Groups at Time 3

Measure

Early* Late**

Skewness/

Z Skewness

Kurtosis/

Z Kurtosis

Skewness/

Z Skewness

Kurtosis/

Z Kurtosis

Word Reading

(composite)

English 0.43/

0.78

-0.52/

-0.49

-0.95/

-1.81

1.33/

1.31

Hebrew -0.01/

-0.01

-1.66/

-1.56

-0.41/

-0.78

-1.42/

-1.40

Reading

Comprehension English (/35)

0.10/

0.17

-1.43/

-1.34

0.28/

0.54

0.08/

0.08

Hebrew (/16) 0.70/

1.27

0.15/

0.14

-0.74/

-1.41

1.13/

1.12

Receptive

Vocabulary

English (/204) 0.08/

0.15

-1.65/

-1.55

0.29/

0.55

-0.83/

-0.81

Hebrew (/39) -0.71/

-1.28

1.58/

1.49

-0.27/

-0.51

0.09/

0.09

Morphological

Awareness

English

Inflections (/10) -0.55/

-1.00

-1.18/

-1.11

0.35/

0.66

0.26/

0.25

Derivations

(/30)

-0.06/

-0.11

-0.30/

-0.28

-0.32/

-0.60

-0.04/

-0.03

Morphological

Awareness

Hebrew

Inflections (18) 0.45/

0.08

-0.81/

-0.76

-1.23/

-2.34

1.69/

1.67

Derivations (/9) -0.43/

-0.78

-0.83/

-0.78

N/A N/A

Phonological Awareness (Time 1)

(/20)

1.01/

1.84

0.39/

0.36

0.96/

1.83

3.40/

3.34

RAN (Time 1)

2.20/

4.00

6.34/

5.96

0.58/

1.10

-0.02/

-0.02

Note. *Early group: skewness standard error = 0.550, kurtosis standard error = 1.063

**Late group: skewness standard error = 0.524, kurtosis standard error = 1.014

101

Table 5 points to two potential issues with respect to the distribution of two measures.

Performance on the RAN task was both skewed and kurtotic for the early group and

performance on the PA measure was slightly kurtotic for the late group. Histogram charts

revealed that in the early group most children scored in and around the mean but one child

performed better than the rest of the group. The histogram for the late group’s performance

on the PA task illustrated that many of the children performed in and around the mean score,

limiting the variance. McMillan and Schumacher (2001) indicated that one method for

alleviating the difficulty of using data that does not meet criteria for a normal distribution is

to convert the data to standardized (Z) scores. Such a transformation allows for normal curve

properties to be assumed. Thus, for both groups, PA and RAN were converted to Z-scores

with a mean of 0 and a standard deviation of 1, in order to obtain a normal distribution for the

performances on each measure and enable group comparisons. Analyses from this point

onwards are based on the Z-scores for the PA and RAN tasks.

Before undertaking regression analyses it was necessary to examine which general

cognitive (e.g., nonverbal reasoning) and developmental (e.g., age) factors needed to be

included. A correlation analysis revealed no significant relationships between any of the

language and reading variables and age (in months) (see Table 6). However, significant

correlations were found between nonverbal reasoning and two variables of interest: English

inflectional awareness (r = .48, p < .01), and PA (r = .48, p < .01). Of note, nonverbal

reasoning and age were not significantly correlated with each other (r = -.01, ns.) Therefore,

nonverbal reasoning served as a control variable in subsequent analyses. The intercorrelation

matrix for each group, controlling for nonverbal reasoning, is summarized in Table 7.

102

Table 6

Correlations of Age and Nonverbal Reasoning with the Variables of Interest in the Full

Sample (N = 36) at Time 3

Measure Age

Nonverbal

Reasoning

Word Reading

(composite)

English .09 .27

Hebrew -.13 .29

Reading

Comprehension

English (/35) -.16 .27

Hebrew (/16) -.03 .23

Receptive

Vocabulary

English .14 .09

Hebrew -.10 .10

Morphological

Awareness

English

Inflectional

Awareness (/10)

.11 .48**

Derivational

Awareness (/30)

-.14 .31

Morphological

Awareness

Hebrew

Inflectional

Awareness (18)

-.20 .25

Derivational

Awareness (/9)

.18 -.03

PA (Time 1) (/20) .18 .48**

RAN (Time 1) .07 -.06

Note. ** p < .01

103

Table 7

Partial Correlations, Controlled for Nonverbal Reasoning, for the Early (n = 17; below

diagonal) and Late (n = 19; above diagonal) Groups

Note. word reading = word reading composite, reading comp = reading comprehension, vocab = receptive

vocabulary, inflect = inflectional awareness, derive = derivational awareness.

*p <.05; ** p < .01.

English

Hebrew

PA RAN

literacy vocab MA literacy vocab MA

1.

word

reading

2.

reading

comp

3.

rec

vocab

4.

inflect

5.

deriv

6.

word

reading

7.

reading

comp

8.

rec

vocab

9.

inflect

10.

deriv 11. 12.

1

- .61** .35 .27 .42 .53* .27 .23 -.23 .11 .32 -.53*

2

.59* - .30 .22 .38 .57** .11 .46 .04 .04 .36 -.52*

3

.36 .61** - .32 .09 .21 .14 -.05 -.03 .01 .30 .02

4

.50* .54* .46 - .07 .08 .28 .28 .11 .12 -.01 .04

5

.51* .83** .73** .51* - .11 .18 .44 -.18 .24 -.04 -.22

6

.67** .28 .36 .56* .26 - .41 .36 .35 -.08 .65** -.70**

7

.64** .56* .18 .57* .48 .57* - .19 .04 .22 .15 -.29

8

.09 .02 .01 .08 -.02 .46 .51* - .38 .36 -.08 -.30

9

.30 .31 .41 .23 .17 .65** .39 .76** - .15 .31 -.18

10

.34 .33 .31 .15 .17 .38 .37 .59* .53* - .06 .11

11

.58* .41 .40 .33 .36 .17 .09 -.41 -.14 .13 - -.55*

12

-.14 -.14 .37 .37 .14 .36 .12 .34 .22 .07 -.38 -

104

Of main interest was how word reading (composite) and reading comprehension in

English and Hebrew were related to the language measures (receptive vocabulary, MA

(inflectional awareness, derivational awareness)) as well as to PA and RAN. Overall,

different patterns appear in the early and late groups with respect to relationships with word

reading and reading comprehension. As can be seen in Table 7, there were more significant

positive correlations within the early group than within the late group. Interestingly, in the

early group significant cross-linguistic correlations were noted between Hebrew word

reading and reading comprehension with English inflectional awareness. No cross-linguistic

relationships of this nature were noted in the late group6.

While different patterns of correlations appeared to emerge between the early and late

groups, it was important to test first whether the covariance matrices actually differed in the

two groups. In order to test the homogeneity of the two covariance matrices, a Box’s M

analysis was conducted. Results indicated that the correlational matrix patterns between the

early and late group were not significantly different from a multivariate normal, F (78,

3550.73) = 131.63, ns. Thus, while different patterns of significant correlations emerged

within each group, suggestive of possible trends, the Box’s M results suggest that there is no

statistically significant difference between the correlational patterns within the two groups.

Given that the remainder of the research questions are correlational in nature, the early and

late groups were merged into one single group. This provided more power for performing the

upcoming regression analyses that address the next set of research questions.

6 While interest in this question was related to relationships between word reading and reading comprehension

with measures of language, PA, and RAN, it should be acknowledged that, for the late group, Hebrew word

reading was significantly cross-linguistically correlated with English word reading and reading comprehension,

p < .01 and p < .05, respectively.

105

Question 3: a) Do the key essential components of the Simple View of Reading (SVR) model

(word reading, oral language) each account for unique variance in emerging bilingual

children’s reading comprehension in English and Hebrew?

b) Does MA skill contribute additional unique variance to reading comprehension within

each language above word reading and vocabulary?

After merging the groups, and in light of the earlier finding that the late group

performed at chance on the Hebrew derivational awareness task, a t-test was performed

against the chance value to determine whether the merged group performed at or above

chance. Results of this analysis confirmed that the group performed significantly above

chance, t (35) = 2.15, p < .05. Thus, the Hebrew derivational awareness task was included in

the subsequent multiple regression analyses. Descriptive statistics for the combined single

group are presented in Table 87. Descriptive analyses of the distribution patterns of all

measures at Time 3 were investigated as well. No measures revealed significant skewness or

kurtosis, with all results falling between -3 and 3 (see Table 9).

7 PA and RAN are not included in the analyses for questions 3 and 4, investigating the SVR model. The main

reason for this was the small sample size in this study and the need to limit the number of variables that can be

entered into a regression model. Theoretical rationales for not including these variables are raised in the

discussion chapter of this dissertation.

106

Table 8

Descriptive Statistics for Literacy and Language in English and Hebrew (Time 3)

Language Category Measure Mean SD Max Min

English

Literacy

Word Reading

composite

0.0 1.95 4.5 -3.8

Reading

Comprehension (/35)

18.0 5.28 28 9

Oral

Language

Vocabulary (/204) 100.8 10.81 121 83

MA- Inflections (/10) 6.9 1.05 9 5

MA- Derivations (/30) 16.9 3.54 24 8

Hebrew

Literacy

Word Reading

composite

0.0 1.92 3.0 -3.3

Reading

Comprehension (/16)

7.1 3.14 16 0

Oral

Language

Vocabulary (/39) 20.3 6.0 33 9

MA- Inflections (/17) 6.1 1.90 10 2

MA- Derivations (/9) 5.2 1.86 9 2

Nonverbal Reasoning (/64) 13.6 7.55 30 2

Note. N = 36. All means are based on raw scores with the exception of the Word Reading

composites which are Z-scores.

107

Table 9

Distribution Statistics for Literacy and Language Skills in English and Hebrew

Language Category Measure skew z skew kurt z kurt

English

Literacy Word Reading -0.13 -0.33 -0.31 -0.40

Reading Comp 0.16 0.40 -0.88 -1.14

Oral

Language

Vocabulary 0.18 0.46 -1.21 -1.57

MA- Inflections -0.18 -0.47 -0.71 -0.92

MA- Derivations -0.04 -0.11 0.16 0.21

Hebrew

Literacy Word Reading -0.18 -0.46 -1.49 -0.19

Reading Comp 0.64 1.62 1.35 1.76

Oral

Language

Vocabulary 0.27 0.68 -0.29 -0.38

MA- Inflections -0.004 -0.01 -.09 -0.11

MA- Derivations 0.31 0.78 -1.00 -1.30

Nonverbal Reasoning 0.74 1.87 -0.10 -0.13

*Note. N = 36. Within the sample, standard error for skewness was .393 and standard error

for kurtosis was .768.

Inter-correlations were conducted to investigate whether English reading

comprehension and Hebrew reading comprehension were significantly related to the

children’s age or nonverbal reasoning ability. English and Hebrew word reading were

included in the analyses as well, given that they would be entered in the first step of the

upcoming regression analyses. Results revealed no significant correlations among the literacy

measures with age or nonverbal reasoning (see Table 10). Therefore age and nonverbal

reasoning are not considered within subsequent statistical analyses, given that English and

Hebrew reading comprehension are the dependent variables in the upcoming analyses.

Correlation analyses were performed to investigate relationships among reading

comprehension, word reading (composite), vocabulary, and MA (inflectional and

108

derivational awareness) within each language (see Table 11). Of main interest were

relationships between reading comprehension with the remainder of the measures indicated

above, therefore reading comprehension is listed as the first variable in the table.

Table 10

Correlational Results for Age and Nonverbal Reasoning with English and Hebrew Word

Reading and Reading Comprehension (N = 36) at Time 3

Measure Age Nonverbal

Reasoning

Word Reading

(composite)

English -.01 .29

Hebrew -.05 .28

Reading

Comprehension

English (/35) -.26 .26

Hebrew (/16) -.17 .16

109

Table 11

Inter-Correlations among Reading Comprehension, Word Reading, Vocabulary, and

Morphological Awareness Tasks, within English (below diagonal) and Hebrew (above

diagonal)

Construct Measure 1. 2. 3. 5. 6.

Literacy

1. reading

comprehension - .52** .45** .33* .38*

2. word

reading

composite

.63** - .29 .53** .13

Oral Language

3. vocabulary

.42* .36* - .58** .66**

5. MA- inflections

.43** .46** .39* - .41*

6. MA- derivation

.61** .49** .47** .44** -

Note. English correlations are to the left of the diagonal, Hebrew correlations are to the right of the

diagonal; N = 36; *p < .05, **p < .01

Results of the correlation analyses highlight several commonalities and differences

between English and Hebrew as a second language. Of main interest are correlations with

reading comprehension. Within each language, reading comprehension correlated

significantly with respective word reading, vocabulary, and both MA measures. To further

address the question of what factors contributed to reading comprehension in the children’s

first and second languages, within-language hierarchical linear regressions were conducted

with English reading comprehension and Hebrew reading comprehension as the dependent

variables, respectively. English variables were used to predict English reading

comprehension and Hebrew variables were used to predict Hebrew reading comprehension.

110

Based on the SVR model discussed earlier, word reading was entered in step 1 with

receptive vocabulary entered in step 2. This is in line with the basic tenets of the SVR

framework with respect to examining additional contributed variance to reading

comprehension, beyond that provided by word reading skills (e.g., Tilstra, McMaster, Van

den Broek, Kendeou & Rapp, 2009). The additional two MA measures of interest,

inflectional awareness and derivational awareness, were entered independently in the third

step of the regression models. Given the sample size in this study, regression models were

limited to three steps, as this approach was most appropriate to test whether each aspect of

MA contributed unique variance to reading comprehension. Thus, four regression models

were conducted: two within English, and two with Hebrew variables.

Predicting English (L1) Reading Comprehension with English Variables

As indicated, the English word reading composite was entered in step 1, followed by

English receptive vocabulary in step 2, with English inflectional awareness and derivational

awareness entered independently in step 3 (see Table 12). As can be seen in Table 12, while

word reading explained a significant 40% of the variance in reading comprehension (p <

.001), receptive vocabulary did not contribute a significant amount of variance above and

beyond word reading. Receptive vocabulary was kept in the model given its shared variance

with each of the two MA measures. The analysis indicated that above and beyond word

reading, performance on the derivational awareness tasks contributed an additional

significant 9% of the unique variance in reading comprehension (p < .05), while performance

on the inflectional awareness tasks did not contribute additional significant variance.

111

Table 12

Hierarchical Linear Regression Examining the Role of English Word Reading, Receptive

Vocabulary, Inflectional Awareness, and Derivational Awareness in Predicting English

Reading Comprehension Within a 3-step Model

Step Predictor

(English) *

R2

change

F

change p

1 Word Reading (composite) .63 .40 22.39 <.001

2 Receptive Vocabulary .22 .04 2.54 .12

3 Inflectional Awareness .13 .01 0.67 .42

3 Derivational Awareness .34 .09 5.75 .02

Note. N = 36 * values are from each respective step within the model.

Predicting Hebrew (L2) Reading Comprehension with Hebrew Variables

Using the same procedure described above, the Hebrew word reading composite was

entered in step 1, followed by Hebrew receptive vocabulary in step 2, and Hebrew

inflectional awareness and derivational awareness entered independently in step 3 (see Table

13). Word reading explained a significant 27% of the variance in reading comprehension (p =

.001) and receptive vocabulary contributed an additional significant 10% of the variance (p <

.05). Performance on the MA measures did not contribute unique significant variance to

reading comprehension above and beyond that explained by Hebrew word reading and

receptive vocabulary skills.

112

Table 13

Hierarchical Linear Regression Examining the Role of Hebrew Word Reading, Receptive

Vocabulary, Inflectional Awareness, and Derivational Awareness in Predicting Hebrew

Reading Comprehension Within a 3-step Model

Step Predictor

(Hebrew) *

R2

change

F

change p

1 Word Reading (composite) .52 .27 12.40 .001

2 Receptive Vocabulary .32 .10 4.89 .03

3 Inflectional Awareness -.13 .01 0.41 .53

3 Derivational Awareness .20 .02 1.16 .29

Note. N = 36 * values are from each respective step within the model.

In summary, overall, different patterns of results emerged from the regression

analyses predicting English reading comprehension from English language and literacy

variables, and Hebrew reading comprehension from Hebrew language and literacy variables.

More variance, generally, was explained in English reading comprehension than in Hebrew

reading comprehension. While word reading was an important variable in predicting reading

comprehension in both English and Hebrew, receptive vocabulary contributed additional

unique variance only for Hebrew reading comprehension. At the same time, performance on

the English derivational awareness task contributed additional unique variance to reading

comprehension in English, above and beyond word reading. Performance on the Hebrew MA

measures, however, did not contribute additional unique variance to Hebrew reading

comprehension above and beyond the variance explained by word reading and receptive

vocabulary.

113

Question 4: a) Do the key essential components of the Simple View of Reading model (word

reading, oral language) each account for unique variance in emerging bilingual children’s

reading comprehension cross-linguistically?

b) Does MA skill contribute additional unique variance to reading comprehension cross-

linguistically, above and beyond word reading and vocabulary?

Question 4 investigated cross-language contributions to English and Hebrew reading

comprehension, respectively. The question was whether the variables investigated in

Question 3 contribute cross-linguistically to reading comprehension within the SVR

framework. Specifically, do Hebrew word reading and Hebrew receptive vocabulary explain

significant unique variance in English reading comprehension and vice versa. Further, does

MA explain variance in reading comprehension cross-linguistically, above and beyond that

explained by word reading and vocabulary?

As noted earlier, age and nonverbal reasoning did not correlate with English and

Hebrew reading comprehension. Therefore age and nonverbal reasoning were not considered

in the next set of analyses. Cross-linguistic correlations between literacy, receptive

vocabulary, and MA in each of Hebrew and English are presented in Table 14.

114

Table 14

Cross-linguistic Inter-correlations among Literacy and Language Skills

Hebrew

Construct Literacy Oral Language

Measure

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

English

Literacy

1. reading

comprehension .41* .48** .08 .26 .15

2. word

reading composite .48** .64** -.02 .14 .11

Oral

Language

3. receptive

vocabulary .17 .30 -.02 .19 .13

4. MA- inflectional

awareness .49** .43** .14 .29 .10

5. MA- derivational

awareness .43** .27 .13 .13 .18

Note. N = 36; *p < .05, **p < .01

These correlations reveal several significant bivariate relationships. Reading

comprehension and word reading in English and Hebrew were positively and significantly

inter-correlated. Otherwise, cross-linguistically, English reading comprehension was only

correlated with Hebrew word reading but not correlated with any of the other Hebrew

language variables. In addition, Hebrew word reading correlated with performance on the

English inflectional awareness task while Hebrew reading comprehension correlated with

performance on both English MA tasks.

To address the question of how cross-language variables contribute to reading,

between-language variables that correlated with reading comprehension were first

considered. Given that the only Hebrew variable that significantly correlated with English

115

reading comprehension (other than Hebrew reading comprehension) was Hebrew word

reading (composite), regression analyses predicting English reading comprehension from

Hebrew variables were not performed. The correlation of .48 between Hebrew word reading

and English reading comprehension, when squared, revealed that the measures shared a

significant 23% of variance, p < .01. There was no other cross-linguistic contribution from

Hebrew to English reading comprehension noted with the measures investigated.

Hierarchical linear regression analyses were performed to investigate how English

word reading (composite), receptive vocabulary and MA predicted Hebrew reading

comprehension. Recall that while English receptive vocabulary did not significantly correlate

with Hebrew reading comprehension, it did significantly correlate with performance on the

English word reading, inflectional awareness and derivational awareness tasks (refer back to

Table 11). Given the shared variance with those measures, English receptive vocabulary was

entered in the regression analysis in order to determine whether performance on English MA

measures explain unique variance over and above their shared variance with English

receptive vocabulary. With Hebrew reading comprehension entered as the dependent

variable, English word reading (composite) was entered in step 1 followed by English

receptive vocabulary in step 2. English inflectional awareness and derivational awareness

were independently entered in step 3. Results are presented in Table 15.

116

Table 15

Hierarchical Linear Regression Examining the Role of English Word Reading, Receptive

Vocabulary, Inflectional Awareness, and Derivational Awareness in Predicting Hebrew

Reading Comprehension (within a 3-step Model).

Step Predictor

(English) *

R2

change

F

change p

1 Word Reading (composite) .48 .23 9.94 .003

2 Receptive Vocabulary -.01 <.01 <0.01 .98

3 Inflectional Awareness .37 .10 4.81 .04

3 Derivational Awareness .30 .06 2.58 .12

Note. N = 36 * values are from each respective step within the model.

Results from the cross-linguistic regression analyses predicting Hebrew reading

comprehension from English variables revealed that English word reading contributed a

significant 23% of the variance (p < .01), while English receptive vocabulary did contribute

additional significant variance. Performance on the English inflectional awareness task

explained a unique significant 10% of the variance (p < .05) in Hebrew reading

comprehension. When performance on the English derivational awareness task was entered

in step 3, it did not contribute any significant additional variance to Hebrew reading

comprehension.

Overall, cross-language predictors of reading comprehension in English and Hebrew

were not identical. Different variables in English and Hebrew predicted reading

comprehension cross-linguistically. Hebrew oral language predictors were not significant in

explaining English reading comprehension, though Hebrew word reading did. That is, the

SVR model does not completely account for explaining English reading comprehension

117

cross-linguistically from Hebrew variables (word reading and receptive vocabulary) within

this emerging bilingual population. When predicting Hebrew reading comprehension with

English predictors, a different pattern emerged. As in Hebrew to English contribution,

English word reading explained significant variance in Hebrew reading comprehension,

while English receptive vocabulary did not. However, performance on another language

measure, English inflectional awareness, proved to be a significant cross-linguistic predictor

of Hebrew reading comprehension, above and beyond English word reading.

118

Chapter Four

Discussion

This dissertation addressed four questions which built upon one another. A native

English-speaking group of children learning Hebrew as a second language in a parochial day

school participated in this study. This study was longitudinal, following students from the fall

of their senior kindergarten (SK) year (Time 1) through the fall of Grade 1 (Time 2) and to

the end of Grade 1 (Time 3). Part of this dissertation explored the impacts of early immersion

programming in two groups of children: the “early” group received partial Hebrew

immersion programming in SK while the “late” group received minimal Hebrew language

exposure during that school year. It is important to remember that the early group was

merged with the late group in Grade 1 which involved a partial Hebrew immersion program

for all the students.

One general question addressed in the present study was whether children’s receptive

vocabulary and literacy skills (i.e., word reading, pseudoword reading, and reading

comprehension) developed similarly over time in English and Hebrew, and whether the early

immersion program would have a “booster effect” on the development of these skills.

Another important question pertained to whether there were specific linguistic factors that

were important to the development of the children’s literacy skills in each language.

Relatedly, this dissertation explored cross-linguistic contribution. The novel aspect of this

work was the developmental level of the children and the instructional framework. Results

from research questions one and two will first be discussed jointly, and followed by a

discussion of results pertaining to questions three and four. Limitations of this study as well

119

as future directions will be addressed at the end of this chapter and followed by final

conclusions.

The Development of Language and Literacy Skills in Early and Late Partial Immersion

The discussion of the development of language and literacy skills in the early and late

immersion groups is organized around two strands, one relating to development of language

skills and reading skills in English and Hebrew, and the other around relationships among

variables.

Question one investigated growth trajectories of word reading, pseudoword reading,

reading comprehension and vocabulary knowledge. Of interest was how early partial Hebrew

immersion contributed to language and literacy development in both English and Hebrew,

compared to a group introduced to communicative Hebrew a year later. That is, it

investigated whether children in the early immersion programming (early group) were

developing skills at a different rate than those who did not participate in the early immersion

programming (late group), and whether there were significant differences in performance

between the groups.

Impact of early versus late Hebrew immersion programming: Language skills.

As hypothesized, both the early and late groups made significant and consistent gains on

English vocabulary, and the groups did not differ from each other, suggesting that being

exposed to more or less intensive Hebrew language instruction did not have an impact on the

development of English vocabulary. The same conclusion can be reached with regard to the

two aspects of morphology that were examined in this study, namely, inflectional and

derivational MA skills, considered to be underlying language skills (e.g., Carlisle, 2000,

120

2007; Levin, 1999; Scott & Windsor, 2000). On these English MA components, just like on

English vocabulary, there did not appear to be a difference between the early and late groups.

It is important to note in this regard that English is the language children are exposed to at

home, in the community and for the most part of their day at school. The similar performance

between the early and late group on the English inflectional awareness task may be a

combination of two notions that both relate to developmental level and vocabulary

knowledge. First, the similar ability may be based on age. It has been indicated in previous

research that inflectional awareness in English-speaking children develops at young ages and

can be observed in children younger than those in this study (e.g., Berko-Gleason, 1958;

Brown, 1973; Clark, 1982). Further, both groups demonstrated similar English vocabulary

knowledge, and previous research has also illustrated that inflectional awareness is related to

word frequency and vocabulary (Shipley et al., 1991). It is perhaps therefore not surprising

that there was no early-late difference on these skills, though it is not possible to rule out the

possibility that more subtle differences on English language skills might emerge

subsequently.

While there was no early-late difference in the English language skills of the children

targeted in this study, this was not the case with regard to the emergence of Hebrew language

proficiency indices. On Hebrew vocabulary there was a consistent improvement over time,

and the early group had an advantage over the late group, an advantage that persisted to the

end of Grade 1, even though the two groups were actually merged throughout Grade 1. The

early exposure advantage was also noted also with regard to the emergence of morphological

derivation skills. One difference emerged whereby the late group’s performance on the

Hebrew derivational awareness task was at chance level while that of the early group was

121

above chance performance. That is, statistical analyses of the task suggested that the late

group was likely guessing on this forced-choice task while the early group was not. This

suggests that the early group had a better developed awareness of derivational patterns in

Hebrew, a fitting finding when considering the similarities and differences between the

linguistic structure of English and Hebrew. That is, both English and Hebrew require

metalinguistic sensitivity to inflection skills; where they differ significantly is with respect to

derivational structures as Hebrew is root-based and English is not (e.g., Geva & Wade-

Woolley, 1998, 2004). This notion would suggest that a measure of Hebrew derivational

awareness should be the most sensitive to differentiate underlying linguistic skills, even

when second language skills are not well developed.

Children in the early group received more intensive exposure to communicative

Hebrew and practice in SK, and the effect of this opportunity was evident on vocabulary and

on budding morphological skill. Interestingly, this advantage was maintained through Grade

1 when the two groups were merged. The advantage of the early group on Hebrew

vocabulary and morphological skills reflects the importance of “time on task” (Genesee,

1987). The early group had an additional year of partial immersion programming and thus, of

exposure to spoken communicative Hebrew. This advantage was maintained over the course

of the following year. In addition, children in the early group did not regress to the mean

Hebrew language level of their merged class as they continued to be able to benefit from the

Hebrew immersion approach in Grade 1, and demonstrated continuing growth in terms of

their familiarity with simple Hebrew vocabulary, and a clear advantage at the end of Grade 1

on budding derivational morphology skills. Similar developmental notions to those used to

explain the English results may also explain the similarity between the early and late group’s

122

performance on the Hebrew inflectional awareness task. Simply put, the ability measured

with the Hebrew inflectional awareness task may reflect a lower developmental level than

that required for Hebrew derivational awareness (Ravid, 1995, 1997; Berman, 1985). In

short, as suggested by Genesee (2005), intensity of exposure (and associated pedagogical

aspects related to the delivery of the curriculum) played an important role in their L2

development.

Impact of early Hebrew immersion programming: Reading skills. Both the early

and late groups improved consistently over time on English word and pseudoword reading

along the three testing waves, and the groups did not differ from each other on these reading

skills, regardless of whether they received or did not receive early Hebrew immersion

programming. In addition, there was no difference between the groups on English reading

comprehension. That is, early exposure to systematic instruction in Hebrew did not appear to

be associated with a trade-off with English literacy skills in the early group (Gottardo &

Grant, 2008). Children in both groups were exposed to the provincial curriculum-standard

English program for half the day and were also exposed to English outside of school.

Overall, within this educational Hebrew immersion context there was no trade-off or delay in

the development of English language and literacy skills that were assessed in this study.

Even though the early group displayed an advantage with regard to the emergence of

Hebrew language skills, once introduced to systematic instruction of reading in Hebrew in

Grade 1, both groups showed a consistent improvement in their ability to decode Hebrew real

words and pseudowords with accuracy, and there were no differences between the early and

late groups on Hebrew word and pseudoword reading. A plausible explanation for this

finding comes from conceptualizations of differences in orthographic demands between

123

languages that vary in orthographic depth. Geva and Siegel (2000) reported that children with

English as the home language were able to decode (vowelized) Hebrew, characterized as a

shallow orthography with more accuracy than English, the L1, which has a deep orthography.

The more consistent features of the Hebrew orthography enabled children whose L1 was

English to be able to decode words with more accuracy in Hebrew than in English, even

though English was their home and stronger language. Vowelized Hebrew, which has a

nearly one-to-one letter-sound correspondence, enables less effortful decoding even when

Hebrew oral language proficiency is just emerging. The current study contributes to this

observation by showing that, regardless of whether onset to more intensive exposure to

spoken Hebrew delivered by a native speaker began when they were in SK or in Grade 1,

there were no group differences on Hebrew word and pseudoword decoding in Grade 1. That

is, once introduced to Hebrew reading instruction in Grade 1, children in the early and late

groups alike were similar in their ability to read accurately. This was in spite of differences in

Hebrew proficiency captured by the vocabulary and derivational morphology tasks.

As would be expected given the early and late groups’ similar English vocabulary

and word and pseudoword reading skills, no significant differences were found between the

early and late groups on English reading comprehension. Less expected was the lack of

difference between the early and late groups on the Hebrew reading comprehension task. In

spite of the more intense exposure to Hebrew, and the fact that the early group had

significantly stronger Hebrew vocabulary skills, this advantage in language skills did not

translate into better Hebrew reading comprehension performance by the end of Grade 1.

There are a few explanations for the fact that the early and late groups did not differ

on Hebrew reading comprehension even though they did on their Hebrew proficiency. The

124

first explanation is methodological, and involves the nature of the Hebrew reading

comprehension task used in this project. The task used to evaluate reading comprehension in

Hebrew was an experimental, multiple choice task. As noted earlier, both groups performed

above chance (i.e., suggesting that they were likely not guessing). However, it is possible that

the children were using their underlying reasoning, background knowledge skills, or

“common sense” to answer the questions. That is, the children may not have needed to fully

comprehend the stories in order to answer the questions and may have been able to deduce

the answers based on their everyday knowledge of situations and verbal reasoning. In other

words, the questions may have been “passage independent” for the children. While there are

no studies of this nature available for children learning Hebrew, support for this

interpretation comes from studies using the GORT (Keenan & Betjemann, 2006), the English

reading comprehension measure used in this study. Keenan and Betjemann have

demonstrated that children between the ages of 8 – 18 were able to answer comprehension

questions relatively accurately, without having read the stories. This may have been the case

across both the English and Hebrew reading comprehension measures in this study, and

requires consideration when interpreting results.

A second explanation for the differences between Hebrew reading comprehension

and proficiency concerns the argument that reading comprehension tests in lower grades

appear to draw primarily on word reading skills and to a lesser extent on language skills,

since monolingual children’s language skills are not as challenged by the texts they typically

read (“learning to read”; Chall, 1983) . Evidence to this effect has come from Vellutino et al.

(1991) and been summarized in a meta-analysis by Florit and Cain (2011). At the same time,

this argument is less likely in the case of young children who are just beginning to learn how

125

to read and speak in Hebrew concurrently. The current study and other studies have shown

that it is possible to decode Hebrew without much comprehension, and this is why the two

groups are rather similar in their performance on reading comprehension.

A clue to another, more plausible explanation comes from the lack of correlation

between the Hebrew reading comprehension and Hebrew vocabulary measures at this early

stage of L2 development. It is possible that the Hebrew reading comprehension measure may

have not been sensitive enough to differentiate between the two groups and that the

vocabulary and syntactic skills required by the task did not reflect what the children were

exposed to during instruction. It may be the case that the test did not pick up on the more

subtle differences in oral language proficiency that may have existed between the two groups

and that the test was simply too difficult for them. If this notion is true, then a curriculum

based comprehension test may have revealed potential differences between the two groups.

Impact of early Hebrew immersion programming: The relationship between

language and reading skills. Question two examined the patterns of correlations among

cognitive, language and literacy measures within and across English and Hebrew. Further

considered was the degree to which the strength of these relations varied according to

differences in second language proficiency.

Overall, it was hypothesized that the early group would reveal more relationships and

stronger relationships among variables, representing the fact that this group had better

Hebrew language skills than the late group, and a relatively deeper awareness of the internal

structures of language than the late group. Yet, while comparisons of means between the

early and late groups revealed few differences, an investigation of correlational patterns at

the end of Grade 1 in both English and Hebrew revealed some interesting disparities,

126

illustrative of possible cross-linguistic effects and somewhat different correlation patterns

between literacy skills with the language and MA measures in the early and late groups.

These findings build on the argument that despite similar overall scores on the measures, the

children who have a richer proficiency in their second language are able to use similar skills

in their first language to their advantage. Importantly, the correlational patterns may suggest

that these young children are using skills from their native language to assist with their

second language (Cummins, 2000; Geva, 2006b) and not vice versa. At a first glance these

correlational findings appeared to support Cummins’ (2000) interdependence hypothesis.

However, given that the correlation matrices of the two groups were in fact not significantly

different from one other, not much can be said about the possible trends. It is worth noting

though that the lack of significance between the two correlational patterns of the two groups

may have been a result of small sample sizes in each of the groups, and it is not

inconceivable that larger sample sizes may have led to different findings and conclusions.

Based on these results, the early and late groups were merged meaningfully.

There is an important discussion to be had around the implications of the results from

questions one and two in conjunction with the finding noted above. Specifically, the first

question asked about overall mean differences between the early and late group, finding that

skills differed on a measure of Hebrew vocabulary knowledge. However, question two asked

about patterns of relationship among skills which, on a theoretical level, do not depend on

mean difference, but rather, on patterns of shared variance. This distinction is important to

consider as it impacts the understanding of separating the early and late groups from one

another for question one, which looked at mean differences in performance, while justifying

127

the merging of the two groups to answer the subsequent research questions that focused on

correlational patterns and relationships through regression analyses.

Of course, this does not mean that there were no individual differences among

children. Indeed, as expected, English and Hebrew word reading skills were significantly and

positively correlated with each other in both the early and late groups. In short, in spite of

differences in the orthographies, and in spite of differences in language proficiency in

Hebrew, children who were strong word and pseudoword readers in their first language were

likewise strong word and pseudoword readers in their second language, and those who were

weak in their first language were also relatively weak in the second language. This result is in

line with other studies involving alphabetic languages, including English-French (e.g.,

Comeau et al., 1999; Jared, Cormier, Levy, & Wade-Woolley, 2-11; Wise & Chen, 2010)

and English-Farsi (e.g., Gholamain & Geva, 1999). Additional consideration of individual

differences and cross-linguistic differences is discussed below in the context of the SVR.

Emergent Bilingualism, the Simple View of Reading, and Cross-linguistic Transfer

The focus of the discussion is on whether the SVR framework that stipulates that

reading comprehension can be understood in terms of the interaction of word reading and

oral language proficiency applies to Grade 1 children learning to simultaneously read in

English, their L1, and Hebrew, their L2. Further examined was the extent to which MA,

conceptualized as a component of oral language proficiency, would add to the model. In

addition to examining the SVR model within each language, a related issue was the extent to

which the word reading and language proficiency, the “pillars” of SVR, predict reading

comprehension cross-linguistically.

128

It is important to address that neither age nor nonverbal reasoning was entered into

step 1 of the model, given that they did not correlate with English or Hebrew reading

comprehension. PA and RAN were not entered into the model as controls either. RAN is

typically predictive of reading fluency and word reading in older children (e.g., Arnell et al.,

2009; Georgiou et al., 2010; Johnston & Kirby, 2006), once they are reading more fluently

and not focusing on word-level reading (David et al., 2006). Thus, considering RAN within

this model was not in line with the population being considered or the research questions at

hand. While PA is often considered to be an important control variable when looking for

unique variance in reading comprehension (e.g., Kirby et al., 2012), PA’s contribution to

reading comprehension in a Grade 1 population has been indicated as being mediated by

word reading skills (e.g., Tunmer & Nesdale, 1985). Indeed, Gottardo and Mueller (2009)

found that to be the case while testing the SVR model with Grade 2 native Spanish-speaking

children learning English as a second language. Likewise, in a longitudinal study of ESL

children, Zadeh, Farnia & Geva (2011) reported that the relationship between PA in Grade 1

and reading comprehension in Grade 3 was mediated with word reading skills in grade 2 (in

addition, language comprehension in grade 1 contributed directly to reading comprehension

in grade 3). Indeed, Carlisle (1995) found that for primary school children, PA was more

relevant for word reading skills while MA was more relevant for reading comprehension

skills.

The Simple View of Reading and young emergent bilinguals. A main interest was

how vocabulary, an aspect of language proficiency, and word reading, the two “pillars” of

the SVR, predicted reading comprehension within each language. In addition, this study

examined whether MA (i.e., inflectional and derivational awareness), conceptualized as

129

components of oral language proficiency, contributed additional unique variance to reading

comprehension beyond vocabulary, the “usual suspect”. The results were uneven with

respect to the SVR. For reading comprehension in English, the significant variables were

word reading and one of the MA components, derivational analysis. For Hebrew, the

significant variables were vocabulary and word reading, but not the MA components. There

are two interesting points of discussion here that will be taken up in the following sections.

First, for the same group of children, why did vocabulary in Hebrew contribute to reading

comprehension, while vocabulary in English did not? Secondly, why did derivational

analysis make a contribution to English reading comprehension but not to Hebrew reading

comprehension?

The Simple View of Reading within English as a first language. Results of the

current study suggest that in English, the typical pillars of the SVR model, word reading and

receptive vocabulary, do not explain reading comprehension. Specifically, a composite of

English word and pseudoword reading (“word reading”) significantly contributed 40% of the

variance to English reading comprehension, but English vocabulary knowledge did not

contribute additional unique variance. This finding was initially unexpected, given the

research supporting the SVR model in monolingual English-speaking populations (Florit &

Cain, 2011; Tunmer & Chapman, 2012) as well as within bilingual populations (Gottardo &

Mueller, 2009; Proctor et al., 2005; Zadeh et al., 2012). However, this finding is in line with

Ouellette and Beers (2010), who report that in Grade 1, word reading (measured with both

real word and pseudoword tasks) is a pivotal predictor of reading comprehension (measured

by answering text-level questions), while discourse-level oral language skills, such as

answering questions about stories, are not. Further, the measures used in the present study

130

may be another explanation for the finding that English vocabulary knowledge did not

uniquely contribute to English reading comprehension beyond English word reading. For

example, the passages may have been too simple with respect to the level of vocabulary

required to understand them, thus making the task more dependent on word reading skill.

This is in opposition to more challenging passages or cloze tasks that progress in difficulty

much faster. It is also important to point out that English was the children’s first language in

this study, whereas in some of the other studies where language proficiency was found to be

a significant predictor of reading comprehension, the participants’ reading comprehension

was not assessed in their home or best language, but rather in their L2 or in bilingual settings

(e.g., Erdos et al., 2010; Gottardo & Mueller, 2009; Proctor et al., 2005; Zadeh, Farnia &

Geva, 2012).

The current results are commensurate with studies showing that in the case of reading

comprehension in young children, the SVR model received less support. In particular, in their

meta-analysis, Florit and Cain (2011) concluded that in deep orthographies such as English,

word reading skills were more important for understanding young children’s (i.e., Grades 1 -

2) reading comprehension. In other words, at this age children are focused on accurately

decoding words (i.e., following grapheme-phoneme correspondence and orthographic

patterns) before putting language comprehension skills into play. That is, they need to be able

to accurately decode a significant number of words first, but their linguistic skills are not

typically challenged by the texts they read (Chall, 1983).

With respect to word-level reading, Gough and Tunmer (1986) suggested that

pseudoword reading is a stronger measure than real word reading within this model for very

young children as it focuses on the aspect of pure decoding (i.e., grapheme-phoneme

131

correspondence). On the other hand, Florit and Cain (2011) suggested that pseudoword

reading is more focused on phonological skills and that real word reading is more appropriate

within this model as it appeared to be more influential for deep, alphabetic orthographies

such as English in the prediction of reading comprehension. Given the very high correlations

between them, both pseudoword and real word reading ability were combined to form a

composite of word-level reading within this study, possibly capturing both the phonological

requirement of decoding as well as the semantic aspect that may parallel real word reading.

Considered jointly with other studies, the present study suggests that the SVR model, as

measured traditionally by measures of word reading and vocabulary knowledge, may not

fully capture reading comprehension skill at this early stage of reading. It appears that the

bilingual context may not have necessarily impacted the findings; rather, these results may

simply reflect a developmental stage along with the requirements of these young readers, as

has been reported in other studies as well.

The Simple View of Reading: The case of emerging Hebrew as a second language.

Whereas the picture emerging with regard to the adequacy of the SVR model was more

complex in English, the SVR model was adequate in explaining reading comprehension

through a combination of word reading and receptive vocabulary in Hebrew. Specifically, a

composite of Hebrew real word and pseudoword reading (“word reading”) significantly

contributed 27% of the variance to Hebrew reading comprehension, while Hebrew

vocabulary knowledge contributed an additional unique 10% of the variance. Despite the

similarity in measures used in English and Hebrew it is of note that Hebrew word-level

reading contributed much less variance to Hebrew reading comprehension than did the

parallel English word reading to English reading comprehension.

132

There are two intertwining points concerning the results pertaining to the applicability

of the SVR model in early Hebrew development that require consideration: one focussing on

differences in orthographic demands between English and Hebrew and the second

concerning the emergent bilingual context wherein Hebrew is a second language for the

children. With respect to the first point, as noted earlier, Florit and Cain (2011)’s meta-

analysis indicated that in the case of shallow orthographies, such as vowelized Hebrew, oral

language skills may be more important for early reading comprehension performance than

word-level reading skills. Indeed, the difference in results between the English and Hebrew

models supports such a notion. The lack of a significant correlation between Hebrew

vocabulary and Hebrew word reading8 lends further support to this idea. Not only were the

children less able to use their Hebrew vocabulary knowledge to assist with Hebrew word and

pseudoword reading, given the fact that their Hebrew proficiency was minimal, but as argued

above, they also did not require much proficiency in order to decode Hebrew words. This is

in contrast with English, where the children were likely dependent to some degree on English

vocabulary knowledge when reading and decoding text to assist with the deeper orthography

and the more complex writing system. In addition, as discussed earlier, it is likely that the

children could accurately read the passages without comprehending them, or alternatively,

that the texts were very simple and that therefore the children could use various guessing

strategies to answer the questions correctly. The second strand in this intertwined explanation

8 The correlation between Hebrew vocabulary and Hebrew word reading (composite) was .29, ns, although

correlations of .33 and higher in this analysis were indicated as being significant, p < .05. Thus, while the above

discussed variables were noted as not being significantly related, the finding may likely be attributable to the

small sample size and should be considered a trend. For the purpose of this dissertation, based on the statistical

analyses, the relationship was non-significant; however, the correlation between Hebrew word reading and

Hebrew vocabulary knowledge may be more relevant than indicated in the present study and is discussed later

as a limitation.

133

of the SVR results is the bilingual factor. The children were very young, native English-

speaking children learning Hebrew as a second language. Similar to the English findings

discussed earlier, it is difficult to tease out how much of these results are specific to this

context and whether similar results would have been found with a comparable group of

monolingual English speakers not exposed concurrently to another typologically different

language.

The results of the present study suggest that the SVR framework is applicable to

Hebrew reading comprehension as both Hebrew word reading skills and Hebrew vocabulary

knowledge contribute to Hebrew reading comprehension. With respect to Share’s (2008)

anglocentricity argument, results from this research further build on expanding models

initially designed to explain reading skill in monolingual English speakers and readers.

Specifically, in addressing Share’s concern of language and literacy models being centred on

English language and reading requirements and developments, the data here lend support in

illustrating how the SVR model is applicable to English-Hebrew emergent bilingual children

in explaining skill both in English and Hebrew. This study needs to be replicated in the future

with larger samples of similar populations, with older learners who have had more exposure

to Hebrew, and with other measures of reading comprehension and oral language

proficiency.

Considering MA as a unique aspect of oral language within the Simple View of

Reading. Part of the criticism of the SVR framework is that it may be “too simple” and it

fails to consider additional components of language proficiency. In particular, in the present

research it was hypothesized that MA, another component of language proficiency, may

contribute to reading comprehension over and above the potential contribution of word level

134

reading skills and vocabulary, the two factors that have been traditionally associated with the

SVR framework.

Two aspects of MA were independently investigated in English and Hebrew. It was

important to break down MA into inflectional awareness and derivational awareness, as they

are considered to each have different developmental trajectories in English (Anglin, 1993;

Carlisle, 2003, 2007) and Hebrew (Berman, 1985, 1987; Clark & Berman, 1987; Levin et al.,

2001; Ravid, 1995, 1997; Ravid & Schiff, 2004). Indeed, as noted earlier, research evidence

from monolingual learners of each of these languages suggests that principles of inflectional

morphology (such as singular-plurals) are acquired early, whereas principles of derivational

morphology take a longer time to develop and continue to develop through the school years

(Berman, 1985; Carlisle, 2003; Ravid, 1995, 1997). As well, the different morphological

structures of English and Hebrew would suggest that MA skills may be implicated differently

in each language. Such differences could be related not only to typological differences in

how morphology works in English and Hebrew, but also to differences in language

proficiency, especially given the bilingual population within this study.

Correlational patterns among MA, literacy and vocabulary skills were not identical in

English, the children’s L1, and Hebrew, their emerging L2. Within each language,

performance on the inflectional awareness task correlated with the other English language

measures, namely vocabulary and derivational morphology (as well as with the reading

measures). Likewise, performance on the English derivational awareness task similarly

correlated with English vocabulary and inflectional morphology, as well as with the reading

measures. However, performance on the Hebrew derivational awareness task did not

correlate with Hebrew word reading (though it did with the other Hebrew measures).

135

The regression analyses indicated that morphological skills contributed to reading

comprehension in English but not in Hebrew. In English, derivational awareness contributed

an additional significant 9% of the unique variance to reading comprehension over and above

the role of word reading skills. However, performance on the English inflectional awareness

task did not contribute additional unique variance. In Hebrew, even though the Hebrew

inflectional and derivational tasks correlated with the vocabulary measure, neither of the MA

measures contributed additional unique variance to Hebrew reading comprehension over and

above the contribution of vocabulary knowledge and word level reading skills.

Results confirm that for this native English-speaking Grade 1 population, it is useful

to consider MA as an important and more nuanced aspect of language proficiency, which is

not simply captured by vocabulary knowledge. In particular, it appears that English

derivational awareness is a unique component of oral language proficiency that adds to

English reading comprehension. It appears that individual differences in children’s ability to

apply derivational principles in their home language such as “protect- protection” or “swim-

swimmer” captured an aspect of oral language proficiency that is not captured by vocabulary

skills. Indeed, it appears that children who can derive (e.g., active – activity) and decompose

(e.g., teacher- teach) words are better able to respond correctly to comprehension questions.

As a deeper level of oral language proficiency, as well as an underlying metalinguistic skill

(Carlisle, 2007), knowledge of derivational morphology is clearly a unique aspect of

language that is an important predictor of reading comprehension in young developing

English readers (Anglin, 1993; Carlisle, 1995; Nagy & Anderson, 1984).

In sum, it appears that language proficiency, captured by derivational morphology

skills, is a “pillar” of the SVR framework for Grade 1 children who speak English as an L1.

136

Individual differences in children’s derivational morphology skills combined with word level

reading skills are excellent predictors of reading comprehension in English, a language with a

deep orthographic structure. Nevertheless, the finding of English derivational awareness

contributing to English reading comprehension within the SVR model leads to two additional

points that merit further consideration: the noted difference in contribution between

performance on the English derivational awareness task and the English inflectional

awareness task, and differences between English and Hebrew.

Given that regression analyses are correlational in nature, considering the zero-order

correlation matrix assists in shedding some light on the present findings. With respect to the

first point considering the English regression model, results involving English MA

correlations point to several interesting notions with respect to language and literacy

development and second language acquisition. Inflectional awareness is considered to be a

more primary or basic aspect of MA developmentally (Berko-Gleason, 1958) which, as

expected, was significantly correlated with the skills at hand in each language. Derivational

awareness, however, requires a deeper and more advanced understanding of word meanings

and functions (Anglin, 1993; Carlisle, 2007; Geva & Wade-Woolley, 2004). Indeed,

performance on the English derivational awareness task appeared to share more variance

with reading comprehension than did performance on the inflectional awareness task.

Performance on each of the MA measures appeared to be similarly correlated with word

reading. Derivational awareness performance appeared to share more variance with

vocabulary knowledge than inflectional awareness, which is expected (e.g., Carlisle, 2000).

However, given the weaker relationship between vocabulary knowledge and reading

comprehension, derivational awareness appeared to contribute something unique to reading

137

comprehension skill that vocabulary knowledge did not. Results overall support the notion

that English derivational awareness is an aspect of oral language that is important for English

reading comprehension and, even at this young age, performance on this type of task explains

a unique aspect of reading comprehension, above and beyond that explained jointly by word

reading and vocabulary knowledge.

Kirby et al. (2012) found that performance on an MA task (combination of

inflectional and derivational awareness) predicted significant variance in Grade 3 reading

comprehension after controlling for nonverbal reasoning, PA, vocabulary, and word reading

performance. Their study is the first known research to demonstrate a contribution of English

MA to English reading comprehension above and beyond word reading and vocabulary (a

more comprehensive SVR model). A difference between the two studies, aside from grade

level (i.e., Grade 3 vs. Grade 1) is with respect to how MA was tested and considered.

Specifically, while Kirby et al. (2012) were interested in the types of manipulations required

to solve the analogy-based inflectional and derivational items (i.e., morphological and/ or

phonological), the present study isolated inflectional awareness and derivational awareness

but did not consider the manipulations required. Kirby et al.’s (2012) results indicated that

when they divided the MA task to represent items that could only be solved through

morphological manipulation and those that required a combination of both morphological

and phonological manipulation, both versions continued to explain additional unique

variance in reading comprehension above and beyond the same control variables. These are

important findings with respect to considering what underlying skills and sensitivity are

being used to solve the MA task. Indeed, the present study revealed that in Grade 1,

138

performance on a derivational awareness task contributes additional unique variance while

performance on an inflectional awareness task does not.

MA skills, however, did not prove to be as robust a predictor of Hebrew reading

comprehension in this group of emerging bilinguals. As discussed previously, this finding is

likely based on several factors that include language structure and proficiency. While

performance on both the inflectional awareness and derivational awareness tasks was

significantly correlated with Hebrew reading comprehension, it appears that at this

rudimentary level for children learning Hebrew as a second language, the measures used as

the core tenets of the SVR (i.e., word reading and receptive vocabulary) explain much more

variance in Hebrew reading comprehension. Further, at this stage of early Hebrew

development, aspects of MA do not yet add additional unique information pertaining to

Hebrew oral language proficiency. That is, any contributions to reading comprehension from

MA at this level can be explained through shared variance with word reading and

vocabulary. Instead, given their rudimentary Hebrew language proficiency (in comparison to

English), higher level metalinguistic skills involving Hebrew morphology may not yet be as

relevant.

Another, though not very likely, explanation for the differences between English and

Hebrew concerns the orthographic nature of each language. As discussed, vowelized Hebrew

is orthographically shallow with a near one-to-one grapheme-phoneme correspondence. This

is different from English, which is a much more opaque language. In order to accurately

decode new words in English, relying on derivational knowledge can be an appropriate

strategy. Thus, given L1 language skills, children can begin to access this knowledge when

reading for meaning (Carlisle, 2000; Carlisle & Fleming, 2003; Ku & Anderson, 2003; Tong

139

et al., 2011). However, such knowledge is less important for decoding vowelized Hebrew,

which is shallow, providing for one possible, though less plausible, explanation as to why a

significant relationship was not established here between Hebrew word reading and Hebrew

derivational knowledge.

As discussed above, knowledge of derivational morphology in Hebrew, more so than

other aspects of morphology, epitomizes Hebrew language proficiency (Ravid, 1995). It is

therefore not surprising that children whose Hebrew language skills are beginning to emerge

do not have sufficient knowledge of this aspect of language proficiency. As a result, even

though they can decode words, they are unable to draw on derivational skills to help them

with word reading tasks in Hebrew. Hebrew derivational knowledge was clearly related to

Hebrew receptive vocabulary and reading comprehension. However, it may not yet be a

strong enough measure of oral language proficiency to significantly assist with deciphering

meaning and problem-solving, above and beyond basic word reading and vocabulary

knowledge.

Overall, how the model explained variance in reading comprehension within each

language was different. Thus how aspects of MA contributed to the variance in reading

comprehension was expected to vary based on patterns of shared variance. Within the SVR

model, results highly implicate the need to include higher-level metalinguistic skills (e.g.,

Kirby & Savage, 2008) in languages with alphabetic orthographies (Kirby et al., 2012), even

with young developing bilingual readers.

Examining the Simple View of Reading cross-linguistically for young emergent

English-Hebrew bilinguals. The last research question investigated the SVR model from a

cross-linguistic perspective. It is important to note that English reading comprehension and

140

Hebrew reading comprehension were significantly correlated with one another, suggesting

shared variance with respect to an overlap in some fundamental skills9 (Geva, 2006a; Geva &

Clifton, 1994; Royer & Carlo, 1991).

Both Hebrew word reading and Hebrew reading comprehension correlated

significantly with the parallel English measures. Aside from Hebrew reading comprehension,

Hebrew word reading was the only Hebrew variable to correlate cross-linguistically with

English reading comprehension. Thus, conducting regression analyses to model the SVR in

predicting English reading comprehension cross-linguistically from Hebrew was redundant.

As argued by Bialystok (2005) and others, once decoding skills are learned for one language,

they can more easily be applied to a second alphabetic language. By extension, it might not

be Hebrew word reading per se that is cross-linguistically related to English reading

comprehension, but rather, the underlying process of understanding grapheme-phoneme

correspondences and sounding-out words, suggestive of the constraints in using parallel

measures of biliteracy (Proctor & Silverman, 2011). Thus, while second language decoding

may be highly implicated in first language reading comprehension (August & Shanahan,

2006; Geva & Genesee, 2006), it may be a result of underlying metalinguistic skill. Overall,

these results continue to support the notion that in the early grades, word reading is highly

implicated in reading comprehension. Nevertheless, more research is needed with respect to

applying the SVR model cross-linguistically from an established first language to a new

second language.

9 Beyond the correlational data, these variables were not entered into the regression models in keeping with the

basic tenets of the SVR framework and considering contributing underlying language and linguistic skills.

Specifically, whether the variables of interest explain reading comprehension cross-linguistically above and

beyond reading comprehension in the other language was not a question asked in this study, nor is the SVR

model structured to answer such a question.

141

This is the first study examining the SVR model cross-linguistically with an English-

speaking Grade 1 population learning Hebrew as a second language, making it difficult to

directly compare the present findings with previous research. Applications of this model with

alphabetic languages have been predicting English as a second language, using a variety of

first languages, in groups of children with a wide age range (Gottardo & Mueller, 2009;

Proctor et al., 2005; Zadeh et al., 2010). Indeed, these studies have shown that English can be

predicted as an L2 within the SVR, although the results were not supported here for Hebrew

as an L2, with this younger population. There are numerous factors that could explain the

present pattern of results including age, school programming, orthographic nature of the two

languages, language proficiency, test measurement, small sample size, etc. Some of these

considerations will be discussed in the limitations section.

A different picture appeared to emerge when investigating how language proficiency

and word reading skills in English predicted Hebrew reading comprehension. Simply put,

Hebrew word reading significantly predicted English reading comprehension, while Hebrew

vocabulary did not. In keeping with the SVR framework, both cross-linguistic models

predicting English and Hebrew reading comprehension were similar in that vocabulary did

not contribute additional unique variance over word reading skills. However, when MA was

included as an additional measure of oral language proficiency, the relevance of the SVR

model in predicting reading comprehension for this emergent bilingual population emerged.

Including MA as a cross-linguistic measure of oral language within the Simple

View of Reading. The last question this research sought to explore was whether measures of

MA contributed to reading comprehension cross-linguistically, above and beyond word

reading and receptive vocabulary. English reading comprehension did not significantly

142

correlate with performance on either of the Hebrew MA measures, a result that reflects the

children’s low proficiency in Hebrew, which rendered a regression analysis with these

measures to be a moot point.

Performance on the English MA measures significantly correlated with Hebrew

reading comprehension, and therefore performance on each of the inflectional awareness and

derivational awareness tasks were considered in predicting Hebrew above and beyond

English word reading and vocabulary performance. While both MA measures appeared to be

similarly correlated with Hebrew reading comprehension, performance on the inflectional

awareness task contributed a unique and significant 10% of the variance to Hebrew reading

comprehension, while performance on the derivational awareness task did not contribute

additional unique variance. It is important to remember that English vocabulary knowledge

was not correlated with Hebrew reading comprehension so performance on the English

inflectional awareness task was mostly contributing additional unique variance to Hebrew

reading comprehension over and above that of English word reading. That is, inflectional

awareness contributed something unique that vocabulary did not.

In general, English inflectional awareness predicted Hebrew reading comprehension,

above and beyond English word reading. These results suggest that the SVR model explains

Hebrew L2 reading comprehension from the better developed English L1 word reading and

language proficiency skills when inflectional awareness is considered. While cross-linguistic

transfer between MA and word reading has been established for young children learning both

English and Hebrew (Kahn-Horwitz et al., 2005; Schiff & Calif, 2007), this is the first known

study to consider cross-linguistic contributions to reading comprehension with an emergent

English-Hebrew bilingual population within the SVR framework.

143

English inflectional awareness explained significant and unique variance in Hebrew

reading comprehension. English and Hebrew both make use of inflections similarly, with the

main difference being that Hebrew is also inflected for gender while English is not. Thus,

given the similarity of how inflections are used within both language structures, it is not

surprising that performance on the English inflectional task was more indicative of Hebrew

reading comprehension than performance on the English derivational task. Indeed, while

Hebrew morphological structure does rely on derivational manipulations and shifts, they are

done in a very different manner than in English, rendering knowledge of English derivational

awareness less useful in comprehending Hebrew text.

With respect to the question of whether transfer occurred, the methodology in this

study needs to be considered. It is limiting that within this study in predicting Hebrew

reading comprehension, only English variables were considered without Hebrew variables

(i.e., Hebrew word reading, Hebrew vocabulary, Hebrew MA), included as controls. This

was based on the research questions at hand which investigated cross-linguistic contributions

to reading comprehension from one language specifically to the other and modelled on the

research of Erdos et al. (2010), who took a similar approach to investigating cross-linguistic

contributions, albeit without MA measures. As a result of not including intra-language

predictors in the cross-linguistic model due to this study’s small sample size (discussed in the

limitations section), the notion of “transfer” cannot be directly applied.

These findings are nevertheless interesting with respect to the directionality of cross-

linguistic contributions from the more proficient language to the less proficient language

(Cummins, 2000; Geva & Genesee, 2006; Lado, 1964). Within the present study, English

morphological skills were supporting Hebrew reading comprehension, above and beyond

144

underlying English word reading skills. The direction of this cross-linguistic relationship,

from the more proficient to the less proficient language, is similar to the findings from

Ramirez et al. (2010), who found that Spanish (L1) derivational MA explained significant

variance in English (L2) word reading, after controlling for several factors including PA and

vocabulary. Saiegh-Haddad and Geva (2008) found the opposite, with MA skills from the

less proficient language (Arabic) predicting word reading skills in the more proficient

language (English). They attributed their results to Arabic’s morphology being much more

complex than that of English. This suggestion, however, is counter-intuitive to the results

depicted in the present study, as Hebrew has much more complex morphology than English

yet the results were more similar to that of Ramirez et al. While it is important to recognize

that the children in the present study were a few years younger than the children in the other

two studies, this study predicted reading comprehension, as opposed to word reading ability,

which was the outcome variable for Ramirez et al. and Saiegh-Haddad and Geva.

Explaining variance in word reading is quite different than explaining variance in

reading comprehension, making it difficult to draw absolute conclusions and properly

speculate based on the cross-linguistic research with MA and word reading. Theoretically,

higher-level aspects of linguistic knowledge captured in the English MA measures appeared

to “catch” important aspects of underlying skill, not captured by receptive vocabulary

knowledge, in the children’s first language that contributed to reading comprehension

proficiency in the second language. Thus, the results suggest that the cross-linguistic

directionality may have been mediated by oral language proficiency. While Deacon et al.

(2007) found cross-linguistic bidirectional transfer between MA and word reading in French

and English, the strongest contributions were for children in Grade 3 who would have had

145

much stronger language proficiency in each language as compared to their counterparts in

Grade 1. It is quite possible that a certain language proficiency threshold needs to be met

(e.g., Cummins, 1979, 1991) before children can use knowledge from one language to

enhance skills in the other, in a bidirectional manner. Answering the question laid out here

with older English-Hebrew bilingual children would assist in building support for the

possibility of a language proficiency threshold in bidirectional linguistic contribution of

metalinguistic skill.

In summary, inflectional awareness, a higher-level metalinguistic skill in children’s

stronger first language, contributed to reading comprehension in their second and less

proficient language. The children, who were developing bilingual literacy skills

simultaneously, were able to pull underlying knowledge from their first language in order to

assist with the development of their second language. As indicated, it is possible that once

the children become more proficient in their second language, a boot-strapping model may

develop wherein both languages mutually enhance and contribute to one another with respect

to oral language proficiency and reading comprehension skills. At the same time, it is likely

that as long as the children are significantly more proficient in their first language, the

strength of this cross-linguistic directionality from the strong language to the weaker one

with respect to meta-linguistic contribution will remain.

Final Discussion and Summary

The series of research questions investigated within this study lead to several

conclusions regarding early immersion programming for young children and models for

predicting reading comprehension both within and between languages. In terms of early

146

Hebrew immersion programming for children who were native English-language speakers,

the present study revealed that at the end of the early immersion year (SK), children who

received the early immersion Hebrew-language programming had stronger receptive

vocabulary knowledge in Hebrew when compared to peers who did not receive the early

programming. Importantly, there was no negative effect of early Hebrew immersion on the

children’s English language or literacy development in the domains measured. This

“advantage” in second language proficiency continued through to the end of the children’s

Grade 1 year of schooling. Nevertheless, these stronger Hebrew vocabulary skills did not

affect the children’s Hebrew word reading or reading comprehension skills. That is, all the

children in the study, regardless of whether they received early Hebrew immersion

programming or not, achieved similar Hebrew word reading, pseudoword reading, and

reading comprehension skills in Grade 1. This is believed to reflect the shallow orthography

of Hebrew, making it less dependent on language proficiency at this early level of

comprehension and structure. Overall, the results suggest a “time on task” model in which

the more time children are formally exposed to and use their second language, the more

proficient they will become in it. In this case, this was without a negative impact on their first

language abilities.

The early group performed significantly better than the late group on a measure of

Hebrew receptive vocabulary and revealed different relationship patterns among performance

on the majority of the measures. However, the actual patterns of variance between the two

groups were not significantly different. As indicated in the discussion and discussed below as

a limitation, the sample size in this study was relatively small and it is recommended that

147

developmental notions with respect to second language proficiency be investigated with a

larger, similar population.

While the SVR model in this study demonstrated that reading comprehension was a

product of word reading skill and receptive vocabulary knowledge in Hebrew for the

bilingual population considered, it did not fully explain reading comprehension within

English using the same predictor variables. Specifically, English receptive vocabulary did not

contribute unique variance to English reading comprehension over and above the

contribution from English word reading. While not in line with the way the SVR model has

generally been considered (e.g., Kirby & Savage, 2004), the results do support the

importance of word reading ability for reading comprehension in Grade 1 within this deeper

orthography, with less of a reliance on receptive vocabulary for reading comprehension as it

was measured in the present study.

This research further illustrated that assessments of language proficiency within the

SVR framework should include aspects of oral language such as English derivational

awareness (Kirby et al., 2012), a result that supports the SVR model for this population in

predicting English reading comprehension from English reading and language skills. Thus,

while the SVR model covers broad constructs, this study indicated that oral language skills

not typically examined in the model are relevant and contribute to reading comprehension

within the children’s first and more proficient language, in this case. From a developmental

perspective, higher-level aspects of oral language proficiency, such as MA, may become

more important within the model as a measure of oral language proficiency and as reading

skill ability increases (Carlisle, 1995).

148

Lastly, cross-linguistic contributions within the SVR model were investigated.

Overall, results revealed contributions from English, the first and stronger language in which

the children were more proficient, to Hebrew, the second and less proficient language.

Specifically, within the model, English MA (performance on the inflectional awareness task)

predicted Hebrew reading comprehension above and beyond English word reading (English

vocabulary did not significantly correlate with Hebrew reading comprehension). Thus, not

only were cross-language contributions demonstrated, but it was MA skill that was revealed

to carry through within the model, capturing a different aspect of language proficiency.

Implications of these findings again point to the importance of expanding the measurement

of oral language proficiency within the SVR framework to include MA, while also

highlighting how oral language proficiency impacts on cross-linguistic contributions

(Cummins, 2000). Lastly, within this cross-linguistic framework, the SVR model as

illustrated in this study is likely to change with increases in oral language proficiency ability.

As children (or adults) become more proficient in their second language, there is a greater

likelihood for the cross-linguistic model to become bi-directional as opposed to

unidirectional (e.g., Deacon et al., 2007).

Limitations and Future Directions

The present study has several limitations that will be addressed. Given that many of

the limitations lead to important ideas with respect to how they can be reconciled or

improved on, future directions with respect to building and strengthening the results from the

present study will be discussed in unison.

149

Sample. Sample size was small within the present study and requires consideration.

As a result of the small group sizes, even when collapsed into one single group for the latter

research questions, statistical analyses were limited. Correlational analyses, including

hierarchical regression analyses, were limited with respect to how many factors could be

partialled out at once. Similarly, significance in correlational results are dependent on sample

size and there was one specific case where a correlation between Hebrew word reading and

Hebrew vocabulary knowledge was approaching significance and indicative of a trend. This

was noted in the discussion section and highlights the impact of the small sample size in this

study on significance testing. Structural equation modelling would have been more

appropriate for answering several of the questions at hand, as such an approach would have

better accounted for both error and power.

The population in this study included one cohort, within one school. Thus,

consideration needs to be taken when extending these results to other populations, as factors

such as curriculum and teaching may have impacted on the children’s language and literacy

development, among numerous other social and developmental factors. That is, results are

more relevant within the education system of the school where the study was conducted.

Cohort effects may have been present as well. It is necessary to consider these factors when

comparing these data to that of other studies, even with English-Hebrew emergent bilingual

populations. Indeed, there is the possibility that some variance in the results may be

attributed to the present school’s specific pedagogy (e.g., Bindman, 2004). Conducting this

research within more geographic locations, schools, and with multiple cohorts will provide

for more applicable and powerful results that can be more readily generalized to other

populations.

150

The first two research questions considered the impact of an early Hebrew immersion

program. However, the children in that program were merged in Grade 1 with children who

did not participate in the program (as per the school’s protocol). This merging of students

may have confounded the later impact of the early immersion program. That is, given the

assumption that classroom teachers were teaching to the class mean in terms of ability, it is

possible that the children from the early immersion program may not have achieved their full

potential in terms of skill development. It is impossible to determine within this context

where and if differences may have occurred, although one may speculate that children from

the early immersion program may have revealed stronger language and literacy skills at the

end of Grade 1 had they not been merged. Future studies with similar research questions

should consider (if possible) streaming such education programs in order to fully appreciate

the possible impact and relevance of early immersion programming.

Similar to the above limitation, the socio-economic status (SES) of the children in this

study was mostly upper-middle class. The majority of parents in this school are also highly

educated with university, post-graduate and/ or professional training, as indicated through

personal communications with the school’s administration (unfortunately, no quantitative

data were collected with regards to SES or parental education and occupation). On average,

children in this school are believed to be exposed to more opportunities than that of the

general public-school population for both financial and accessibility (e.g., living in a central

area of Toronto) reasons, as indicated in personal communication with school administration

and teaching staff. These noted factors may be indicative of stronger underlying cognitive

and academic skills. Thus, caution needs to be considered when extending these results to

populations which are different than that described here. Future studies would benefit from

151

the collection of information regarding SES (e.g., mother’s education, annual family income,

or postal code) in order for statistical consideration of SES impact on measures of

performance outcome to occur. Conducting similar research with children from a variety of

SES backgrounds would assist with this limitation and allow for the results to become more

extendable.

In line with the participants coming from the same school, all of the children were in

a parochial Hebrew day school and were receiving partial Hebrew immersion programming

by Grade 1. Having a monolingual English control group would allow for comparisons to be

made that considered the impact of bilingualism within the analytic framework and how

second language development truly affected first language and literacy development, if at all.

Growth modelling would also reveal if/ how differences in development occur. Ideally, such

a methodology would include matching children based on underlying cognitive skill and

baseline English language and literacy ability.

Measures. Most constructs within the present study were assessed using one

measure. This is was necessary given time restraints with data collection in a school setting

and with young children who have limited ability to focus and attend. While this appeared to

be quite common in research, based on the meta-analysis conducted by Florit and Cain

(2011) on the SVR model in populations with alphabetic orthographies, there are costs to this

as relying on one measure per construct leaves room for measurement error with respect to

both validity and reliability. Future studies should consider using multiple measures for each

construct in order to increase the construct validity of measures and prepare for possible

issues that may arise with respect to reliability.

152

Another measurement aspect that requires thought is the measuring of oral language

proficiency and reading comprehension. This study measured passage-level reading

comprehension and word-level oral language proficiency. Hoover and Gough (1990)

suggested that parallel measures tapping oral language and reading comprehension should be

used. Their point, however, can go in two directions. The present study’s method for testing

these constructs may not have captured a strong enough oral language proficiency through

vocabulary knowledge and MA skills that is required for sentence/ text level comprehension,

as an oral cloze task may have captured. On the flipside, using a word-level task to capture

oral language knowledge assists in potentially isolating the skill of text-level comprehension

beyond that of word recognition. Nevertheless, it is important to consider that the present

study’s use of word-level measures for oral language proficiency may not have fully captured

the construct. This notion may explain why English vocabulary, for example, did not

significantly explain English reading comprehension within the analyses investigating the

SVR framework. Indeed, the discussion captured issues pertaining to language proficiency

and such implications.

All measures were carefully chosen, adapted and/ or developed for this study

although some measures were found to have lower than acceptable inter-item test reliability.

However, Pedhauzer and Schmelkin (1991) indicate that there is variance in “acceptable”

estimates of test reliability, with researchers often citing sources that support their findings.

These authors indicated that reliabilities of .50 and higher can often be justified.

Nevertheless, three measures resulted in reliabilities close to .50 and require some caution:

Hebrew reading comprehension (.66), English inflectional awareness (.52), and Hebrew

153

derivational awareness (.49). Issues surrounding these three measurement tools were

discussed in earlier sections of this dissertation, but will be revisited here as well.

Hebrew reading comprehension was a multiple-choice test format. While studies have

indicated that the English counterpart from which it was devised (GORT) can be accurately

answered without having read the text passages (Keenan & Betjemann, 2006), it is not clear

whether that was the case in the present study. The children here were at the end of their first

year of formal literacy instruction in Hebrew as a second language and the measure may have

not been sensitive enough to their language proficiency and literacy development stage. That

is, while this test likely captured a degree of the children’s Hebrew reading comprehension

ability, it may have been too easy or too difficult for them at this stage. An oral cloze task

which would have required less text reading while still assessing comprehension at a single

sentence level, with one-word multiple choice options, may have been more suitable for the

age and grade level of Hebrew as a second language learners. Nevertheless, it is believed that

this task appropriately captured Hebrew reading comprehension within this study.

Given the children’s age, both the English inflectional awareness and Hebrew

derivational awareness tasks had a small number of items (10 and 9, respectively). However,

this may have impacted reliability. Indeed, internal consistency is an interplay between the

number of items and the interrelations among them (Pedhauzer & Schmelkin, 1991), which

suggests that the lower the number of items, the more interrelated they need to be. Earlier, in

the methods section, it was discussed that the English inflectional awareness task may have

been limited given the pattern of errors as the children appeared to make errors on similar

items. While this task was based on that of Nunes et al. (1997), who had eight items, Kirby et

al. (2012) have indicated that a measure with more broadly-based items (i.e., 20 items that

154

captured different levels of difficulty and requirement) would be more beneficial in capturing

the construct. Such an argument can be made for the Hebrew derivational awareness task as

well. Further, the Hebrew derivational awareness task was forced-choice and dichotomous in

nature. Having more possible response options may have assisted in a stronger reliability

measure as well. While error patterns were equally distributed on this task (i.e., there was no

one item that was consistently wrong across the children’s responses), there remains the

possibility that this task may have been too difficult for the population in this study. That

said, with respect to both the English inflectional awareness and Hebrew derivational

awareness task, had they both had more items and been geared more closely to the present

population’s language proficiency, performance on the measures may have been more

predictive of word reading and reading comprehension ability. That is clearly a speculation

and future studies with measures containing more items with breadth will better determine

this.

Within the present study, derivational awareness was measured with different types of

tasks within each of English and Hebrew. The present study did not use similar measures

within both languages due to constraints related to assumed language proficiency.

Specifically, given that Hebrew was a second language for the children, it was believed that

an expressive task measuring derivational awareness would be too challenging for them,

especially given the complexity of Hebrew morphology. For this reason a receptive and

forced-choice task was used. The same was not paralleled in English, as Carlisle’s (2000)

task was documented as having good reliability for this construct. Having different methods

of measuring derivational awareness within each of English and Hebrew may have impacted

the correlational results, in that aspects of underlying process needed to solve the tasks may

155

have been implicated. Future directions include measuring constructs within multiple

languages using the same approach so that comparisons can be more direct, meaningful and

less confounded by possible differences (e.g., level of difficulty, underlying process) between

tasks.

Study duration. Children in the present study were assessed at the end of SK,

beginning of Grade 1 and end of Grade 1. Assessing the children into later grades would

likely have provided for a stronger understanding of the longer-term impact of early Hebrew

immersion programming on bilingual language and literacy development, while answering

more questions pertaining to cross-linguistic transfer and oral language proficiency. Future

longitudinal studies are necessary to respond to several of the present study’s unanswered

questions and hypotheses.

One shortcoming of this study is that there was only one early immersion program;

there is no comparison immersion class to contrast results with. Having had a comparison

early Hebrew immersion program would have allowed for the teasing out of whether

differences observed were a direct result of early immersion or whether type of program/

instruction had a direct influence on Hebrew receptive vocabulary skills. Another

shortcoming that needs to be addressed is the lack of baseline performance scores from the

onset of the SK school year. While the assumption is that the early and late groups did not

differ on initial Hebrew and English language and literacy skills prior to the start of

kindergarten, it cannot be ruled out that the early group had stronger Hebrew language skills

at the onset. While a difference in initial skills is possible, discussions with administration at

the school where this study took place clarified that it was unlikely that any children in the

early or late group had significant previous exposure to Hebrew. They emphasized that both

156

groups had similar (if any) exposure to spoken Hebrew prior to attending SK. It is important

to emphasize that the early and late groups did not differ from each other on any of the

English language or literacy measures at any time point.

Transfer. This dissertation is unable to conclude that transfer of English MA to

Hebrew reading comprehension occurred, but rather it suggests that there were cross-

linguistic contributions. Taken from Genesee et al. (2006) and defined in the literature

review, transfer refers to “cross-language relationships found in the structures that belong

exclusively to the linguistic domain (e.g., morphology) as well as skills that involve cognitive

and language abilities (e.g., reading comprehension)” (p. 157). The cross-linguistic

hierarchical regressions conducted in this study were modelled after Erdos et al. (2010) and

did not control for within-language variables. This approach assisted in keeping a minimal

number of variables in the regression analyses due to the small sample (discussed earlier).

Thus, within-language measures that accounted for the same structures considered were not

entered in the cross-linguistic analyses. As a result, the occurrence of transfer of skills cannot

be determined by the present study. In order to directly explore the transfer of skills within

the SVR framework, especially those related to MA, a larger sample of children would be

required with analyses that included within-language variables as controls.

Conclusions

In summary, support for early Hebrew immersion within a native English-speaking

group of children was illustrated with respect to developing Hebrew receptive vocabulary

knowledge, without any consequence to English language or literacy (i.e., word reading and

reading comprehension) skills or to underlying PA and RAN skills. Thus, participation in an

157

early Hebrew immersion program elicits a positive advantage for Hebrew receptive

vocabulary knowledge without a negative impact on English language and literacy skills.

From an educational programming perspective, only positive gains were found at one year

post the early immersion program.

The SVR is supported as a model for explaining reading comprehension in Hebrew as

a second language for this population, although English receptive vocabulary was not as

robust a predictor when explaining English reading comprehension over and above English

word reading. Results suggest that the traditional SVR model, wherein vocabulary is a

common measure of oral language proficiency, may not be a strong model for explaining

English reading comprehension in a population where formal literacy instruction has just

begun. English derivational awareness, an aspect of MA, did contribute to the SVR model in

uniquely explaining English reading comprehension. In terms of Hebrew as a second

language, and in consideration of its shallow orthography, results indicate the importance of

joint focus on both word-level reading and vocabulary knowledge with respect to Hebrew

reading comprehension. From an educational and clinical perspective, results indicate the

relevance of focusing on English word-level reading skills in terms of their importance for

reading comprehension in both English and Hebrew. Indeed, more research with different

measures of oral language proficiency is warranted.

The present study underscores the need to expand how oral language proficiency is

examined in the SVR model. Specifically, the relevance of including MA, a higher-level

metalinguistic skill, was indicated. The present study illustrated that MA contributed cross-

linguistically from the more proficient language to the less proficient language in predicting

reading comprehension within the SVR framework. Importantly, English inflectional

158

awareness, an aspect of MA that is similar across English and Hebrew, was the component

noticed to contribute cross-linguistically to Hebrew reading comprehension. Thus, including

explicit instruction of morphology within lesson plans for the early school grades is

supported. Longitudinal research with larger sample sizes examining the development of

skills in this population into the elementary school grades will assist in understanding the

direction, degree and impacts of cross-linguistic transfer.

159

References

Ackerman-Simchovitch, S. & Kavenstock, M. (2010). Chalav u’Dvash – Hebrew for

preschoolers user’s guide- Everything you need to know to succeed with chalav

u’dvash: Program principals and tips for use in the classroom. Department for

Jewish and Zionist Education, Jewish Agency for Israel. Retrieved from

http://www.jewishagency.org/NR/rdonlyres/B349E2F2-EFD2-4A5A-A4D6-

3B4650ED1673/65252/usersguide.pdf

Aitchinson, J. (2003). Review of language change: Progress or decay? Journal of Language

and Social Psychology, 22, 132-139.

Anglin, J.M. (1993). Vocabulary development: A morphological analysis. Monographs of the

Society for Research in Child Development, 58, v-165.

Aram, D. (2005). Continuity in children’s literacy achievements: A longitudinal perspective

from kindergarten to school. First Language, 25, 259-289.

Arnell, K.M., Joanisse, M.F., Klein, R.S., Busseri, M. & Tannock, R. (2009). Decomposing

the relation between rapid automatized naming (RAN) and reading ability. Canadian

Journal of Experimental Psychology, 63, 173-184.

August, D. & Shanahan, T. (2006). Introduction and methodology. In D. August & T.

Shanahan (Eds.), Developing literacy in second language learners: Report of the

National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority Children and Youth (pp. 1-42).

Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Baker, C. (2001). Foundations of bilingual education and bilingualism: 3rd

ed. Clevedon,

UK: Multilingual Matters.

Ben-Dror, I., Bentin, S., & Frost, R. (1995). Semantic, phonologic and morphologic skills in

reading disabled and normal children: Evidence from perception and production of

spoken Hebrew. Reading Research Quarterly, 30, 876-893.

Bentin, S., & Leshem, H. (1993). On the interaction of phonologic awareness and reading

acquisition: It’s a two-way street. Psychological Science, 2, 271-274.

Berko-Gleason, J. (1958). The child’s first learning of English morphology. Word, 14, 150-

177.

Berman, R. (1985). The acquisition of Hebrew. In D. Slobin (Ed.). The cross-linguistic study

of language acquisition (pp. 255-371). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Berman, R.A. (1987). A developmental route: Learning about the form and use of complex

nominals. Linguistics, 25, 1057-1085.

Bhatia, T.K., & Ritchie, W.C. (2006). The handbook of bilingualism. Oxford: Blackwell.

160

Bialystok, E. (2005). The impact of bilingualism on language and literacy development. In

T.K. Bhatia & W.C. Ritchie (Eds.). The Handbook of Bilingualism (pp. 577-601).

Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.

Bialystok, E., Majumder, S., & Martin, M.M. (2003). Developing phonological awareness: Is

there a bilingual advantage? Applied Psycholinguistics, 24, 27-44.

Bindman, M. (2004). Grammatical awareness across languages and the role of social context:

Evidence from English and Hebrew. In T. Nunes & P. Bryant (Eds.), Handbook of

children’s literacy (pp. 691-709). Great Britain: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Birdsong, D. (1999). Second language acquisition and the critical period hypothesis.

Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Bradley, L., & Bryant, P. (1983). Categorizing sounds and learning to read – A causal

connection. Nature, 301, 419-421.

Brown, R. (1973). A first language: The early stages. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University

Press.

Bruck, M., & Genesee, F. (1995). Phonological awareness in young second language

learners. Journal of Child Language, 22, 307-324.

Cain, K., Oakhill, J., & Bryant, P. E. (2004). Children's reading comprehension ability:

Concurrent prediction by working memory, verbal ability, and component skills.

Journal of Educational Psychology, 96, 31-42.

Campbell, R., & Sais, E. (1995). Accelerated metalinguistic (phonological) awareness in

bilingual children. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 13, 61-68.

Carlisle, J.F. (1995). Morphological awareness and early reading achievement. In L.B.

Feldman (Ed.), Morphological aspects of language processing (pp.189-209).

Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Carlisle, J.F. (2000). Awareness of the structure and meaning of morphologically complex

words: Impact on reading. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 12,

169-190.

Carlisle, J.F. (2003). Morphology matters in learning to read: A commentary. Reading

Psychology, 24, 291-322.

Carlisle, J.F. (2007). Fostering morphological processing, vocabulary development and

reading comprehension. In R.K. Wagner, A.E. Muse & K.R. Tannenbaum (Eds.),

Vocabulary Acquisition: Implications for Reading Comprehension (pp. 78-103). NY:

The Guilford Press.

Carlisle, J.F., & Fleming, J. (2003). Lexical processing of morphologically complex words in

the elementary years. Scientific Studies of Reading, 7, 239-254.

161

Cashion, M., & Eagan, R. (1990). Spontaneous reading and writing in English by students in

total French immersion: Summary of final report. English Quarterly, 22, 30-44.

Castles A., & Coltheart, M. (2004). Is there a causal link from phonological awareness to

success in learning to read? Cognition, 91, 77-111.

Census Canada (2006). Statistics Canada. Retrieved from:

http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2006/dp-pd/tbt/Rp-

eng.cfm?LANG=E&APATH=3&DETAIL=0&DIM=0&FL=A&FREE=0&GC=0&G

ID=0&GK=0&GRP=1&PID=99016&PRID=0&PTYPE=88971,97154&S=0&SHO

WALL=0&SUB=0&Temporal=2006&THEME=70&VID=0&VNAMEE=&VNAME

F=

Chall, J. (1983). Stages of reading development. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Chiappe, P., & Siegel, L.S. (1999). Phonological awareness and reading acquisition in

English- and Punjabi- speaking Canadian children. Journal of Educational

Psychology, 91, 20-28.

Clark, E.V. (1982). The young word maker: A case study of innovation in the child’s lexicon.

In E. Wanner & L. Gleitman (Eds.), Language acquisition: The state of the art (pp.

390-425). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Clark, E.V., & Berman, R.A. (1987). Types of linguistic knowledge: Interpreting and

producing compound nouns. Journal of Child Language, 14, 547-567.

Comeau, L., Cormier, P., Grandmaison, E., & Lacroix, D. (1999). A longitudinal study of

phonological processing in children learning to read in a second language. Journal of

Educational Psychology, 91, 29-43.

Cummins, J. (1979). Linguistic interdependence and the educational development of

bilingual children. Review of Educational Research, 49, 222-251.

Cummins, J. (1991). Interdependence of first- and second-language proficiency in bilingual

children. In E. Bialystok (Ed.), Language processing in bilingual children (pp.70-89).

New York: Cambridge University Press.

Cummins, J. (2000). Language, power and pedagogy: Bilingual children in the crossfire.

Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.

Cummins, J. (2012). The intersection of cognitive and sociocultural factors in the

development of reading comprehension among immigrant students. Reading and

Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 25, 1973-1990.

Cunningham, A.E., & Stanovich, K.E. (1998). The impact of print exposure on word

recognition. In J. Metsala & L. Ehri (Eds.), Word recognition in beginning reading

(pp. 235-262). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

162

David, D., Wade-Woolley, L., Kirby, J.R., & Smithrin, K. (2006). Rhythm and reading

development in school-age children: A longitudinal study. Journal of Research in

Reading, 30, 169-183.

Davis, L.H., Carlisle, J.F., & Beeman, M. (1999). Hispanic children’s writing in English and

Spanish when English in the language of instruction. Yearbook of the National

Reading Conference, 48, 238-248.

Deacon , S.H. & Kirby, J. (2004). Morphological awareness: Just ‘more phonological

awareness’? The roles of morphological and phonological awareness in reading

development. Applied Psycholinguistics, 25, 223-238.

Deacon, S.H., Wade-Woolley, L., & Kirby, J. (2007). Crossover: The role of morphological

awareness in French immersion children’s reading. Developmental Psychology, 43,

732-746.

Deacon, S.H., Wade-Woolley, L., & Kirby, J.R. (2009). Flexibility in young second-

language learners: Examining the language specificity of orthographic processing.

Journal of Research in Reading, 32, 215-229.

Denckla, M.B., & Rudel, R.G. (1976). Rapid ‘automatized’ naming (RAN): Dyslexia

differentiated from other learning disabilities. Neuropsychologia, 14, 471-479.

Dressler, C., & Kamil, M.L. (2006). First- and second- language literacy. In D. August & T.

Shanahan (Eds.). Developing literacy in second-language learners: Report of the

national literacy panel on language-minority children and youth (pp. 197-238).

Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Dunn, L., & Dunn, L. (1997). Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (3rd

edition). Circle Pines,

MN: American Guidance Service.

Durgunoğlu, A.Y. (1998). Acquiring literacy in English and Spanish in the United States. In

A.Y. Durgunoğlu & L. Verhoeven (Eds.). Literacy development in a multilingual

context: Cross-cultural perspectives, pp. 135-145. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Durgunoğlu, A.Y. (2002). Cross-linguistic transfer in literacy development and implications

for language learners. Annals of Dyslexia, 52, 189-204.

Durgonoğlu, A.Y., Nagy, W., & Hancin-Bhatt, G.J. (1993). Cross-language transfer of

phonemic awareness. Journal of Educational Psychology, 91, 29-43.

Elbro, C., & Arnbak, E. (1996). The role of morpheme recognition and morphological

awareness in dyslexia. Annals of Dyslexia, 46, 209-240.

Erdos, C., Genesee, F., Savage, R., & Haigh, C.A. (2010). Individual differences in second

language reading acquisition. International Journal of Bilingualism, 15, 3-25.

Florit, E., & Cain, K. (2011). The simple view of reading: Is it valid for different types of

alphabet orthographies? Educational Psychology Review, 23, 553-576.

163

Fowler, A. E., & Liberman, I.Y. (1995). The role of phonology and orthography in

morphological awareness. In L.B. Feldman (Ed.), Morphological aspects of language

processing (pp. 157-188). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Francis, D.J., Lesaux, N.K., & August, D. (2006). Language of instruction. In D. August &

T. Shanahan (Eds.). Developing literacy in second-language learners: Report of the

national literacy panel on language-minority children and youth (pp. 365-414).

Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Frost, R., Katz, L., & Bentin, S. (1987). Strategies for visual word recognition and

orthographical depth: A multilingual comparison. Journal of Experimental

Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 13, 104-115.

Genesee, F. (1987). Learning through two languages: Studies of immersion and bilingual

education. Rowley, MA: Newbury.

Genesee, F. (2005). What do we know about bilingual education for majority-language

students? In T.K. Bhatia & W.C. Ritchie (Eds.). The Handbook of Bilingualism (pp.

547-576). Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.

Genesee, F., & Geva, E. (2006). Cross-linguistic relationships in working memory,

phonological processes, and oral language. In D. August & T. Shanahan (Eds.),

Developing literacy in second language learners: A report of the national literacy

panel on language minority children and youth (pp. 175-184). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Genesee, F., Geva, E., Dressler, D., & Kamil, M. (2006). Synthesis: Cross-linguistic

relationships. In D. August & T. Shanahan (Eds.), Developing literacy in second-

language learners: Report of the national literacy panel on language-minority

children and youth (pp.153-174). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Genesee, F., & Jared, D. (2008). Literacy development in early French immersion programs.

Canadian Psychology, 49, 140-147.

Georgiou, G., Manolitsis, G., Nurmi, J.-E., & Parrila, R. (2010). Does task-focused versus

task-avoidance behavior matter for literacy development in an orthographically

consistent language? Contemporary Educational Psychology, 35, 1-10.

Geva, E. (2006a). Learning to read in a second language: Research, implications and

recommendations for services. In R.E. Tremblay, R.G. Barr & R.D. Peters (Eds.),

Encylopedia on Early Childhood Development [online] (pp. 1-12). Retrieved from

http://www.child-encyclopedia.com/documents/GevaANGxp.pdf.

Geva, E. (2006b). Second-language oral proficiency and second-language literacy. In D.

August & T. Shanahan (Eds.), Developing literacy in second-language learners:

Report of the national literacy panel on language-minority children and youth

(pp.123-139). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

164

Geva, E. (2008). Facets of metalinguistic awareness related to reading development in

Hebrew: Evidence from monolingual and bilingual children. In K. Koda & A.M.

Zehler (Eds.), Learning to read across languages: Cross-linguistic relationships in

first- and second- language literacy development (pp. 154-187). NY: Routledge.

Geva, E., & Clifton, S. (1994). The development of first and second language reading skills

in early French immersion. Canadian Modern Language Review, 50, 646-667.

Geva, E., & Genesee, F. (2006). First-language oral proficiency and second-language

literacy. In D. August & T. Shanahan (Eds.). Developing literacy in second-language

learners: Report of the national literacy panel on language-minority children and

youth (pp. 185-196). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Geva, E. & Siegel, L. (2000). Orthographic and cognitive factors in the concurrent

development of basic reading skills in two languages. Reading and Writing: An

Interdisciplinary Journal, 12, 1-31.

Geva, E., & Wade-Woolley, L. (1998). Component processes in becoming English-Hebrew

biliterate. In A.Y. Durgunoğlu & L. Verhoeven (Eds.). Literacy development in a

multilingual context: Cross-cultural perspectives, pp. 119-144. Mahwah, NJ:

Erlbaum.

Geva, E., & Wade-Woolley, L. (2004). Issues in the assessment of reading disability in

second language children. In I. Smythe, J. Everatt & R. Salter (Eds.). International

book of dyslexia: A cross language comparison guide, pp. 195-206. Chichester, UK:

John Wiley.

Geva, E., Wade-Woolley, L., & Shany, M. (1993). The concurrent development of spelling

and decoding in two different orthographies. Journal of Reading Behavior, 25, 383-

406.

Geva, E., Wade Woolley, L., & Shany, M. (1997). Development of reading efficiency in first

and second language. Scientific Studies of Reading, 1, 119-144.

Geva, E., & Yaghoub Zadeh, Z. (2006). Reading efficiency in native English-speaking and

English-as-a-second-language children: The role of oral proficiency and underlying

cognitive-linguistic processes, Scientific Studies of Reading, 10, 31-58.

Geva, E., Yaghoub-Zadeh, Z., & Schuster, B. (2000). Understanding individual differences

in word recognition skills of ESL children. Annals of Dyslexia, 50, 123-154.

Gholamain, M., & Geva, E. (1999). Orthographic and cognitive factors in the concurrent

development of basic reading skills in English and Persian. Language Learning, 49,

183-217.

Gillis, S., & Ravid, D. (2006). Typological effects on spelling development: A crosslinguistic

study of Hebrew and Dutch. Journal of Child Language, 33, 621-659.

165

Goetry, V., Wade-Woolley, L., Kolinsky, R. & Mousty, P. (2006). The role of stress

processing abilities in the development of bilingual reading. Journal of Research in

Reading, 29, 349-362.

Goswami, U. (2002). Phonology, reading development, and dyslexia: A cross-linguistic

perspective. Annals of Dyslexia, 52, 141-162.

Gottardo, A., & Grant, A. (2008). Defining bilingualism. Encyclopedia of language and

literacy development (pp. 1-7). London, ON: Canadian Language and Literacy

Research Network. Retrieved from

http://www.literacyencyclopedia.ca/pdfs/topic.php?topld=236.

Gottardo, A., & Mueller, J. (2009). Are first- and second-language factors related in

predicting second-language reading comprehension? A study of Spanish-speaking

children acquiring English as a second language from first to second grade. Journal of

Educational Psychology, 101, 330-344.

Gough, P.B., & Tunmer, W.E. (1986). Decoding, reading and reading disability. RASE:

Remedial and Special Education, 7, 6-10.

Haigh, C.A., Savage, R., Erdos, F. & Genesee, F. (2011). The role of phoneme and onset-

rime awareness in second language reading acquisition, Journal of Research in

Reading, 34, 94-113.

Hoover, W.A., & Gough, P.B. (1990). The simple view of reading. Reading and Writing: An

Interdisciplinary Journal, 2, 127-160.

Jared, D., Cormier, P., Levy, B. A., & Wade-Woolley, L. (2011). Early predictors of

biliteracy development in children in French Immersion: A four-year longitudinal

study. Journal of Educational Psychology, 103, 119-139.

Johnston, T.C., & Kirby, J.R. (2006). The contribution of naming speed to the simple view of

reading. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 19, 339-361.

Kahn-Horwitz, J., Shimron, J., & Sparks, R.L. (2005). Predicting foreign language reading

achievement in elementary school students. Reading and Writing: An

Interdisciplinary Journal, 18, 237-258.

Keenan, J. M., & Betjemann, R. S. (2006). Comprehending the Gray Oral Reading Test

without reading it: Why comprehension tests should not include passage-independent

items. Scientific Studies of Reading, 10, 363 – 380.

Kirby, J.R., Deacon, S.H., Bowers, P.N., Izenberg, L., Wade-Woolley, L. & Parrila, R.

(2012). Children’s morphological awareness and reading ability. Reading and

Writing, 25, 389-410.

Kirby, J.R., & Savage, R. S. (2008). Can the simple view deal with the complexities of

reading? Literacy, 42, 75-82.

166

Kirby, J., Parrila, R.K., & Pfeiffer, S. L. (2003). Naming speed and phonological awareness

as predictors of reading development. Journal of Educational Psychology, 95, 453-

464.

Koda, K. (2007). Reading and language learning: Cross-linguistic constraints on second

language reading development. Language Learning, 57(Suppl 1), 1-44.

Koda, K., & Zehler, A.M. (2008). Learning to read across languages: Cross-linguistic

relationships in first- and second- language literacy development. New York:

Routledge.

Kozminksy, L., & Kozminsky, E. (1993/1994). The effects of phonological awareness

training in Kindergarten on reading acquisition in school. Chlekat HaLashon, 15-16,

7-28.

Kroll, J.F. ,& de Groot, A.M.B. (2005). Handbook of bilingualism: Psycholinguistic

approaches. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Ku, Y., & Anderson, R.C. (2003). Development of morphological awareness in Chinese and

English. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 16, 399-422.

Kuo, L., & Anderson, R.C. (2006). Morphological awareness and learning to read: A cross-

linguistic perspective. Educational Psychologist, 41, 161-180.

Lado, R. (1964). Language teaching: A scientific approach. NY: McGraw-Hill.

Lafrance, A., & Gottardo, A. (2005). A longitudinal study of phonological processing skills

and reading in bilingual children. Applied Psycholinguistics, 26, 559-578. doi:

10.1017/S0142716405050307.

Lapkin, S., Hart, D., & Turnbull, M. (2003). Grade 6 French immersion students’

performance on large-scale reading, writing, and mathematics tests: Building

explanations. Alberta Journal of Education, 49, 6-23.

Lapkin, S., Swain, M., Kamin, J., & Hanna, G. (1982). Late immersion in perspective: The

Peel study. The Canadian Modern Language Review, 39, 182-206.

Laurent, A., & Martinot, C. (2010). Bilingualism and phonological awareness: The case of

bilingual (French-Occitan) children. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary

Journal, 23, 435-452.

Leong, C.K. (2000). Rapid processing of base and derived forms of words and Grades 4, 5,

and 6 children’s spelling. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 12,

277-302.

Lervåg, A., & Aukrust, V. G. (2010). Vocabulary knowledge is a critical determinant of the

difference in reading comprehension growth between first and second language

learners. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 51, 612-620.

167

Lesaux, N.K., Koda, K., Siegel, L.S., & Shanahan, T. (2006). Development of literacy. In D.

August & T. Shanahan (Eds.). Developing literacy in second-language learners:

Report of the national literacy panel on language-minority children and youth (pp.

75-122). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Levin, I., Ravid, D., & Rapaport, S. (1999). Developing morphological awareness and

learning to write: A two-way street. In T. Nunes (Ed.), Learning to read: An

integrated view from research to practice (pp.77-104). Amsterdam: Kluwer.

Levin, I., Ravid, D., & Rapaport, S. (2001). Morphology and spelling among Hebrew-

speaking children: From kindergarten to first grade. Journal of Child Language, 28,

741-772.

Li, M., Kirby, J., & Georgiou, G.K. (2011). Rapid naming speed components and reading

comprehension in bilingual children. Journal of Research in Reading, 34, 6-22.

Lindsey, K.A., Manis, F.R., & Bailey, C.E. (2003). Prediction of first-grade reading in

Spanish-speaking English-language learners. Journal of Educational Psychology, 95,

482-494.

Liow, S.J.R., & Poon, K.K.L. (1998). Phonological awareness in multilingual Chinese

children. Applied Psycholinguistics, 19, 339-362.

Mahony, D. L. (1994). Using sensitivity to word structure to explain variance in high-school

and college level reading ability. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal,

6, 19-44.

Mahony, D., Singson, M., & Mann, V. (2000). Reading ability and sensitivity to

morphological relations. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 12, 191-

218.

McBride-Chang, B., & Ho, C. S-H. (2005). Developmental issues in Chinese children’s

character acquisition. Journal of Educational Psychology, 92, 50-55.

McBride-Chang, C., Cho, J.R., Liu, H., Wagner, R.K., Shu, H., Zhou, A., & Muse, A.

(2005). Changing models across cultures: Associations of phonological awareness

and morphological structure awareness with vocabulary and word recognition in

second graders from Beijing, Hong Kong, Korea, and the United States. Journal of

Experimental Psychology, 92, 140-160.

McCarthy, J. (1981). A prosodic theory of non-concatenative morphology. Linguistic

Inquiry, 12, 373-418.

McMillan, J.H. & Schumacher, S. (2001). Research in education: A conceptual introduction,

fifth edition. NY: Addison Wesley Longman, Inc.

Melby-Lervåg, M., & Lervåg, A. (2011). Cross-linguistic transfer of oral language, decoding,

phonological awareness and reading comprehension: A meta-analysis of the

correlational evidence. Journal of Research in Reading, 34, 114-135

168

Met, M. (1998). Curriculum decision-making in content-based language teaching. In J.

Cenoz & F. Genesee (Eds.), Beyond bilingualism: Multilingualism and multilingual

education (pp. 35-63). Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.

Misra, M., Katzir, T., Wolf, M., & Poldrack, R.A. (2004). Neural systems for rapid naming

identified using fMRI. Scientific Studies of Reading, 8, 241-256.

Morris, R.D., Stuebing, K.K., Fletcher, J.M., Shaywitz, S.E., Lyon, G.R., Shankweiler, D.P.,

& Shaywitz, B.A. (1998). Subtypes of reading disability: Coherent variability around

a phonological core. Journal of Educational Psychology, 3, 347-373.

Muter, V., & Diethelm, K. (2001). The contribution of phonological skills and letter

knowledge to early reading development in a multilingual population. Language

Learning, 51, 187-219.

Muter, V., Hulme, C., Snowling, M.J., & Stevenson, J. (2004). Phonemes, rimes, vocabulary,

and grammatical skills as foundations of early reading development: Evidence from a

longitudinal study. Developmental Psychology, 40, 665-681.

Naglieri, J. (1985). Matrix analogies test. New York: Psychological Corporation.

Nagy, W.E. & Anderson, R. (1984). The number of words in printed English. Reading

Research Quarterly, 19, 304-330.

Nagy, W.E., & Scott, J.A. (2000). Vocabulary processes. In M.L. Kamil, P. Mosenthal, P.D.

Pearson & R. Barr (Eds.), Handbook of Reading Research (Vol. 3, pp. 269-284).

Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Nagy, W.E., Berninger, V.W., & Abbott, R. (2006). Contributions of morphology beyond

phonology to literacy outcomes of upper elementary and middle-school students.

Journal of Educational Psychology, 98, 134-147.

National Reading Panel. (2000). Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of

the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading

instruction (NIH Pub No. 00-4769). Bethesda, MD: National Institutes of Health,

National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Nunes, T., Bryant, P., & Bindman, M. (1997). Morphological spelling strategies:

Developmental stages and processes. Developmental Psychology, 33, 637-649.

Nunes, T., Bryant, P. & Olsson, J. (2003). Learning morphological and phonological spelling

rules: An intervention study. Scientific Studies of Reading, 7, 289-307.

Oller, D.K. (2008). Sequence of reading acquisition in bilinguals. Encyclopedia of language

and literacy development (pp. 1-7). London, ON: Canadian Language and Literacy

Research Network. Retrieved from

http://www.literacyencyclopedia.ca/pdfs/topic.php?topld=249.

169

Ontario Ministry of Education. (2008). Supporting English language learners with limited

prior schooling: A practical guide for Ontario educators. Queen’s Printer for

Ontario.

Perfetti, C. A. (2007). Reading ability: Lexical quality to comprehension. Scientific Studies of

Reading,11, 357-383.

Ouellette, G. & Beers, A. (2010). A not-so-simple view of reading: How oral vocabulary and

visual-word recognition complicate the story. Reading and Writing, 23, 189-208.

Pasquarella, A., Chen, X., Lam, K. & Luo, Y.C. (2011). Cross-language transfer of

morphological awareness in Chinese-English bilinguals. Journal of Research in

Reading, 34, 23-42.

Pearsall, J. (Ed.). (1998). The new Oxford dictionary of English. New York: Oxford

University Press.

Pedhauzer, E.J. & Schmelkin, L.P. (1991). Measurement, design, and analysis: An integrated

approach. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Proctor, C.P., Carlo, M., August, D. & Snow, C. (2006). The intriguing role of Spanish

language vocabulary knowledge in predicting English reading comprehension.

Journal of Educational Psychology, 98, 159-169.

Proctor, C.P., & Silverman, R.D. (2011). Confounds in assessing the associations between

biliteracy and English language proficiency. Educational Researcher, 40, 62-64.

Ramírez, G., Chen, X., Geva, E., & Kiefer, H. (2010). Morphological awareness in Spanish-

speaking English language learners: Within- and cross-language effects on word

reading. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 23, 337-358.

Ravid, D. (1995). Language change in child and adult Hebrew: A psycholinguistic

perspective. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

Ravid, D. (1997). Between syntax and the lexicon: The parallel between N-N compounds and

N-A strings in acquisition. In A. Sorace, C. Heycock & R. Shillcock (Eds.),

Proceedings of the GALA ’97 conference on language acquisition. Edinburgh:

University of Edinburgh.

Ravid, D. (2001). Learning to spell in Hebrew: Phonological and morphological factors.

Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 14, 459-485.

Ravid, D., & Bar-On, A. (2005). Manipulating written Hebrew roots across development:

The interface of semantic, phonological and orthographic factors. Reading and

Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 18, 231-256.

Ravid, D., Levie, R., & Ben-Zvi, G.A. (2003), The role of language typology in linguistic

development: Implications for the study of language disorders. In Y. Levy & J.

170

Schaeffer (Eds.), Language competence across populations: Toward a definition of

specific language impairment (pp.171-196). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Ravid, D., & Malenky, D. (2001). Awareness of linear and nonlinear morphology in Hebrew:

A developmental study. First Language, 21, 25-56.

Ravid, D., & Schiff, R. (2004). Learning to represent vowels in written Hebrew: Different

factors across development. First Language, 24, 185-208.

Ravid, D., & Zilberbauch, S. (2003). Morphosyntactic constructs in the development of

spoken and written Hebrew text production. Journal of Child Language, 30, 395-418.

Royer, J.M. & Carlo, M.S. (1991). Transfer of comprehension skills from native to second

language. Journal of Reading, 34, 450-455.

Saeigh-Haddad, E., & Geva, E. (2008). Morphological awareness, phonological awareness,

and reading in English-Arabic bilingual children. Reading and Writing: An

Interdisciplinary Journal, 21, 481-504.

Saiegh-Haddad, E., & Geva, E. (2010). Acquiring reading in two languages: An introduction

to the special issue. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 23, 263-267.

Savage, R. (2004). Motor skills, automaticity and developmental dyslexia: A review of the

research literature. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 17, 301-324.

Schatschneider, C., Fletcher, J.M., Francis, D.J., Carlson, C., & Foorman, B.R. (2004).

Kindergarten predictors of reading skills: A longitudinal comparative analysis.

Journal of Educational Psychology, 96, 265-282.

Schiff, R., & Calif, S. (2007). Role of phonological and morphological awareness in L2 oral

word reading. Language Learning, 57, 271-298.

Scott, C.M., & Windsor, J. (2000). General language performance measures in spoken and

written narrative and expository discourse of school-age children with language

learning disabilities. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 43, 324-

339.

Share, D. (2008). On the Anglocentricities of current reading research and practice: The

perils of overreliance on an “outlier” orthography. Psychological Bulletin, 134, 584-

615.

Share, D., & Blum, P. (2005). Syllable splitting in literate and pre-literate Hebrew speakers:

Onsets and rimes or bodies and codas? Journal of Experimental Child Psychology,

92, 182-202.

Shaywitz, S. (2003). Overcoming dyslexia: A new and complete science-based program for

reading problems at any level. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

171

Shimron, J. (2006). Reading Hebrew: The language and the psychology of reading it. NY:

Erlbaum.

Shipley, K.G., Maddox, M.A., & Driver, J.E. (1991). Children's development of irregular

past tense verb forms. Language, Speech and Hearing Services in Schools, 22, 115-

122.

Singson, M., Mahony, D., & Mann, V. (2000). The relation between reading ability and

morphological skills: Evidence from derivational suffixes. Reading and Writing, 12,

219-252.

Snow, C.E., Burns, M.S., & Griffin, P. (1998). Preventing reading disabilities in young

children. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

Solberg, S., & Nevo, B. (1979). Preliminary steps towards an Israeli standardization of the

Peabody test. Megamoth, 3, 407-413. [Hebrew].

Stanovich, K. E. (2000). Progress in understanding reading. NY: Guilford Press.

Stanovich, K.E., & Siegel, L.S. (1994). The phenotypic performance profile of reading-

disabled children: A regression-based test for the phonological-core variable-

difference model. Journal of Educational Psychology, 86, 24-53.

Statistics Canada. (2009). School characteristics for minority and majority language school

systems, Canada and selected provinces. Retrieved from:

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/81-595-m/2011092/tbl/tbl25-eng.htm.

Stemberger, J.P. (1993). Vowel dominance in overregularizations. Journal of Child

Language, 20, 503-521.

Stevens, F. (1983). Activities to promote learning and communication in the second language

classroom. TESOL Quarterly, 17, 35-72.

Swain, M., & Lapkin, S. (1982). Evaluating bilingual education: A Canadian case study.

Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.

Tilstra, J., McMaster, K., Van den Broek, P., Kendeou, P. & Rapp, D. (2009). Simple but

complex: Components of the simple view of reading across grade levels. Journal of

Research in Reading, 32, 383-401.

Tong, X., Deacon, S.H., Kirby, J.R., Cain, K., & Parrila, R. (2011). Morphological

awareness: A key to understanding poor reading comprehension in English. Journal

of Educational Psychology, 103, 523-534.

Tong, X., & McBride-Chang, C. (2010). Chinese-English biscriptal reading: Cognitive

component skills across orthographies. Reading and Writing, 23, 293-310.

172

Tunmer, W.E. & Chapman, J.W. (2012). The simple view of reading redux: Vocabulary

knowledge and the independent components hypothesis. Journal of Learning

Disabilities, Published online, 1 – 14.

Tunmer, W.E. & Nesdale, A.R. (1985). Phonemic segmentation skill and beginning reading.

Journal of Educational Psychology, 77, 417-427.

Vellutino, F.R., Scanlon, D.M., Small, S.G., & Tanzman, M.S. (1991). The linguistic basis of

reading ability: Converting written to oral language. Text, 11, 99-133.

Verhoeven, L.T. (1994). Transfer in bilingual development: The linguistic interdependence

hypothesis revisited. Language Learning, 44, 381-415.

Verhoeven, L., & Perfetti, C. (2003). Introduction to this special issue: The role of

morphology in learning to read. Scientific Studies of Reading, 7, 209-217.

Wade-Woolley, L., & Geva. E. (1999). Processing inflected morphology in second language

word recognition: Russian-speaker and English-speakers read Hebrew. Reading and

Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 11, 321-343.

Wade-Woolley, L., & Geva, E. (2000). Processing novel phonemic contrasts in the

acquisition of L2 word reading. Scientific Studies of Reading, 4, 295-311.

Wagner, R.K. & Torgesen, J.K. (1987). The nature of phonological processing and its causal

role in the acquisition of reading skills. Psychological Bulletin, 101, 192-212.

Wagner, R.K., Torgesen, J.K., & Rashotte, C.A. (1994). Development of reading-related

phonological processing abilities: New evidence of bidirectional causality from a

latent variable longitudinal study. Developmental Psychology, 30, 73-87.

Wagner, R.K., Torgesen, J.K. & Rashotte, C.A. (1999). Comprehensive Test of Phonological

Processing. Austin, TX: PRO-ED.

Wang, M. & Geva, E. (2003). Spelling acquisition of novel English phonemes in Chinese

children. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 16, 325-348.

Wesseling, R. & Reitsma, R. (2001). Preschool phonological representations and

development of reading skills. Annals of Dyslexia, 51, 203-229.

White, T.G., Power, M.A., & White, S. (1989). Morphological analysis: Implications for

teaching and understanding vocabulary growth. Reading Research Quarterly, 24,

283-304.

Wiederholt, J.L., & Bryant, B.R. (2001). Gray Oral Reading Test- Fourth Edition (GORT-4).

San Antonio, TX: Pearson Education.

Wimmer, H., Mayringer, H., & Landerl, K. (2000). The double deficit hypothesis and

difficulties in learning to read a regular orthography. Journal of Educational

Psychology, 92, 668-680.

173

Wise, N. & Chen, X. (2010). At-Risk readers in French immersion: Early identification and

early intervention. Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 13, 128-149.

Wolf, M., & Bowers, P. (1999). The double-deficit hypothesis for the developmental

dyslexias. Journal of Educational Psychology, 91, 415-438.

Wolf, M., Bowers, P., & Biddle, K. (2000). Naming-speed processes, timing, and reading: A

conceptual review. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 33, 387-407.

Woodcock, R.W. (1987). Woodcock Reading Mastery Test. Circle Pines, MN: American

Guidance Service.

Wysocki, K., & Jenkins, J.R. (1987). Deriving word meanings through morphological

generalization. Reading Research Quarterly, 22, 66-81.

Zadeh, Z.Y., Farnia, F., & Geva, E. (2012). Toward modelling reading comprehension and

reading fluency in English language learners. Reading and Writing: An

Interdisciplinary Journal, 25, 163- 187.

Ziegler, J., & Goswami, U. (2005). Reading acquisition, developmental dyslexia, and skilled

reading across languages: A psycholinguistic grain size theory. Psychological

Bulletin, 131, 3-29.

174

Appendix A

Parent Information Letter

175

Appendix B

Consent Form

176

177

Appendix C

Child Assent Script

178

Appendix D

Test Batteries

Time Battery 1 Battery 2 Battery 3 Battery 4 Battery 5

1- Spring

SK

PA

English

Word

Reading

English

Receptive

Vocabulary

---

Hebrew

Receptive

Vocabulary

RA

English

Nonword

Reading

Nonverbal

Reasoning

2 – Fall

Grade 1

---

English

Word

Reading

English

Receptive

Vocabulary

Hebrew

Word

Reading

Hebrew

Receptive

Vocabulary

English

Nonword

Reading

English

Reading

Comprehension

Hebrew

Nonword

Reading

3- Spring

Grade 1

English

Derivations

English

Word

Reading

English

Receptive

Vocabulary

Hebrew

Word

Reading

Hebrew

Receptive

Vocabulary

English

Nonword

Reading

English

Reading

Comprehension

Hebrew

Nonword

Reading

Hebrew

Reading

Comprehension

English

Inflectional

Awareness

Hebrew

Inflectional

Awareness

Hebrew

Derivational

Awareness

179

Appendix E

Hebrew Receptive Vocabulary

180

Appendix F

Hebrew Word Reading

181

Appendix G

Hebrew Nonword Reading

182

Appendix H

Hebrew Reading Comprehension

183

184

185

186

Appendix I

English Inflectional Morphology

187

Appendix J

Hebrew Inflectional Morphology

188

Appendix K

English Derivational Morphology

189

Appendix L

Hebrew Derivational Morphology