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NARRATIVE WRITING IN NATIVE ENGLISH AND ESL LEARNERS: DEVELOPMENTAL TRAJECTORIES AND PREDICTORS

by

Chanthalone Smith

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Graduate Department of Human Development and Applied Psychology Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

University of Toronto

© by Chanthalone Smith 2011

NARRATIVE WRITING IN NATIVE ENGLISH AND ESL LEARNERS: DEVELOPMENTAL TRAJECTORIES AND PREDICTORS

Chanthalone Smith

Doctor of Philosophy 2011

Department of Human Development and Applied Psychology

University of Toronto

Abstract

Little is known about writing development among English as a second language (ESL) and

monolingual children. The “simple view of reading” (Gough & Tunmer, 1986; Juel 1988) and

“component” models (Joshi & Aaron, 2000) were used as theoretical frameworks in this

investigation of story writing development of ESL and monolingual children from grades 4 to 6.

This longitudinal study (a) compared the narratives composed by ESLs and monolinguals and (b)

examined the nature of the language, cognitive, and reading variables that predict writing in

these groups. Reading and writing skills were conceptualized in terms of lower order, word-level

components, and higher order, text-level components. The study involved 57 monolinguals and

121 ESLs from various language backgrounds, who had attended English speaking schools since

grade 1. Based on the Test of Written Language (TOWL, Hammill & Larsen, 1996) three aspects

of narrative writing were analyzed: writing mechanics, writing syntax, and overall story quality.

Monolinguals and ESLs were similar on the cognitive, linguistic, word- and text-level reading

and writing measures, but ESL performance was lower on vocabulary and reading

comprehension across all three grades. Narrative writing in monolinguals and ESLs alike was

predicted by syntactic skills, word-level skills (decoding and spelling) and text-comprehension.

Nonverbal reasoning and phonological processing significantly predicted writing performance

for monolinguals only. Overall, writing mechanics, writing syntax, and story quality all grew

significantly across grades. However, only story quality demonstrated significantly different

patterns of growth across students, but this difference was not explained by any of the predictors.

Importantly, despite having weaker vocabulary and reading comprehension skills, ESLs’

narratives did not differ from monolinguals on mechanics, syntax, and overall story quality. The

findings have implications for assessment and instruction of writing in both groups, provide

additional evidence that reading comprehension and writing skills share common underlying

processes, and suggest that skills that determine reading success can be used to flag possible

writing weaknesses in both groups. Despite the effect of L2 status on vocabulary and reading

comprehension, ESLs demonstrated similar narrative writing skills to monolingual peers.

Acknowledgments

There are many individuals to whom I would like to express my gratitude for their contribution

toward the completion of this thesis. First and foremost I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my

supervisor, Dr. Esther Geva, who remained supportive, understanding and patient throughout my Ph.D.

journey. I am inspired by her enthusiasm and commitment to research in the area of second-language

literacy development. With her guidance and mentorship, this thesis was made possible.

I wish to express my warm thanks to my committee members, Dr. Patricia Bowers and Dr. Dale

Willows, who stayed the course in their support of my thesis over the years. Their valuable insights and

contributions have helped to increase my knowledge of children’s literacy development and improved the

quality of this thesis.

I am grateful to my friends for listening when I talked endlessly about my thesis and providing

moral and emotional support. In particular, I am indebted to Olesya Falenchuk and Monique Herbert, who

spent many hours patiently explaining and re-explaining the statistical analyses for my thesis. I owe them

my deepest gratitude for helping me to make sense of the numbers and cheering me on when things

seemed impossible.

I would like to thank my family. I am grateful to my mother, her courage and sacrifices made it

possible for me to pursue my dreams. By her example, I have learned what it means to persist in the face

of hardship and to keep moving forward even when the future seems uncertain. I thank my sisters, nieces

and nephews for their unconditional love.

Lastly, and most importantly, I thank my loving husband, Jared Smith. His patience and loving

encouragement have made this thesis possible. For the last 20 years, he has been by my side, sharing my

hopes and dreams, always unwavering in his love and support for everything I do.

Dedication

I dedicate this work to the memory of my father, Ou Vongphrachanh, a courageous man who

sacrificed everything to ensure a better life for his daughters. He has instilled within me a passion for

learning that will be with me forever.

Table of Contents

Abstract ii Acknowledgements iv Chapter One – Introduction and Literature Review 1 Approaches to Studying Reading and Writing Development 1 Models of Reading and Writing Development 2 The Simple View model 2 The Component Model 4 L2 Writing Development 6

Variables Related to Writing 8 Writing and phonological processing skills 8 Phonological awareness 9 Rapid Automatized Naming 11 Phonological Verbal Memory 13 Writing and oral language skills 15 Vocabulary 18 Syntactic Awareness 22 Writing and word-level skills 23 Word-Level Reading 23 Word-Level Spelling 25 Writing and text-level reading skills 26 Reading Comprehension 26 Gap In the Literature 29 The Present Study 29 Research Question 1 30 Research Question 2 30 Research Question 3 31

Chapter Two – Method 32 Participants 32 Measures 33 Control Variables 33 Nonverbal Reasoning 33 Age 33 Group Status 33 Oral Language 33 Vocabulary 33 Syntax 34 Phonological Processing 34 Phonological Awareness 34 Rapid Automatized Naming 35 Verbal Memory 35 Word-Level Skills 35 Word Reading 35

Pseudoword Reading 36

Spelling 36 Text-Level Skills 36

Reading Comprehension 36 Writing Sample 37

Writing Mechanics 37 Writing Syntax 38 Story Quality 38

Procedure 39 Data Management and Manipulation 40

Data Analyses 41 Research Question 1 41 Research Question 2 41

Research Question 3 42 Chapter Three – Results 44 Research Question 1 44 Descriptive statistics 44 Research Question 2 57 Cognitive-linguistics development 57 Word-level development 58 Text-Level Development 59 Research Question 3 61 Data reduction and creating composite scores 62 Descriptive statistics after data reduction 64 HLM modeling of writing outcomes 69 Chapter Four – Discussion 76 The Developmental Progression of Cognitive-Linguistics Skills 76 The Developmental Progression of Oral Language Skills 77 The Developmental Progression of Word-Level Reading and Writing Skills 77 The Developmental Progression of Text-Level Reading and Writing Skills 78 Predictors of Writing Skills 81 Predictors of Writing Mechanics 81 Predictors of Writing Syntax 82 Predictors of Story Quality 85 Chapter Five – General Discussion 88 Contributions to the Literature and Future Directions 88

Classroom and Assessment Implications 89 Limitations 90 References 92

List of Tables

Table 1 Interclass-Correlations for Inter-rater Reliability 39 Table 2 Tests Administered in Grades 4, 5 and 6 45 Table 3 Descriptive Statistics and One-Way Repeated Measures ANOVAs for L1 and L2

Children 46 Table 4 Summary of Post Hoc Analyses for Grade Effect in Repeated Measures ANOVA 48 Table 5 The Effect of Language Group: Cognitive and Linguistics Variables Not Administered at all Three Grades 52 Table 6 Intercorrelations of Variables for L1 and L2 Students at Grade 4 (Time 1) 54 Table 7 Intercorrelations of Variables for L1 and L2 Students at Grade 5 (Time 2) 55 Table 8 Intercorrelations of Variables for L1 and L2 Students at Grade 6 (Time 3) 56 Table 9 Unconditional Linear Models of Growth in Vocabulary, Rapid Automatized

Naming, and Memory 58 Table 10 Unconditional Linear Models of Growth in Word Reading, Pseudoword Reading,

and Spelling 59 Table 11 Unconditional Linear Models of Growth in Reading Comprehension, Writing

Mechanics, Writing Syntax and Story Quality 60 Table 12 Summary of Unconditional Linear Models of Growth Across Grades 4 to 6 61 Table 13 The Results of Factor Analysis (Rotated Factor Loadings) for Monolingual and ESL Groups at Grades 4, 5, and 6 63 Table 14 Means and Standard Deviations for Composite Variables 65 Table 15 L1 and L2 Correlations Among Composite Scores and Variables of Interest at Grade 4 (Time 1) 66 Table 16 L1 and L2 Correlations Among Composite Scores and Variables of Interest at Grade 5 (Time 2) 67

Table 17 L1 and L2 Correlations Among Composite Scores and Variables of Interest at Grade 6 (Time 3) 68 Table 18 Two-Level Conditional Linear Model for Writing Mechanics with All Predictors 72 Table 19 Two-Level Conditional Linear Model for Writing Syntax with All Predictors 73 Table 20 Two-Level Conditional Linear Model for Story Quality with All Predictors 74 Table 21 Summary of Significant Predictors of Writing Outcome Measures 75

List of Figures

Figure 1. L1 and L2 Percentage of Average Performances on Cognitive and Linguistics Measures Across Grades 4, 5, and 6 49

Figure 2. L1 and L2 Percentage of Average Performances on Word-Level Measures Across Grades 4, 5, and 6 50

Figure 3. L1 and L2 Percentage of Average Performances on Text-Level Measures for Grades 4, 5, and 6 51

List of Appendices

Appendix A 107

Appendix B 110

Appendix C 113

Appendix D 116

Appendix E 117

Appendix F 118

Chapter 1: Introduction and Literature Review

Although there is a considerable body of research focusing on reading and writing

development in children’s first language (L1), only recently has the focus shifted to the

acquisition of these same skills in second language (L2) school children. At present, the existing

literature for L2 literacy often uses L1 frameworks to explore writing development among adult

L2 learners. While researchers have examined the development of reading and writing

separately, writing development and its relationship with other components of literacy (e.g.,

various reading, cognitive and linguistics skills) has received less attention, particularly within

the L2 literature. This chapter is a review of current theories of literacy development, and

research findings for writing development and its relationship with other literacy components

such as reading, cognitive and linguistics skills, among L1 and L2 learners.

Approaches to Studying Reading and Writing Development

Within the research literature, the relationship between reading and writing has taken four

approaches: 1) shared knowledge, 2) domain knowledge, 3) metaknowledge, and 4) procedural

knowledge (Fitzgerald & Shanahan, 2000; Shanahan, 2006). Only the shared knowledge

approach will be discussed because it is relevant to this present study; this approach has attracted

the most attention from researchers and is typically the area studied by cognitive psychologists

who have examined the relationship between reading and writing. These studies entail the

analysis of shared knowledge and the cognitive processes that might underlie both reading and

writing. The key premise of this approach stipulates that reading and writing consist of

constellations of cognitive processes that depend on knowledge representations at various

linguistic levels (phonemic, orthographic, semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic). Reading and

writing are perceived to be interconnected in that they share similar or identical knowledge

representations and cognitive processes; it is this notion of shared or common knowledge

processes that has sparked decades of research.

It is impossible to review the research history for writing development without addressing

the relationships between reading and writing. The connection between reading and writing has

been well established by correlational and cross-sectional studies and many have shown that

reading and writing are indeed associated (Ehri, 1989; Juel, 1988; Juel, Griffith, & Gough, 1985;

Shanahan, 1984). These studies suggest that reading and writing share common underlying

components and depend on similar cognitive abilities; anything that impacts these abilities (e.g.,

phonological awareness, working memory, vocabulary) also has implications for reading and

writing development (Berninger, Cartwright, Yates, Swanson, & Abbott, 1994; McCutchen,

2000; Shanahan, 2006).

The idea that reading predicts writing development has received some support in the

literature. In a longitudinal study, Juel (1988) showed that poor readers tended to go on to

become poor writers, whereas good readers became better writers during the first four years of

school. Of the poor readers who became poor writers, poor spelling and story ideas (i.e.,

knowledge of story structures and the delivery of interesting story episodes) were reported for 11

out of 17 children. Similarly, results from the Stahl, Pagnucco and Suttles (1996) study

suggested that success in reading was associated with writing success in grade one; in other

words, good readers were more likely to become good writers. It is important to note that these

studies (Juel, 1988; Stahl et al., 1996) are neither cross-lagged nor bidirectional and cannot

provide information about directionality of the reading-writing relationship. Studies that employ

regression analyses provide information about relationships between variables and allow

investigators to evaluate shared variance. Boland’s (1993) longitudinal study indicated that

decoding and reading comprehension were good predictors of spelling in the second and sixth

grade. Additionally, spelling and writing fluency have been predicted by reading ability

(Francis, 1994), and word recognition skills were predictive of later writing mechanics and

compositional coherence for students from the second to third grade (Mäki, Voeten, Vauras, &

Poskiparta, 2001). On the whole, the relationship between reading and writing has been well

established and the L1 research literature provides evidence that reading skills are good

predictors of writing performance.

Models of Reading and Writing Development

The Simple View model. The “simple view” of reading development presented by

Gough and Tunmer (1986) and Juel (1988) provides a conceptual framework for understanding

how reading and writing emerge among young learners. While the Simple View of Reading

(SVR) acknowledges that reading is a complex process, this model holds two central claims: 1)

that reading can be decomposed into two primary components, decoding (word recognition) and

language comprehension – generally referred to as either listening or oral comprehension and 2)

both decoding and comprehension are important and necessary components for reading, with

neither being sufficient on its own. The model is represented as R = D x C, where R is reading

comprehension, D is decoding skills, and C is comprehension. This equation suggests that

students who struggle to recognize words of age-appropriate text and/or to understand the

language being read will not be able to adequately understand the text (Hoover & Gough, 1990;

Tunmer, 2008). According to this model, reading comprehension is not possible if either

decoding or language comprehension are poorly developed. This model identifies poor reading

comprehension as being related to weak recognition of words, poor language comprehension

skills, or both (Hoover & Gough, 1990; Savage, 2001; Tunmer, 2008).

Parallel to reading, the simple view of writing (SVW) also has two central claims: 1) that

writing is a product of spelling (encoding) and ideation (composing) and 2) both spelling and

ideation are essential components for writing (Berninger et al., 2002). Spelling involves the

process of encoding, which shares some of the same processes as decoding. Encoding requires

the analysis of spoken words, where individual sounds are represented in print. Some level of

phonemic awareness is required, as writers segment and use phoneme-grapheme knowledge to

represent the sounds of spoken words in print. The second component necessary for writing,

ideation, is conceptualized as the ability to generate and organize ideas in writing. This term

encompasses both the generation of creative thoughts and the organization of these thoughts into

sentences and text structures. Both spelling and ideation are essential processes for writing; to

have spelling without ideas is an empty skill on its own, and ideas cannot be expressed in print

without spelling knowledge. The simple view acknowledges the complexities involved in

spelling and ideation; it recognizes that each of the two components (decoding and

comprehension for reading and spelling and ideation for writing) in the models are complex in

their own right and each can be further subdivided into numerous components (Juel et al., 1985).

The simple view makes further distinctions about the components that comprise reading

comprehension and writing. Lower order processing includes decoding and spelling skills, while

comprehension and ideation are viewed as higher order processing skills. Proficiency in lower

level processing skills has a significant impact on higher order processing. For example, when

the spellings of high-frequency words are automatic, the writer can divert more attention to the

demanding task of composing (Bereiter, 1980; Gundlach, 1981; Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1986).

The same appears to be true for reading, where efficient word recognition skills allow for

attention to be diverted to the task of reading comprehension (LaBerge & Samuels, 1974). From

a developmental perspective, it is understood that as high-level skills improve, the lower-level

skills become automatized and function in the background. In this regard, in higher grades, there

is a shift in focus from learning to read and write towards reading and writing to learn (Chall,

1967; Chall, 1983).

The Component Model. Inspired by the simple view, a new model, the Component

Model of Reading (CMR), was proposed and empirically examined. This model was designed in

an effort to help in the diagnosis and remediation of reading difficulties (Aaron, 1997; Aaron &

Joshi, 2008; Joshi & Aaron, 2000; Joshi, 2005). The CMR model is a broad conceptualization

of literacy performance, acknowledging that the acquisition of literacy skills requires more than

cognitive factors, and that psychological and ecological factors also play important roles. The

model categorizes various components that influence literacy skills into three domains:

cognitive, psychological, and ecological. The cognitive domain consists of two specific

components: 1) word recognition and 2) comprehension. The psychological domain includes

components such as student motivation, level of interest, teacher expectations, and learning

styles. The ecological domain takes into consideration learning and home environment, culture,

home language, and parental involvement. Within the CMR, a component is defined as an

independent elementary information processing system that operates on internal representations

of objects and systems. In order to be considered a component, the process must be independent

of other cognitive processes (Sternberg, 1985). By this definition, a cognitive process such as

reading consists of several independent components. Further, it is possible for some components

to function normally, while others lag in development (Aaron & Joshi, 2000). Aaron, Joshi,

Gooden, and Bentum (2008) contended that components within the cognitive domain tend to

satisfy the condition of ‘independence’ better than those found within the psychological and

ecological domains.

The CMR has been well supported within the research literature by empirical evidence

from experimental, developmental and neuropsychological studies. Catts, Hogan, and Frey

(2003) found only a low correlation of .16 between word recognition and listening

comprehension among monolingual students in grades 1 through 6 in a longitudinal study.

Similarly, de Jong and van der Leij (2002) also found low correlations (.30 or less) between

decoding skills and listening comprehension, providing support for the independence of word

recognition and comprehension. Findings from neuropsychological studies suggested that some

patients were able to comprehend individually presented words better than they could decode

them, while other patients demonstrated better decoding than comprehension for those same

words (Coltheart, Patterson, & Marshall, 1980; Patterson, Marshal, & Coltheart, 1985). These

types of reading failures, referred to as deep dyslexia and surface dyslexia, respectively, provide

support for the separability of decoding and comprehension as independent components.

Although the use of a component model for writing has not been proposed and

empirically examined, one could argue that the ideas behind the CMR could be extended for

writing development because the CMR was proposed as a broad conceptualization of literacy

performance. The research in this dissertation draws on both the SVW and CMR models and on

existing research for reading and writing, to propose a component model for writing (CMW) that

can be used to guide research and understanding of writing development. One basic idea that has

emerged in the research literature is that reading and writing depend on common underlying

cognitive processes; as a result, there should be common underlying cognitive components

shared between reading and writing models, such as phonemic awareness (Frost, 2001) and

working memory (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1987; McCutchen, 2000). Similar to the CMR, the

CMW also consists of the cognitive, psychological and ecological domains, along with some of

their corresponding components. Within this proposed model, two components comprise the

cognitive domain for writing: 1) spelling and 2) ideation or composing; it is possible to further

subdivide these components into other subcomponents. Various skills are required for spelling,

including letter name knowledge and phonemic awareness (Juels et al., 1985; Read, 1986).

Without basic literacy skills, single word spelling would be difficult and the more complex task

of composing would not be possible. Ideation is a broad category that includes many

subcomponents required to generate ideas and organize thoughts into sentences and connected

text for composing. Knowledge of writing mechanics (such as capitalization and punctuation),

syntax (grammatical arrangement of words into sentences), and vocabulary are some essential

subcomponent skills within ideation. While we propose that the psychological and ecological

domains discussed in the CMR remain important for writing development, they will not be

discussed in this review.

L2 Writing Development

As suggested above, the act of writing is a complex process, requiring the coordination of

numerous low- and high-level skills. It is an intricate form of expression that requires writers to

generate and organize ideas, plan, and review and revise what has been written, all the while

monitoring one’s own performance (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1987; Flower & Hayes, 1981).

Writing is a multidimensional process that involves knowledge of story components, word-level

skills (e.g., spelling), language skills (e.g., grammar and syntactic awareness), vocabulary,

mechanics, conventions of print, cognitive abilities (e.g., working memory), and audience

awareness (Lesaux, Koda, Siegel, & Shanahan, 2006; Roth, 2000). It is a higher-order text-level

skill that is comparable to reading comprehension; just as reading comprehension is dependent in

part on automatic low-level decoding, effective writing also requires automatization of lower-

order word-level skills such as spelling.

In comparison to the literature available for reading development, the study of written

language has been a neglected area of focus in the research literature; as a result, there is limited

understanding about how written discourse develops (Horowitz, 1987). Traditionally, the study

of L2 writing has predominantly focused on writing instructions to international students within

higher educational institutions in North America (Matsuda & De Pew, 2002). Although adult L2

writing is one of the fastest growing areas of research, early L2 writing development is not

(Matsuda, 2002). Based on a lesson learned from research that examined the relationship

between literacy development and oral language skills (Lesaux et al., 2006), when it comes to

language minority learners, one cannot assume that writing skills are tied exclusively to oral

language proficiency. Studies examining bilingual and monolingual children (DaFontoura &

Siegel, 1995; Lesaux & Siegel, 2003) have found that despite having lower syntactic skills,

bilingual and L2 children demonstrated similar word-level spelling skills to those of monolingual

and native English speakers. Recent studies have suggested that typically developing L2 learners

naturally demonstrate lower oral language skills in comparison to L1 students. Studies have

documented that L2 English speakers lag behind monolinguals in oral language skills such as

vocabulary knowledge, syntactic knowledge, and listening comprehension (Farnia & Geva,

2010; Geva & Farnia, in press; Lervag & Aukrust, 2010; Lesaux & Geva, 2006).

Only a small number of studies could be found that examined the early writing

development of English-language learners (L2). Lanauze and Snow (1989) examined the

relationship between first- and second-language writing skills of Puerto Rican elementary school

children in a bilingual program (Spanish and English). Fourth and fifth graders were rated as

having good proficiency in both languages (GG), poor proficiency in English but good in

Spanish (PG), or poor proficiency in both languages (PP), on the basis of oral, aural and reading

skills in both languages. They found that the GG and PG groups obtained higher scores than PP

on both Spanish and English writing. Overall, first-language proficiency was a better predictor

of writing performance than second-language proficiency. Lanauze and Snow argued that the

fact that PG students wrote longer, syntactically more complex and semantically more complex

essays in English and Spanish in comparison to the PP group, suggested that they were able to

use their first-language writing skills to help facilitate writing in a second language. The poor

performance of the PP group was taken as a reflection of their poor first-language literacy skills.

This study provided support for the hypothesis that skills acquired in the first language can be

transferred to help second-language writing. Ferris and Politzer (1981) examined the

composition skills of two groups of seventh and eighth grade native Spanish speakers. One

group of children was born and educated in Mexico until third or fourth grade and then educated

in English in the United States for middle school. The second group was born in the United

States and educated in English from kindergarten. Both groups were asked to write a

composition in English about a film they watched. The English composition skills were

evaluated using a holistic measure that focused on clarity, coherence, frequency of grammar

errors and structural complexity. Despite the difference in language instruction, there were no

group differences on the writing measure. It is important to note that the aforementioned studies

(Ferris & Politzer, 1981; Lanauze & Snow, 1989) did not have a monolingual comparison group;

thus, it is unclear how their participants would have fared in comparison to monolinguals.

Ball (2003) examined low- and high-level reading and writing development among L1

and L2 learners in grades 3 and 5/6, using various reading and spelling measures and written

composition based on the Test of Written Language, third edition (TOWL-3). Overall, L1 and

L2 students performed similarly on reading (word reading, pseudoword reading, reading

comprehension), writing (mechanics, use of syntax/grammar, story quality), and various

cognitive measures (memory tests), despite the fact that L1 learners outperformed their L2

counterpart on measures of receptive vocabulary, expressive vocabulary, and syntax knowledge.

Moreover, there was a group difference for single-word spelling, in favour of L2 over L1

learners.

Although there have been a limited number of studies, the overall evidence suggests that

L2 and L1 students’ early writing skills share similar developmental trajectories. Despite having

weaker oral language proficiency skills, L2 students demonstrated comparable writing skills to

their L1 counterparts.

Variables Related to Writing

Studies that examined various reading, cognitive, and linguistics skills as predictors of

writing development for both first- and second-language learners, especially where story

composition was the outcome variable, have been scarce. In the next section, this literature is

reviewed.

Writing and phonological processing skills. Phonological processing skills are required

to process written and oral language (Wagner & Torgesen, 1987; Wagner et al., 1997). Wagner

and Torgesen (1987) identified three primary phonological processing skills: phonological

awareness, short-term verbal memory, and phonological recoding in lexical access. Research

examining L2 reading development within schools has provided evidence that strongly

implicated phonological processing skills, including phonological memory and naming speed, as

underlying cognitive-linguistic processes important for English reading and writing (Chiappe &

Siegel, 1999; Genesee & Geva, 2006; Jongejan, Verhoeven, & Siegel, 2007; Wade-Woolley &

Geva, 2000; Wade-Woolley & Siegel, 1997). Research has shown the importance of these same

processes for native speakers of other languages such as French (Plaza & Cohen, 2003), Chinese

(So & Siegel, 1997), Norwegian (Hoien, Lundberg, Stanovich, & Bjaalid, 1995) and Hebrew

(Ben-Dror, Bentin, & Frost, 1995).

Phonological awareness. Phonological awareness is defined as the awareness of the

sound structure of words and the ability to manipulate sounds in words, such as syllables, onset-

rime constituents, and phonemes. Early awareness of phonemes is essential to being able to

understand the logic of the alphabetic principle and has been shown to be significantly correlated

with early decoding (Adams, 1990). This skill may be measured by counting, deleting,

substituting, blending or segmenting elements (Shankweiler, 1999; Stanovich, 1993; Yopp,

1988). Phonological awareness is seen as a key component for the development of reading

ability in monolinguals, and poor development of this skill is seen as a central core deficit in

reading disability (Adams, 1990; Goswami & Bryant, 1990; National Reading Panel, 2000).

There is consensus among researchers examining L1 reading development that

phonological awareness is important for early reading acquisition and that word reading

difficulties are largely due to deficits in phonological skills, as assessed by tests of phonemic

awareness, or non-word decoding (Bradley & Bryant, 1983; Bruck, 1992; Lyon, 1995;

Stanovich, 1988; Vellutino & Scanlon, 1987). Phonemic awareness has been shown to pave the

way to English reading, as it is an early predictor of later reading ability (Bryant, MacLean,

Bradley & Crossland, 1990; Cormier & Dea, 1997).

Though smaller in number, a handful of studies have examined the impact of

phonological awareness for L2 learners. There is evidence to suggest that L1 and L2 children’s

phonological awareness skills follow the same developmental pathway. In a large scale

longitudinal study, Chiappe, Siegel, and Wade-Woolley (2002) examined basic literacy skills

among 727 native English speakers and 131 children who spoke English as a second language

(ESL) in kindergarten and the first grade. Overall, both groups showed comparable correlations

among phonological awareness and literacy skills. A multiple analysis of variance (MANOVA)

was conducted on kindergarten and grade 1 scores, and indicated that native speakers of English

and ESL students performed similarly on phonological awareness tasks (phoneme deletion and

phoneme deletion and substitution). At the end of grade 2, a phonological awareness task was

administered to measure phonological awareness skills. Based on their performance on a

standardized word recognition task, children were divided into two categories: normally

achieving (at or above the 30th percentile) and reading disabled (below the 25th percentile).

ANOVAs were conducted and the results indicated that ESL (n=181) and L1 (n=757) typical

readers were not significantly different in their performances a measure of phonological

awareness; a similar finding was also noted for the reading disabled group, where ESL and L1

students demonstrated similar skills on the phonological awareness task (Lesaux & Siegel,

2003). Geva, Yaghoub-Zadeh, and Schuster (2000) examined L2 (n=248) and L1 (n=100)

students to explore the extent to which various phonological skills in grade 1 could be used to

predict grade 2 word-level word recognition skills. The analysis of covariance (ANCOVA)

revealed that the language group main effect was not significant for phonological awareness,

indicating that the L1 and L2 groups were comparable in their performances on a phonological

awareness task. Phonological awareness has been found to discriminate between groups of

children based on their reading skills and not on their language groups (Arab-Moghaddam &

Senechal, 2001; Chiappe & Siegel, 1999; Geva & Wade-Woolley, 2000; Geva et al., 2000;

Wade-Woolley & Siegel, 1997), and there is evidence to support the idea that phonological

awareness skills transfer cross-linguistically (Abu-Rabia & Siegel, 2002; Comeau, Cormier,

Grandmaison, & Lacroix, 1999; D’Angiulli, Siegel, & Serra, 2001; Da Fontoura & Siegel, 1995;

Durguno lu, Nagy, & Hancin-Bhatt, 1993; Gottardo, Yan, Siegel, & Wade-Woolley, 2001;

Saiegh-Haddad & Geva, 2008; Wade-Woolley & Geva, 2000).

Research evidence also indicates that phonological processing skills predict later word-

level spelling outcomes for L1 and L2 children. Chiappe, Siegel, and Gottardo (2002) examined

native speakers of English, bilingual students, and ESL students in kindergarten. Regression

analyses indicated that phonological processing skills (sound mimicry and rhyme detection)

measured during the fall term (November) significantly predicted single word spelling during the

spring-term (May). Jongejan et al. (2007) examined various processing skills (phonological

awareness, lexical access, syntactic awareness, and verbal memory) and their relationships to

word-level spelling among L1 and L2 children in grades 1 through 4. Children in this study were

divided into two groups, lower (grades 1 and 2) and upper (grades 3 and 4) grades. Phonological

awareness was the strongest predictor of lower grade L1 spelling skills (accounting for 50% of

the variance), but did not significantly predict their upper grade spelling, whereas syntactic

awareness accounted for the greatest amount of variance (54%) in upper grades. It would appear

that phonological awareness played a greater role in determining spelling development for L2

students, as it was the best predictor for spelling in both lower and upper grades, 24% and 35%

respectively.

Rapid Automatized Naming. Phonological recoding in lexical access refers to recoding

of written words into a sound-based system where the fast retrieval of the lexical referent of that

word is required. This is often measured using tasks of rapid automatized naming (RAN) of

objects, colours, letters and numbers (Wagner & Torgesen, 1987; Wagner et al., 1997). The

ability to quickly name presented objects (letters, numbers, objects, or colours) is thought by

some to be another component of phonological processing and research has shown that it can

predict later literacy skills (Torgesen, 1997). Some researchers consider it to be associated with

speed of lexical access (Chiappe, Stringer, Siegel, & Stanovich, 2002; Wagner, Torgesen, &

Rashotte, 1994), while others view it as a separate construct that involves speed of access to

information in any form, a global processing speed that is not limited to phonological skills. The

latter view proposes that reading difficulties can result from slow RAN, poor phonological

processing or both (Catts, Gillispie, Leonard, Kail, Miller, 2002; Cutting & Denckla, 2001; Kail

& Hall, 1994). Wolf and Bowers (1993, 1999) argued that RAN and phonological deficits are

independent facets contributing to reading skill and they proposed the double-deficit hypothesis;

it stipulates that the decoding skills of children who have deficits in either RAN or phonological

processing will be better off than those who have deficits in both areas. This hypothesis assumes

a cumulative effect, and having deficits in both areas will produce greater impairments for

reading. Rapid automatized naming has been found to differentiate between good and poor

readers. Poor readers are significantly slower than good readers in their ability to name

continuous lists of digits, letters, colours and objects (Bowers & Wolf, 1993; Denckla & Rudel,

1976; Wolf, Bowers & Biddle, 2000; Wolf, & Obregón, 1992). There is evidence to suggest that

the relationship between RAN and reading skills decreases with age (Wagner et al., 1997), but

remains among children with reading disabilities.

In comparison to reading development research, fewer studies have examined the role of

RAN in the acquisition of L1 composing skills; however, the relationship between RAN and

word-level spelling has been examined. Savage, Pillay and Melidona (2008) examined the

relationship of RAN (digits and letter naming) among 65 poor spellers with average reasoning

ability (ranging between 7 and 13 years old). Using hierarchical regression analyses, and

controlling for age, nonverbal reasoning, spelling of nonsense words, and RAN letter naming

remained a significant predictor of concurrent single-word spelling skills. Similar results were

noted in Scarborough’s (1998) research that examined contributions of phonemic awareness,

verbal memory, RAN and IQ for predicting future reading and spelling skills among children

with and without reading disabilities in grades 2 and 8. The best predictor of later achievement

for normally achieving children was their grade 2 literacy scores. However, the best predictor

for reading disabled students was RAN performance. Sunseth and Bowers (2002) obtained

similar results when they examined reading, spelling and orthographic skills of children in grade

3 who had a single (either phonological or RAN deficit) or double deficit. Overall, children with

a double deficit performed worse than those with a single deficit; performance on the spelling

dictation for regular and exception words was associated with RAN. Children identified as

having a RAN deficit struggled to recognize correctly spelled words from plausible foils.

There is some evidence to suggest that the development of lexical retrieval is similar for

L1 and L2 children. Lesaux and Siegel (2003) classified L1 and L2 children into two groups in

kindergarten (at-risk and not-at-risk) and grade 2 (average readers and reading disabled). In

kindergarten, they found that at-risk and not-at-risk L2 students performed significantly more

poorly than at-risk and not-at-risk L1 students on a measure of RAN; however, in grade 2, the

tables turned and L2 average readers significantly outperformed L1 average readers. There was

no significant difference between L1 and L2 reading disabled students’ RAN performance,

supporting the notion that L1 and L2 children share a similar pattern of development. Geva et al.

(2000) found similar results in their study that examined various phonological skills for L1 and

L2 students in grades 1 and 2. Although there was a group difference in grade 1, where L1

performed better than L2 students in their ability to rapidly name letters, this group difference

disappeared by the time children reached grade 2. Typically, L2 children demonstrate weaker

skills than L1 students at the onset of school, but they eventually catch up, even surpassing their

L1 counterparts. The developmental trajectory of lexical retrieval is similar after L2 children

have more exposure to English language instruction.

Studies examining RAN and narrative writing have been lacking in the literature.

However, a handful of studies explored the relationship between RAN and L2 word-level

spelling. Jongejan et al. (2007) used RAN (an object naming task) to explore predictors of L1

and L2 children’s word-level spelling performance among students in lower grades (1 and 2) and

upper grades (3 and 4). Object naming was significant in predicting L2 spelling performance in

the upper grades, second to phonological awareness. Despite significant contributions to L1 and

L2 literacy skills, RAN was second to phonological awareness in its ability to predict word-level

spelling. Among a group of Sylheti first-language speaking children, poor spellers had lower

scores on a RAN task (naming pictures) than average spellers (Everatt, Smythe, Adams, &

Ocampo, 2000). Overall, the research suggests that L1 and L2 students with word-level spelling

difficulties demonstrate similar poor performance on RAN. According to Jongejan et al.’s

(2007) findings for spelling development within a non-disabled group of children, L1 and L2

students demonstrated similar development, in that lexical retrieval skills were significant in

predicting spelling achievement in the early grades; however, lexical retrieval appeared to lose

its importance for L1 spelling in higher grades, whereas it continued to play an important role for

L2 spelling development as students entered higher grades.

Phonological Verbal Memory. Phonological memory refers to the brief retention of

verbal information where immediate and ordered recall of sequences of verbal items is required

(i.e., digits or words). Verbal memory is an ability that has sometimes, but not always, been

found to be related to reading difficulties. Although verbal memory requires phonological

processing of spoken input, much like phonological awareness tasks, there is some evidence that

memory and awareness do not necessarily tap the same skill (McDougall, Hulme, Ellis, & Monk,

1994; Siegel & Ryan, 1988; Swanson & Howell, 2001).

Research examining L2 students’ short-term verbal memory suggests that they

demonstrate poorer performance than L1 students during early grades, but catch up as they enter

higher grades. In a longitudinal study, L1 students performed significantly better on a verbal

memory task (recall of sentences) than their L2 counterparts in kindergarten and grade 1

(Chiappe et al., 2002). A similar finding was also noted in another longitudinal study, where L1

students outperformed L2 students on a verbal memory task (pseudoword repetition) in grades 1

and 2 (Geva et al., 2000). Jogejan et al. (2007) examined children’s verbal memory skills

(sentence memory task) in grades 1 through 4, and found that L2 children performed below their

L1 peers. Conversely, various short-term memory tasks (memory for numbers forward, numbers

backward, words and sentences) examined in a study with students in grade 5/6 revealed no

group differences (Ball, 2003). Taken together, similar to the development of RAN, these

findings suggest that there might be a developmental pattern of growth where the gap between

L2 and L1 students on verbal memory disappear over time, after increased facility with the L2

language.

There is no general consensus among researchers about whether verbal memory can

predict individual differences in literacy skills, apart from that attributed to phonological

awareness. There have been mixed findings in studies that explored the relationship between

verbal memory and text-level writing skills. Rohl and Pratt (1995) conducted a two-year study

of 76 initially pre-reading Australian children to examine the relationships among phonological

awareness, verbal working memory and the development of word-level reading and spelling.

Results of multiple regression analyses indicated that phonological awareness, but not verbal

working memory, consistently predicted reading and spelling. Although verbal memory

measured in the first grade predicted spelling performance at the second grade, the effects of

verbal memory disappeared when phonological awareness variables were controlled.

Conversely, Jongejan et al. (2007) found that verbal memory (memory for sentences)

significantly predicted L1 children’s spelling skill in lower (grades 1-2) and upper (grades 3-4)

grades, even when phonological awareness was included in the regression model.

Few studies have examined the direct relationship of verbal memory to word- and text-

level writing skills. However, the small number of studies that have examined the role of verbal

memory for children learning to read in a second language may give some clues about the

potential relationship of verbal memory and writing skills. For example, short-term verbal

memory measures such as digit span and lexical repetition tasks predicted word recognition and

reading comprehension (Geva & Ryan, 1993; Geva & Siegel, 2000; Gholamain & Geva, 1999).

Lafrance and Gottardo (2005) examined a sample of bilingual first graders and found that

phonological awareness and verbal memory were correlated with decoding and word reading;

however, phonological awareness proved to be the stronger predictor of the two and the effects

of verbal memory disappeared when regression analyses were run. Jongejan et al. (2007)

examined L2 children’s verbal memory (remembering sentences) and single-word spelling. The

findings from their regression analysis indicated that verbal memory did not significantly predict

spelling; rather, phonological awareness predicted children’s spelling in lower grades (1-2) and

phonological and lexical access were significant predictors of spelling in upper grades (3-4). At

least in the early grades, phonological awareness may be a stronger predictor of word-level

writing skills. As children get older, reading materials become much more complex in terms of

demands on syntax and grammar, and texts generally become longer. In higher grades, verbal

memory may play a more important role in helping to retain new material long enough to be able

to understand what is being heard. Therefore, verbal memory may not be as important for lower-

level skills such as decoding and spelling (Daneman & Carpenter, 1983; Dufva, Niemi, &

Voeten, 2001; Geva & Ryan, 1993), but may play a more significant role when higher level

aspects of reading and writing are involved. It has been shown to predict vocabulary learning

among L1 and ESL learners (Farnia & Geva, 2010 in press)

In summary, the research literature suggests that L1 and L2 students share commonalities

in their development of phonological awareness and RAN. There is speculation that the cross-

linguistics effect of phonological awareness occurs for younger learners, and that phonological

awareness becomes less important as students gain greater exposure to the second language.

Despite showing an early developmental lag in rapid naming skills, L2 students catch up and

demonstrate similar skills in later grades; however, there is some evidence that rapid naming,

when compared with phonological awareness, is secondary in its ability to predict and spelling

(Jongejan et al., 2007). Few studies have examined the importance of phonological verbal

memory to writing skills, and more research is needed to provide a clearer understanding of how

phonological verbal memory impacts L2 learners.

Writing and oral language skills. According to the simple view and component models

of literacy development, oral language is one of many subcomponents that are required for

language comprehension and composing; they include receptive and expressive vocabulary,

syntactic and semantic knowledge, and narrative discourse processes such as text comprehension

and storytelling (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2005). Writing

instruction usually occurs after children enter school, whereas children’s oral language skills

begin to develop long before children receive their first writing lesson. Therefore, it is reasonable

to assume that oral language would become a natural foundation for writing. It is difficult to

imagine that one could comprehend written text or construct written sentences without having

some knowledge of the various aspects of oral language (such as vocabulary and grammatical

and syntactic awareness).

The precise nature of the relationship between oral language and word-level and text-

level reading and writing is unclear among L1 learners, and there are mixed findings. Several

researchers have argued that oral language skills are important for text-level reading and spelling

development (Bryant, MacLean, & Bradley, 1990; Deacon, Kirby, & Casselman-Bell, 2009;

Nagy, Berninger, Abbott, Vaughan, & Vermeulen, 2003), while some studies suggest that other

component skills, such as phonological awareness, are better predictors of word-level reading

and spelling (Muter, Hulme, Snowling, & Stevenson; 2004; Plaza & Cohen, 2004; Roth, Speece,

& Cooper, 2002). Likewise, the research examining the importance of oral language skills for

text-level reading and writing development for L1 children has also produced mixed results and

the overall picture of their relationship is not clear.

In terms of reading comprehension development, some studies suggests that oral

language skills play an important role (Catts, Fey, Zhang, & Tomblin, 1999; Kendeou, van den

Broek, White, & Lynch, 2009; Muter, et al., 2004; Paris & Paris, 2003; Roth, et al., 2002), while

others suggests the opposite, that it is not integral for text comprehension (Bryant et al.,1990;

Vellutino, Tunmer, Jaccard, & Chen, 2007).

The research literature exploring the relationship between oral language and text-level

writing is sparse, and few studies have examined the impact of oral language on composition

writing. From the limited literature that does exist, some researchers have attempted to examine

the connection of writing and oral language by exploring the underlying components of

language, for example verbal working memory. When children have weak verbal working

memory, they struggle to produce written compositions (McCutchen, 1996; Swanson &

Berninger, 1996). Young writers are initially better at oral composition or dictation than they are

at writing. As they mature, and other sub-component skills become automatized (e.g., hand

writing and letter-sound knowledge), they become better composers, producing longer and better

quality written compositions (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1987; Cox, Shanahan, & Sulzby, 1990;

McCutchen, 1987).

Overall, the mixed findings are likely a result of two problems: 1) the different ways in

which oral language and reading comprehension are conceptualized and measured, and 2) the

varying age range on which the studies have focused. Further, Willows and Ryan (1986) have

suggested that sensitivity to semantic and syntactic features in reading materials increases among

L1 children during the elementary school years. Therefore, oral language may not serve as a

strong predictor of early literacy skills among young children; however, it may play a critical

role in literacy as children enter later elementary years, when they have gained greater skills

(Flynn & Rahbar, 1998). For example, children in later elementary years are exposed to a wider

range of unfamiliar academic vocabulary in text, than in the primary years (Beck, McKeown, &

Kucan, 2002; Biemiller & Slonim, 2001). It is conceivable that children with a greater repertoire

of words will likely use them in writing to express thoughts and ideas, in more interesting and

eloquent ways. Therefore, children who are weaker in oral language skills may be limited in their

ability to express themselves adequately in writing.

The notion that L2 learners lag in oral language development in comparison to their L1

counterparts has been well supported in the research literature (Farnia & Geva, 2010 in press;

Lervag & Aukrust, 2010; Leseaux & Siegel, 2003; Wang & Geva, 2003; Ball, 2003). The impact

of oral language on L2 word-level and text-level literacy skills has been explored longitudinally

by a number of researchers and the results have been variable; this suggests that the relationship

of oral language skills to word-level and text level literacy skills may differ at various stages of

literacy development. Lesaux and Siegel (2003) conducted a longitudinal study examining the

pattern of word reading, reading comprehension and single word spelling skills development of

790 L1 and 188 L2 students from kindergarten through grade 2. All students received

phonological awareness instruction in kindergarten and phonics instruction in the first grade. By

the end of the second grade, L2 students’ word reading, pseudoword reading, and reading

comprehension skills were comparable to their L1 counterparts; L2 students outperformed L1

students on measures of pseudoword and single-word spelling tasks. Despite lagging in oral

language proficiency (oral cloze task) at the onset of the study, L2 children performed similarly

or better than their L1 peers on measures of word-level reading skills (pseudoword reading, word

reading, single-word spelling). Further, oral language was a predictor of later reading

comprehension for L1 students, but not for L2 students.

Ball (2003) explored the relationship of oral language (a composite measure that

incorporated receptive and expressive vocabulary, syntax, listening comprehension, sentence

memory) to text-level reading comprehension and story composition quality among older L1 and

L2 children in grades 3 and 5/6. Oral language skills significantly predicted both word-level

(pseudoword and spelling) and text-level skills (reading comprehension and written composition

quality) for L1 students, and reading comprehension for L2 students. L2 students demonstrated

significantly lower vocabulary and syntactic awareness than their L1 counterparts; however both

groups were similar in their text-level reading comprehension, and written composition skills.

The importance of oral language skills, as indicated by Ball’s study, is consistent with some of

the research findings examining reading comprehension development in L1 and L2 learners

discussed earlier, which underscores the importance of vocabulary and syntactic skills (Bowey &

Patel, 1988; Demont & Gombert, 1996; Roth, et al., 2002; Tunmer 1989; Verhoeven, 1990;

2000; Willows & Ryan, 1986; Zadeh, Farnia & Geva, 2010 in press). This research suggests that

lower-level literacy skills of L1 and L2 learners appear to develop in similar ways and are less

dependent on oral language skills such as vocabulary and syntax (Genesee & Geva, 2006; Geva,

2006; Geva & Zadeh, 2006). At the same time, oral language skills appear to play critical,

although different, roles in predicting higher order text-level reading comprehension and

composition writing among L1 and L2 learners.

Vocabulary. Vocabulary knowledge, a component of oral language skills, is defined by

Isaacson (1988) as the originality and maturity of a student’s choice of words. The development

of a rich and varied vocabulary is considered an essential step in becoming an effective writer

(Baker, Gersten, & Graham, 2003; Roth, 2000). The following section presents studies where

vocabulary was used as a variable of interest on its own, and not a part of an oral language

composite score.

Studies that have examined the relationship of vocabulary knowledge and word-level

reading have produced mixed findings. There is evidence to suggest that vocabulary knowledge

is important for word-level reading. Strattman and Hodson (2005) examined grade 2 L1 learners

and found that receptive vocabulary explained additional variance for word recognition, even

after the effects of various cognitive and linguistics factors (that included phonological

awareness, rapid automatized naming and working memory) had been partialed out. Similarly,

Nagy et al. (2003) used path analysis to explore grade 2 L1 readers, and found that oral

vocabulary contributed unique variance for word recognition. Dickinson, McCabe,

Anastasopoulos, Peisner-Feinberg, and Poe (2003) investigated the reading acquisition of low-

income preschool-aged children and found that receptive vocabulary predicted word recognition

even after controlling for phonological sensitivity. When both phonological awareness and

receptive vocabulary were included in the model, they each contributed an equal amount of

unique variance in word recognition. In contrast, other studies have found that other components,

such as phonological awareness, not receptive vocabulary, predicted word-level reading ability

in young children (Muter et al., 2004; Tunmer, Herriman, & Nesdale, 1988).

In terms of word-level spelling, Rolla San Francisco, Mo, Carlo, August and Snow

(2006) explored the relationship of language of instruction and vocabulary knowledge to the

English spelling of bilingual first graders receiving either English or Spanish literacy instruction,

and of monolinguals in English literacy instruction. Using regression analysis, they found that

Spanish vocabulary significantly predicted Spanish-influenced spellings, while English

vocabulary significantly predicted orthographically plausible English spellings. This finding

demonstrates the importance of vocabulary knowledge as a determinant of spelling skills. Bryant

and colleagues’ (1990) research with 3 and 4 year olds suggested that the relationship between

vocabulary knowledge and spelling is not simple. Vocabulary knowledge was a significant

predictor of children’s spelling when it was examined alongside other oral language variables,

rhyme and alliteration skills. However, when maternal education and IQ were added to the

regression analysis, vocabulary and the oral language variables were no longer significant

predictors of word-level spelling. The findings from this study suggest that the relationship

between vocabulary knowledge and spelling is complex.

Weak vocabulary knowledge has been found to be related to poor text comprehension.

Cain, Oakhill and Lemmon (2004) found that students with good and poor reading

comprehension, who were matched for knowledge of written and spoken word meanings,

differed on standardized measures of reading comprehension. There is evidence to suggest that

vocabulary knowledge predicts reading comprehension among L1 learners. Muter et al. (2004)

examined 90 British children longitudinally over two years, starting at the beginning of school

entry (4 and 5 year-olds). Using path analysis, they investigated the relationships among early

vocabulary knowledge, along with other skills (letter knowledge, phoneme deletion, word

recognition, grammatical awareness), as predictors of reading comprehension. The results

indicated that both vocabulary and syntax were significantly related to reading comprehension;

in fact, these skills assumed a similar level of importance. This finding suggests that reading

comprehension appears to be dependent on higher level language skills such as vocabulary

knowledge and syntax. Research examining the specific influence of vocabulary knowledge on

text-level writing could not be found. As mentioned above, the literature examining the

connection between oral language skills and text-level writing is limited. Most of the research

that explored this relationship has used verbal memory and morphological skills as variables of

interest in composition writing.

The relationship between vocabulary and L2 children’s word-level skills is less clear and

not as well documented, as there has been limited research examining the role of vocabulary

knowledge and its relationship to L2 word-level skills. However, there have been consistent

findings that indicate L2 children lag behind L1 learners on measures of vocabulary knowledge

(Ball, 2003; Farnia & Geva, 2010 in press; Larvag & Aukrust, 2010; Wang & Geva 2003) and

that vocabulary knowledge appears to have less impact on the development of word-level skills

(Wang & Geva, 2003). According to Geva’s (2006) review of second language oral proficiency

and literacy skills, the impact of vocabulary knowledge on word-level reading skills is small, and

other cognitive-linguistic component skills such as phonological awareness and rapid naming

explain a greater portion of the variance for single-word and pseudoword reading tasks.

Similarly, Wang and Geva (2003), in a two-year longitudinal study, compared the word-level

spelling development of 35 Cantonese-speaking primary level children learning English as a

second language and 37 English-speaking children. Despite having significantly lower

vocabulary skills at each of the four testing times, the developmental trajectory of L2 single-

word spelling across time for the L2 children was similar to that of their L1 peers.

One can imagine that having limited vocabulary may hinder a reader’s ability to

comprehend text. While comprehension may remain unaffected by a few unknown words, too

many of them would certainly impair it. As a result, L2 students may be at a disadvantage with

their lower vocabulary knowledge. Few researchers have examined this very question and the

available findings are mixed. In the study by Ball (2003), mentioned previously, a composite

measure of oral language, which included vocabulary, significantly predicted word-level

(pseudoword and spelling) and text-level skills (reading comprehension and written composition

quality) for L1 students, and reading comprehension for L2 students. However, it is unknown to

what extent vocabulary uniquely contributes to each of the outcome variables; in addition to

expressive and receptive vocabulary, the oral language composite measure in Ball’s study also

included syntax, listening comprehension, and sentence memory. A study by Lervag and Aukrust

(2010), examining growth and predictors of growth for early reading comprehension for L1 and

L2 grade 2 students, suggests that vocabulary appears to be a critical predictor of higher-order

reading comprehension for both language groups. Individual differences in vocabulary skills

predicted initial status (in the second grade) and subsequent growth of reading comprehension,

measured at four time points over an 18-month period. Until recently, the majority of second

language learning research that has explored the relationship between vocabulary knowledge and

text-level writing has been with adult L2 learners, where findings indicate that lack of

vocabulary knowledge contributes to their writing difficulties (Santos, 1988) and it is viewed as

one of the most important features for determining writing quality (Uzawa & Cumming, 1989:

Walters & Wolf, 1996).

Although vocabulary knowledge may not be as important during the early stages of

literacy development because it is not crucial for the acquisition of word-level skills such as

word recognition or single-word spelling, research findings examining adult L2 writers suggest

that it may play a more critical role for higher order text-level skills such as reading

comprehension and writing quality (Santos, 1988; Uzawa & Cumming, 1989; Walters & Wolf,

1996). Overall, little is known about the relationship between vocabulary development and text-

level writing. It is important to explore this relationship, where vocabulary is observed as an

independent variable on its own and not part of a composite oral language proficiency variable.

This way, the individual contribution of vocabulary knowledge can be observed alongside other

variables, such as syntactic knowledge and phonological processing skills.

Syntactic awareness. Syntactic awareness is a skill that is related to reading

development for native speakers of English (Siegel, 1993) and for English as a second language

speakers (Geva & Yaghoub Zadeh, 2006). Syntax involves word order and grammatical

construction; deficits in syntactic awareness can lead to poor sentence comprehension despite the

ability to decode the words within sentences. It is an important aspect of oral language

proficiency.

There have been some mixed results about the importance of syntactic awareness for

reading skills among L1 learners. Several investigators have reported that when phonological

awareness is taken into account, the influence of oral language skills on reading is no longer

significant for word-level reading (Muter et al., 2004; National Reading Panel, 2000; Plaza &

Cohen, 2004; Roth et al., 2002). For example, Bryant et al. (1990) found in a longitudinal study

that measures of syntactic and semantic awareness (measured at 34 to 45 months old) among L1

learners did not predict word-level reading scores two years later, once phonological awareness

had been accounted for.

In contrast, other researchers have found evidence that syntactic awareness was a

significant predictor of word-level and text-level skills. Plaza and Cohen (2003) examined

phonological awareness, Rapid Automatized Naming and morphological/syntactic skills among

267 French speaking grade 1 students; hierarchical multiple regressions showed that all three

contributed a significant amount of variance to French reading and spelling performance

(measured as a single composite score that combined word reading and spelling, pseudoword

reading and spelling, text dictation spelling, and reading comprehension) after the variances in

other variables had been controlled for. Plaza and Cohen (2004) continued the study the

following year; hierarchical multiple regression analyses were conducted to examine the

relationship of phonological awareness, Rapid Automatized Naming and

morphological/syntactic skills (measured in grade 1) to word-level French spelling (a composite

score that combined single word spelling, pseudoword spelling, and text dictation spelling)

measured in grade 2. Consistent with findings from the previous year, the results indicated that

phonological awareness was the most potent predictor of text-level spelling, followed by RAN,

then morphological/syntactic skills. Morphological/syntactic skills remained significant in

predicting word-level spelling, even without reading comprehension as part of the composite

outcome variable.

In a pattern similar to vocabulary development, there is evidence to suggest that L1 and

L2 children do not share the same developmental pathway for syntactic awareness. A

longitudinal study that assessed syntactic awareness with an oral cloze task (Lipka & Siegel,

2007) found that L1 children significantly outperformed ESL children at the start of

kindergarten. When they were reassessed on the same oral cloze measure in grade 3, the ESL

children continued to lag behind L1 students, despite improvements on other skills such as

phonological processing and working memory. Wade-Woolley and Siegel (1997) examined

children’s syntactic awareness in grade 2 and found that L2 were disadvantaged relative to L1

students on oral cloze and syntax judgment tasks. Similar findings were noted in Ball’s 2003

study with older children in grade 5/6: L2 children performed significantly more poorly than L1

children on a task of syntax/grammar judgment (using the Formulated Sentences subtest from the

Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals, Third Edition, Wiig & Secord, 1995).

The discrepancy between researchers is partly a consequence of the complex relations

between oral language skills and early reading development (Bishop & Adams, 1991;

Scarborough, 1990). Among children with reading problems, oral language difficulties with

syntax (Bishop & Adams, 1990) and semantic relations (Menyuk et al., 1991) were most

strongly predictive of reading performance. To account for the discrepancy between studies, a

closer examination of the research indicates that outcome measures were inconsistent (Storch &

Whitehurst, 2002). In some studies, reading was measured by word recognition, while another

used reading comprehension (Catts et al., 1999). Overall, there is a notable gap in the research

literature that examines the role of syntactic awareness in children’s reading comprehension and

composition writing.

Writing and word-level skills.

Word level reading. Word-level reading skills are usually measured by tasks of single-

word and pseudoword reading. Overall, research findings reveal similarity between L1 and L2

students’ word-level reading ability (Geva, et al., 2000; Lesaux & Siegel, 2003; Wade-Woolley

& Siegel, 1997; Wang & Geva, 2003). Two studies examining single-word and pseudo-word

reading skills found that L1 and L2 students in kindergarten performed similarly, even though L2

learners demonstrated significantly lower English oral language proficiency skills than their L1

counterparts. By the time students entered grade 1, there were no differences between L1 and L2

students on measures of single-word and pseudoword reading (Chiappe, Siegel, & Gottardo,

2002; Chiappe, Siegel, &Wade-Woolley, 2002). Consistent findings were noted in Wade-

Woolley and Siegel’s (1997) study with 79 L1 and L2 children in grade two. Within each

language group, children were separated by reading groups and identified as either average or

poor readers. Results of separate two-way ANOVAs indicated main effects for reading group on

word recognition and pseudoword decoding, suggesting that average readers were more accurate

than poor readers in decoding real words and pseudowords. L1 and L2 students performed

similarly on word recognition and pseudoword decoding, as there were no main effects or

interactions involving language group.

Similar findings were noted by Lipka and Siegel (2007), when they examined the single-

word and pseudoword reading skills of English monolinguals (L1) and English language learning

(L2) third graders. A study with Dutch L1 and L2 students indicated that initial word reading

differences disappeared over time. Although Dutch L2 (Turkish speaking background) students

scored lower than L1 Dutch speaking students for reading lists of words, this gap disappeared

after 20 months of literacy instruction (Verhoeven, 1990). Droop and Verhoeven (2003)

examined third and fourth grade Dutch speaking (L1) students (divided into high and low socio-

economic status groups) with low socio-economic status Dutch minority students (L2); the

results indicate that the L2 group performed at the same level as their L1 peers on measures of

single-word decoding (list of words varying in orthographic complexity).

A smaller number of studies have examined word-level reading skills of children in

higher elementary grades. Bilingual Arabic-English and monolingual English-speaking children

in grades 4 through 8 were measured on tasks of word and pseudoword reading. The results

indicated there were no group differences on measures of word-level reading skills (Abu-Rabia

& Siegel, 2002). Similar findings were obtained by Da Fontoura and Siegel (1995), who

examined literacy development among bilingual Portuguese-English and English-speaking

students in grades 4 through 6. Again, no differences were noted between groups on a measure

of word recognition. Contradictory findings were reported by D’Angiulli and colleagues’ (2001)

research with bilingual English-Italian and monolingual English-speaking students in grades 4

through 8; the results indicated group differences for word and pseudoword reading tasks, with

an advantage for the bilingual children. In addition to exploring word-level reading skills for

samples of L1 and L2 children with a range of abilities, researchers have also examined these

same skills with L2 students who have literacy difficulties. Overall, early primary and middle

school L2 children who were classified in studies as having poor word-level literacy skills

performed similarly on the tasks administered. For example, individual cognitive linguistics

skills (i.e. phonological processing), not language status, were significantly correlated with

reading skills. Further, the proportion of L1 and L2 children identified as having “poor” skills

was the same. L2 children were not more likely to be poor decoders in comparison to the L1

children (Abu-Rabia & Siegel, 2002; Chiappe & Siegel, 1999; D’Angiulli et al., 2001; Da

Fontoura & Siegel, 1995; Geva, Yaghoub-Zadeh, & Schuster, 2000).

Word-level spelling. Spelling in English involves the application of phoneme-grapheme

correspondences in a written format (Ehri, 1989) and requires phonological and orthographic

processing skills as well as visual memory. There was some concern that spelling development

may present a challenge for L2 learners as they are likely to have had less exposure to language

and literacy in comparison to their L1 counterparts. However, further review of the same studies

(Abu-Rabia & Siegel, 2002; Chiappe & Siegel, 1999; D’Angiulli et al., 2001; Da Fontoura &

Siegel, 1995) that examined word reading skills suggests that L1 and L2 learners appear to

develop in similar ways (Lesaux et al., 2006). Results from studies examining children in

primary grades indicated similar spelling skills among L1 and L2 learners. Wade-Woolley and

Siegel (1997) found no group differences for L1 and L2 learners in grades 1 and 2 on real word

and pseudoword spelling tasks. Further analysis for average readers indicated that L1 and L2

groups made similar spelling errors. Limbos and Geva (2001) found similar results in their study

with 369 L1 and L2 children. Between L1 and L2 learners in grade 1, no group differences were

found on a measure of word spelling.

Studies examining spelling skills of older L1 and L2 English language learners in grades

4 through 6, who were considered to be typical readers, demonstrated no group differences on

measures of spelling ability (Abu-Rabia & Siegel, 2002: D’Angjiulli et al, 2001; Da Fontoura &

Siegel, 1995; Geva & LaFrance, in press). Contrary to these findings, a cross-sectional study

found that native Spanish speakers learning English made more errors than monolingual English

speakers. It is interesting to note that language minority students in grades 3 and 4 made more

spelling errors than those who were in grades 5 and 6. It is possible that the nature of the

spelling errors was an indication that the spelling ability of the language minority students was

still developing. Similar to the groups’ performance on word-level reading tasks, the spelling

skills of L1 and L2 students designated as poor readers were similar. Overall, spelling

difficulties could not be attributed to language status. In fact, results from two studies with early

elementary learners indicated no interaction effect for language group or reader group; thus L2

learners were not more likely to be identified as poor readers than their L1 counterparts (Chiappe

& Siegel, 1999; Wade-Woolley & Siegel, 1997).

Writing and text-level reading skills. Text-level skills are higher-level processes that

require the integration of many skills, some of which include prior knowledge, cognitive-

linguistic processes and word-level skills (Lesaux, Koda, Siegel, & Shanahan, 2006; Roth,

2000). In comparison to word-level skills, text-level skills are complex by nature; perhaps this is

the reason for the lack of research examining the development of reading comprehension and

writing of connected text among language minority learners.

Reading comprehension. It has been difficult to find research that has examined the

relationship between text-level writing and reading comprehension for either L1 or L2 learners.

Given this limitation, the following is a summary of research that has explored the relationship of

various underlying cognitive-linguistic processing skills and word-level reading to reading

comprehension. Although reading comprehension is an independent variable of interest and not

an outcome variable in this study, research findings for reading comprehension will be discussed

extensively here because it is a high-level skill and a good point of comparison for text-level

writing skills.

Cain and Oakhill (2007) reviewed studies that examined the relationship of phonological

processing skills, word decoding, vocabulary knowledge, and syntax to reading comprehension

among monolingual learners. The overall findings suggest that phonological skills (such as

phonemic awareness and RAN) predict later reading comprehension. However, the findings

were inconsistent and it was unclear whether they were direct predictors or mediated by word

decoding, as concurrent word decoding was not controlled for in many of the studies that were

reviewed (De Jong & van der Leij, 2002; Manis, Seidenberg, & Doi, 1999; Parrila, Kirby, &

McQuarrie, 2004; Willson & Rupley, 1997). The evidence also suggests that the relationship

between word-level skills and reading comprehension declines with age (Willson & Rupley,

1997) and may depend on the type of task used to measure reading comprehension (Keenan,

Betjemann, & Olson, 2008).

Vocabulary knowledge has been shown to be one of the best predictors of reading

comprehension (Cain & Oakhill, 2007; Carroll, 1993; Davis, 1944, 1968; Thorndike, 1973);

however, the precise nature of the relationship is unclear. There have been mixed findings about

a causal link: research has shown that vocabulary knowledge is predictive of reading

comprehension (Roth et al., 2002), that reading comprehension enables vocabulary growth

(Eldredge, Quinn, & Butterfield, 1990), and that the relationship between the two variables is

reciprocal (Seigneuric & Ehrlich, 2005).

Results from research examining the relationship between syntactic skills and reading

comprehension has produced mixed findings (Bowey & Patel, 1988; Demont & Gombert, 1996;

Tunmer, 1989; Willows & Ryan, 1986); however, syntactic skills appear to have a weaker link to

reading comprehension than does vocabulary (Cain & Oakhill, 2007). In studies where a

relationship between syntactic skills and reading comprehension was established, it was

proposed that this relationship was perhaps mediated by phonological working memory, as tasks

measuring syntactic knowledge that required the integration of new information with information

stored in long-term memory (in other words placing heavier demands on working memory)

predicted reading comprehension more strongly than tasks that placed demands on short-term

memory (Goff, Pratt, & Ong, 2005; Gottardo, Stanovich, & Siegel, 1996). The notion that

syntactic knowledge and reading comprehension are related by way of phonological processing

was proposed by Shankweiler and colleagues (Shankweiler, 1989; Smith, Marcaruso,

Shankweiler, & Cain, 1989). According to this hypothesis, comprehension difficulties arise

when children are unable to construct phonological representations of incoming verbal

information, which leads to problems processing information in verbal working memory, thus

resulting in problems parsing syntactically complex constructions.

Until recently, few studies have examined reading comprehension development among

L2 learners. Leseaux et al. (2006) reviewed studies from the Netherlands that examined the

reading comprehension performance of language-minority students and Dutch-speaking

monolingual peers; the overall findings indicated that minority children who were L2 learners, in

comparison to L1 monolinguals, showed a substantially lower level of achievement on measures

of reading comprehension. Two studies examined the development of reading comprehension

for Dutch L1 and L2 students in the first two years of schooling in the Netherlands (Verhoeven,

1990; 2000); the findings from both studies suggested that despite having similar word reading

performance at the end of the second year of school, L2 students continued to lag behind in

reading comprehension in comparison to their L1 Dutch-speaking peers. Similarly, it appears

that the gap between L2 and L1 Dutch language learners in their comprehension of written text

does not decrease within the primary years; a study that examined L1 and L2 learners (matched

by socio-economic status, age, and gender) at the end of primary school – after at least eight

years of Dutch instruction - found that L2 students were not able to achieve native-like literacy

proficiency in Dutch compared to the monolingual Dutch children (Aarts & Verhoeven, 1999).

In contrast to these findings, Ball’s (2003) study indicated no significant group difference

between L1 and L2 learners for reading comprehensions skills.

The findings of studies that examined L2 Dutch learners in their first two years of school

demonstrate the impact of word reading skills and oral proficiency on reading comprehension

development. Verhoeven (1990) found that within the first grade, word reading efficiency was a

strong predictor, while oral proficiency contributed moderately to reading comprehension.

However, at the end of the second grade, the importance of word reading efficiency was reduced,

while the predictive power of oral second-language proficiency increased. In another study by

Verhoeven (2000), vocabulary and word reading efficiency were found to be significant

predictors of Dutch reading comprehension at the end of the first grade. Ball (2003) found that

both oral language (a composite of receptive vocabulary, expressive vocabulary, syntax, listening

comprehension, and sentence memory) and cognitive ability (a composite of working memory,

sequencing, phonemic awareness, and rapid automatic naming) were significant predictors of

reading comprehension for students in grades 3 and 5/6. Given the small number of L1 (n=123)

and L2 (n=48) students in the study, the regression analyses examining the differences at each

grade should be interpreted with caution. In all of the research discussed above, it is important to

note that little is known about the quality of literacy instruction that students within these studies

received, which would certainly have an impact on reading comprehension development (Lesaux

et al., 2006).

Gap in the Literature

Writing is a powerful means of self-expression that can be used to convey creative ideas,

persuade the opinions of others and disseminate information. It is a valuable form of record-

keeping and allows stories of important historical events to be passed from one generation to the

next. In school, writing is important because not only is it a means by which teachers evaluate

student performance, but it is also a way of acquiring knowledge as children progress from

‘learning to read’ to ‘reading to learn.’ Students who struggle with writing are disadvantaged in

grade school and post-secondary settings (Chall, 1983; Graham, 2008; Graham & Perrin, 2006).

Despite the importance of writing, there is considerably less research on children’s writing that

extends beyond spelling as the variable of interest. In comparison to the research available on

reading development, there has been less focus on writing, especially within the L2 population.

An overview of the existing literature on children’s writing development indicates there is a

significant gap in our understanding of monolingual and ESL developmental trajectories.

Further, there is a need to identify component skills that are related to writing development and

explore how these sub-skills contribute to various aspects of writing for L2 learners.

The Present Study

The purpose of this present study was to examine longitudinally (grades 4-6) the

relationship between reading and writing performance for children whose native language is

English (monolingual) and children whose native language is not English (ESL). Reading and

writing performance were conceptualized as components, involving lower order word-level

components (decoding and encoding) and higher order text-level components (reading

comprehension and ideation in writing), using aspects of both the “simple view” and

“component” models as theoretical frameworks for the study. In addition, basic cognitive-

linguistic skills were examined and their relationships to writing explored. This research focused

on ESL writing with three questions: exploring group differences, predictors and developmental

progression.

The following three research questions, along with the corresponding hypotheses, were

addressed:

Research Question 1. Do monolingual and ESL students differ significantly in their

performance on cognitive-linguistics, oral language, reading and writing measures?

Hypothesis: Given that ESL children have had adequate exposure to literacy instruction,

their cognitive-linguistics skills were expected to be similar to their monolingual counterparts.

No language group differences for the word-level reading and spelling skills were expected. In

studies where early group differences were noted, research has indicated that the gap between

monolingual and ESL low-level skills tends to disappear over time and as students develop great

proficiency in these skills, they begin to function in the background at an automatic level.

Conversely, a group difference for vocabulary knowledge, syntactic awareness and reading

comprehension was anticipated, where monolingual students were expected to outperform their

ESL counterparts. There is evidence to suggest that despite the groups having similar word

reading skills, the gap between monolingual and ESL vocabulary, syntactic awareness and

reading comprehension skills do not decrease over time, with the ESL group continuing to lag

behind monolingual students. There is not much evidence to draw on to hypothesize about the

outcome for the text-level writing measures; however, based the findings from Ball’s 2003 study,

we anticipated that there would be no group differences for the writing measures; that the L2

group would perform similarly to its monolingual counterpart.

Research Question 2: What is the developmental progression of cognitive-linguistics,

vocabulary, syntactic awareness, reading and writing skills from grades 4 through 6?

Hypothesis: It was hypothesized that monolingual and ESL writing skills (mechanics,

syntax and composition quality) will develop in similar ways; thus no group difference is

anticipated for the writing outcome measures.

Research Question 3: Which variables measured in grade 4 predict the developmental

progression of writing skills from grades 4 through 6?

Hypothesis: Based on the limited research that has examined story composition, ESL

literacy theories and the existing knowledge about reading comprehension, it was hypothesized

that phonological processing skills, word-level skills, vocabulary, syntactic awareness and

reading comprehension would significantly predict subsequent writing skills.

Chapter 2: Method

Participants

The overall sample consisted of 178 participants, of whom 122 learned English as a

second language and 57 were native speakers of English. Of the 122 ESL students, there were

53 speakers of Portuguese, 43 speakers of Punjabi, 19 speakers of Tamil, 4 speakers of Urdu, 1

Cantonese, 1 Mandrin, and 1 Sinhala. Within the ESL sample, there were 58 female (1) and 63

male (2) students, with 23 female and 34 male students for the monolingual group. At the initial

time of testing in grade 4, the average age of ESL students was 117.14 months, with a standard

deviation of 3.68 and the average age of monolingual students was 115.66 months, with a

standard deviation of 3.78. One ESL student was excluded because the writing sample was

missing at grade 6. Overall, the final sample consisted of 121 ESL and 57 monolingual students.

The ESL language status was determined by using information gathered from multiple

sources and then cross-validated. Language status was cross-checked with student records,

classroom teacher interviews, child interview protocols, and information from parental consents.

Students were identified as ESL when their first language was not English and when English was

not spoken as the primary language in the home. Only students whose school records and

teacher interviews indicated an ESL status were classified as such in the study. Some children

were born in Canada and others abroad. However, to be considered for the project, children born

outside of Canada must have arrived by the age of 6. Additionally, children must have entered

school in Canada for grade 1. At the onset of the study, children in grade 1 who had not lived in

an English speaking country for at least 4 months were excluded from the study. This ensured

that ESL students had some basic exposure to the rudiments of language and literacy instruction.

In Canada, school-age children who arrive from non-English speaking countries typically

attend two years of special ESL classes, conducted on a withdrawal basis within the school

system. Within the four school districts where this project was conducted, ESL instruction was

provided on a daily withdrawal basis (30 to 40 minutes) in a small group setting. Within these

groups, children did not necessarily share the same first language, however they all had similar

levels of English language proficiency. Teachers with special ESL training provided instruction

with a focus on the development of English and readiness for literacy skills. With the exception

of the ESL classes, children were integrated into regular classrooms, where all instruction was

presented in English. Depending on individual student needs, regular classroom teachers

provided adaptations to the curriculum.

Measures

Control variables.

Nonverbal Reasoning: The Ravens Progressive Matrices (RAVEN; Raven, Court, &

Raven, 1983) was administered in grade 5 to evaluate non-verbal reasoning ability. This test was

used because it does not require verbal responses and is relatively free of cultural bias. Thus, it

was felt to be an intelligence tool that minimizes bias towards ESL learners. Children were

shown an incomplete illustration of a matrix and then asked to identify the correct pattern from a

set of 5 or 6 items that complete the matrix. Children were permitted to respond by either

pointing to or verbally identifying the number corresponding to the missing piece. Testing within

each subtest was discontinued after four consecutive errors. Results were reported in raw scores,

with a possible range of 0 – 60. According to the test developers, the median internal consistency

is .90 and the median test-retest value is .82. Concurrent validity coefficients with other

intelligence tests generally range from .70 to .80.

Age. Chronological age, in months, was calculated for each participant. Group Status. All participants were assigned a code according to their language group

status (L1=1, L2=2).

Oral Language.

Vocabulary. The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test – Revised (PPVT-R: Dunn & Dunn

1981) is an individually administered, standardized test of receptive vocabulary knowledge. On

this task, the experimenter read a word, then the child was presented with four pictures and asked

to choose the one that best described the target word. There was a total of 175 items, including

nouns, verbs, and adjectives. The PPVT-R was considered to be a valid and reliable test of

receptive vocabulary (reliability coefficient range from .52 to .90) and shown to be a good

measure of oral language proficiency (Geva & Farnia, 2010).

Syntax. An adapted and abbreviated version of the Grammatical Judgment Task

(Johnson & Newport, 1989) was used to assess participants’ English syntactic processing skills.

The task consists of 40 sentences: 20 syntactically correct (e.g. “Tom drove his sister to the

concert.”) and 20 syntactically incorrect sentences (e.g., “The ball the boy caught.”). The test

measures a wide variety of syntactic functions such as function words, word order, phrase order,

clause boundaries, prenominalization, tense, markers, articles, subject-predicate agreement,

particles and copula words. The items contained high frequency words and the intended

meaning of sentences was deliberately kept transparent in order to control for semantic

knowledge and to reduce possible side effects of lexical meaning on children’s performance.

The sentences were professionally recorded using a female voice. Each sentence was played

twice on a tape recorder. Children were instructed to indicate whether the sentence they heard

was presented “the right way” or “the wrong way.” The number of correctly judged sentences

represented each child’s total score for the task. The test reliability was high (Cronbach alpha =

.83). This task was administered in grade 4.

Phonological Processing.

Phonological Awareness. Phonological awareness was measured using a sound deletion

task adapted from the Auditory Analysis Test (Rosner & Simon, 1971). Methodological

considerations guided the adaptation of the task to better suit the ESL population, in order to

minimize the possible confounds of language proficiency. On this task, only high frequency

words were used for the initial and target responses, in order to minimize the effects of lexical

knowledge (e.g., sunshine, hand, tree). For the first subtest, children were instructed to delete

one syllable, in either the initial or final position of the spoken word (e.g., “say sunshine, say it

again but don’t say shine”). The second subtest required students to delete single initial or final

phonemes in one-syllable words (e.g., “say hand, say it again but don’t say the /h/”). The last

subtest required students to delete single phonemes in an initial or final consonant blend (e.g.,

“say tree, say it again but don’t say the /r/”). The test consisted of 36 items and each correct

response was awarded 1 point. Ceiling was reached after five consecutive errors and each correct

response received a score of one (Cronbach alpha=.83). The task was administered in grades 5

and 6.

Rapid Automatized Naming. The letter naming section of the Denckla and Rudel’s

(1976) Rapid Automatized Naming task (RAN) was used to assess children’s speed of rapid

serial naming. This task measures basic lower level cognitive processes by estimating the speed

with which individuals were able to access the names of highly automatized print symbols

(Bowers, Golden, Kennedy, & Young, 1994; Wolf, Pfeil, Lotz, & Biddle, 1994). Children were

asked to name a series of 5 letters (O, A, S, D, P), presented 10 times in random order (total of

50). Prior to starting the task, each student was asked to name the five letters to determine

familiarity with the letter names. This measure was not administered to children who could not

identify all five letters. Students were instructed to name all 50 letters as quickly and accurately

as possible. The accuracy and amount of time (in seconds) to name all 50 items were recorded.

Reliability coefficients for the Rapid Automatized Naming were not possible to determine

because of the administration and scoring methods used. However, Wagner et al. (1994)

administered a similar task with digits and obtained a split-half reliability coefficient of .91 after

Spearman-Brown correction. The number of items children named per second was used as the

Rapid Automatized Naming measure, with a higher score indicating faster speed of naming.

Verbal Memory. Verbal memory was measured using the Digit Span subtest of the

Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Third Edition, WISC-III (Psychological Corporation,

1991). Each child was instructed to repeat back sequences of verbally presented numbers. Two

trials of two, three, four, five, six and seven digits were used, with the two-digit series serving as

practice. In the reverse span task, the task was presented in the same manner, except that the

child was asked to repeat the digits in the reverse order. The total scores were obtained by

adding the raw scores for the forward and reverse span tasks, with a possible range of scores

from 0 to 30. Based on the WISC-III, the Digit Span subtest has a split-half reliability of .78 to

.88 for 9-12 year old students.

Word-level Skills.

Word reading. In order to assess children’s ability to read words in English, the Word

Recognition subtest of the Wide Range Achievement Test-Revised (WRAT 3 – R; Wilkinson,

1993) was administered. This test was a standardized measure that assesses the ability to

accurately identify real words out of context in English. There were 42 unrelated English words

that start with short and familiar words and progress to longer and less familiar ones. Ceiling

was reached after 10 consecutive errors and the total of correctly read words was considered

each child’s total score. The WRAT-3 is considered to be a valid and reliable test (cited

reliability coefficients range from .85 to .95).

Pseudoword reading. The Word Attack sub-test of the Woodcock Reading Mastery

Test-Revised (WRMT-R; Woodcock, 1987) was administered to assess children’s ability to

apply grapheme-phoneme knowledge to decode pseudowords. This test consisted of 45

pseudowords which complied with English orthographic rules and phonology; however, they

were not real words in English (e.g., bufty or mancingful). The level of difficulty increased as the

test progressed and participants read the pseudowords one at a time. Ceiling was reached after 5

consecutive errors and the number of correctly read items was each child’s total score. Test

developers indicate an internal consistency and split-half reliability that exceed .90.

Spelling. The Spelling subtest of the Wide Range Achievement Test-Revised (WRAT-R;

Wilkinson, 1993) was used to assess children’s spelling of isolated words. The test was

administered in a small group format by a trained examiner. This activity consisted of 15 letter

writing and 40 word spelling items, for a total of 55. Before being asked to write the word on a

record form, participants heard it three times; the examiner read the target word alone out of

context, then used the target word in a sentence, and again alone out of context. Each correctly

written letter or word received one point, for a maximum possible total score of 55. The WRAT-

3 is considered to be a valid and reliable test (cited reliability coefficients range from .85 to.95).

Text-level Skills.

Reading Comprehension. The reading comprehension subtests from the Gates-

MacGinitie Reading Tests, Second Canadian edition (GMRT) (MacGinitie & MacGinitie, 1992)

were used to measure student reading comprehension of narrative and expository text. Within the

GMRT there are seven different levels of difficulty covering grades 1 through 12. In grades 4, 5,

6 respectively, Level D4 (Form 3), Level D 5/6 (Form 4), and Level D 5/6 (Form 3) were

administered. The test contained several short reading narrative, information, and expository

passages, with a total of 48 multiple-choice questions. Some of the questions required

constructing an understanding based on information that was explicitly stated within the stories,

while others required the students to construct an understanding based on information that was

only implicitly stated in the passages. The test was administered in groups of 5 and students

were given a time limit of 35 minutes. Participants were required to read the passages silently

and select one answer for each question; each correct answer was awarded a score of 1, with a

possible range of 0 to 48. Extended Scaled Scores (ESS) were calculated so that reading progress

could be tracked over a period of years on a single continuous scale, using equal units. An ESS

score of 500 is considered to be average performance at the beginning of grade 5, and 525 is

average for the beginning of grade 6. Therefore, a difference of 25 units anywhere on the scale

represents the difference in achievement between the beginning of grade 5 and beginning of

grade 6. In particular, this equal-unit scale is useful for statistical analyses for calculating gains

(MacGinitie & MacGinitie, 1992). There was high internal consistency in the current data

(Cronbach’s = .85 to .88 across time points).

Writing Sample: The Test of Written Language – Third Edition (TOWL-3), Story

Composition (Hammill & Larsen, 1996; Spontaneous writing format, Form A and Form B) was

used to collect written stories from students. The TOWL-3 was a test of higher-level writing

ability and was the dependent measure of main interest for this study. The test was designed for

children aged 7 through 18 years. In grades 4 and 6, children were shown a picture stimulus

depicting space exploration (Form B). In grade 5, participants were presented with a picture

stimulus depicting prehistoric mammoth hunting (Form A). Children were given 15 minutes to

write a story based on the given visual prompt. In accordance with test protocols, only stories

containing more than 40 words were scored. The story was scored using three subtests: writing

mechanics, writing syntax, and story quality.

Writing Mechanics refers to the ability to utilize lower-level aspects of writing, such as

the basic mechanics of writing in context (e.g., capitalization, punctuation and spelling). Within

this category, there are 12 items that measure the appropriate use of capital letters, various

aspects of punctuations (e.g., periods, question marks, commas, apostrophes) and spelling. A

global rating system was used for most items (e.g., 0=poor, 1=average, 2=good) and a maximum

score of 18 was available. In addition to the global rating indices offered by the test manual, the

number of punctuation, capitalization, and spelling errors were recorded for each participant as

supplemental information to aid scoring reliability (e.g., if a child produced 17 spelling errors,

that figure would be recorded in addition to the global rating score of “0” in order to increase the

test’s sensitivity).

Writing Syntax examines various aspects of language use (e.g., grammar, vocabulary,

verb usage). There were 14 items that assessed the quality of sentence structure (e.g., presence

of incomplete run-on or incomplete sentences, compound and complex sentences), various

components of sentences (e.g., introductory phrases, conjunctions), and the overall quality of the

writing (e.g., subject-verb agreement, complexity of vocabulary used). In total, a score of 31 is

possible. In addition to the global rating indices offered by the test manual, supplemental

information was included. Recorded as well were the percentage of T-units (thought units are

independent complete clauses containing a subject and object, as well as any connected

dependent clauses) in the body of text found in 1) poorly constructed sentences, 2) simple, and 3)

complex and compound sentences; the number of correctly spelled words that contained seven or

more letters, and the number of correctly spelled words with three or more syllables were also

recorded. This supplemental scoring for T-units allowed for greater consistency between raters

because it allowed them to objectively quantify the quality of sentences within each story (e.g., a

story was rated poorly because the majority of T-units were within poorly constructed

sentences).

Story Quality measured the overall coherence and quality of the writing sample. The

story beginning and ending were considered (e.g., introductory phrases, clear ending). The plot

and sequence of the story were examined for logical and smooth progression. The quality of the

prose, character development, use of emotions and action were scored on rating scales wherein

more points are awarded for better use of the target devices. In total, a score of 21 was possible.

Given the complexity of the scoring system and the subjectivity of some items, reliability coding

was conducted for each of the three subtests. To facilitate consistency in scoring, a supplemental

set of guidelines containing additional details was created by scorers.

The TOWL-III Story Composition was scored by two graduate students in psychology

and an undergraduate research assistant. Reliability coding was conducted for each of the three

subtests (Writing Mechanics, Writing Syntax, and Story Quality) due to the complexity of the

scoring system and the element of subjectivity on some items. A supplemental set of guidelines

with additional details was constructed by the scorers to aid in obtaining reliability and to

decrease ambiguity for difficult items (see Appendix A). Interclass correlation coefficients using

a two-way random model were calculated twice to determine consistency of scoring; once

between the first and third rater for stories collected in grade 5, and again between the second

and third rater for stories collected in grades 4 and 6 (Bartko, 1966; McGraw & Wong, 1996;

Rae, 1988). The third rater was the reliability coder, who double-scored a random 20 percent of

stories from each grade. Overall, good reliability was achieved for each subtest (refer to Table 1

for Cronbach’s Alphas).

Table 1 Interclass-Correlations for Inter-rater Reliability (Cronbach’s Alpha)

Raters Writing Mechanics Writing Syntax Story Quality

Rater 1 and Rater 3 .96 .93 .81

Rater 2 and Rater 3 .91 .91 .94

Procedure

The data examined in this research was part of a larger longitudinal study that began in

1996, involving four successive cohorts of children. Participants were recruited from eight

different schools (from four Boards of Education) in a large multi-ethnic metropolitan city in

Canada, and followed from grades 1 through 6. Schools were situated within low socio-

economic status communities. Children were tested annually over a six-year period. Various

cognitive, academic, and language skills were measured by trained graduate students and research

assistants, using test batteries administered in random order starting in grade 1. Depending on the

activity, testing occurred either individually or in groups. Participants were tested eight times:

twice in grades 1 and 2, and in grades 3 through 6. This dissertation focused only on data

collected for children who were tested on three subsequent occasions in grades 4, 5, and 6, as this

was when the writing measure was administered. Data imputation was not possible because the

writing test was administered only three times; therefore, only children with no missing data were

included in the study.

Consent forms prepared in English and the child’s home language were sent home to

parents in the participating schools. Of the children who returned consent forms, only those who

had no special disabilities (e.g., sensory impairment, autism) and whose parents had consented to

their participation were permitted to take part in the study. Due to language barriers, budgetary

constraints, and reluctance by the school districts to allow access to parents, it was not possible to

interview parents about specific home literacy experiences and the extent to which the native

language was used at home.

Data management and manipulation. With the exception of Reading Comprehension,

all data from standardized measures were not converted to percentiles or standardized scores, in

order to avoid bias associated with using norms standardized on L1 populations and to measure

growth over time; analyses were based on raw scores. ESS scores were used for all analyses

involving Reading Comprehension, so that progression in reading could be followed from year to

year. Prior to data analyses, all variables were examined for data entry error, missing values,

normalcy of distributions and other assumptions of univariate and multivariate analyses.

Although the normality assumption was slightly violated for the writing outcome variables, it

was decided to proceed with statistical analyses; according to the literature, the statistical

techniques used in this study are not sensitive to the violation of the normality assumption

(Green & Salkind, 2003; Tabachnik & Fidell, 2007; Zhang & Wilson, 2006).

Well established within the literature is the notion that reading and writing share common

underlying components (e.g., phonological awareness, working memory, vocabulary); as a result,

many literacy skills are associated (Berninger et al., 1994; Ehri, 1989; Juel, 1988; Juel et al.,

1985; McCutchen, 2000; Shanahan, 1984; 2006). Based on the research, it was reasonable to

expect that the variables in this study would also be highly correlated due to overlapping

constructs. Given the large number of variables used and the relationships among them,

multicollinearity was a presenting concern in this study. Reducing the number of individual

predictor variables by creating composite scores was one way of dealing with problems of

multicollinearity for variables that were highly correlated. As a result, data reduction techniques

were applied, using factor analysis. The necessity for data reduction was determined based on the

degree of association between variables; however, the final decision for combining multiple

variables into composite variables was both statistically and theoretically determined. Two

composite variables, Word-Level and Phonological Processing, were created using the SPSS

regression method. Word Reading, Pseudoword Reading and Spelling comprise the Word-Level

composite variable, while Phonological Processing was the combination of RAN, Memory and

Phonological awareness. Rather than simply adding the variable scores together, this method of

creating composites took into account the weight of each measure that relates it to the composite.

In subsequent analyses, factor scores were used as predictors.

Data analyses. The analyses conducted in the study are presented in three parts, each

addressing one of the three research questions. Research question 1 was addressed using the

original variables. The two composite variables created (Word-Level and Phonological

Processing) were used to address research questions 2 and 3.

Research Question 1: Do monolingual and ESL students differ significantly in their

performance on cognitive-linguistics, reading and writing measures?

To address the first research question, various preliminary statistics were conducted to

explore the data. First, means, standard deviations, and correlation coefficients were computed

to examine the patterns of relationships between the dependent and independent variables.

Second, change over time in monolingual and ESL groups were explored by applying one-way

repeated measures analyses of variance (ANOVA) for variables that were administered over the

three time points. Repeated measures ANOVAs were followed up by a series of paired sample t-

tests for variables where there were significant effects of time and/or time by group interactions.

Finally, one-way ANOVAs were performed to explore the difference in performance of

monolingual and ESL groups for the three cognitive and linguistics variables that were not

administered at all three time points (Syntax, Nonverbal Reasoning and Phonological

Awareness).

Research Question 2: What is the developmental progression of cognitive-linguistics,

reading and writing skills from grades 4 through 6?

Although the repeated-measures ANOVA statistical technique used to address research

question 1 permitted the exploration of the population-average trends over time, it did not allow

for modeling individual difference in the amount of change. In order to investigate individual

change over time, a statistical technique that permits the modeling of individual growth while

accounting for the longitudinal nature of the data was required; this study used multi-level

modeling as a statistical method appropriate for such analysis. Hierarchical Linear Modeling

(HLM6) growth model was applied in order to describe the initial status of children in grade 4

and changes over time for each measure (Raudenbusch, Bryk, Cheong, & Congdon, 2004). An

additional benefit of multi-level modeling was that it allowed for the examination of linear and

nonlinear growth trajectories. In the situation where there are only three waves of data, it is

recommended (Raudenbaush & Bryk, 2002; Singer &Willett, 2003) that a linear model be used,

as opposed to a nonlinear model (such as the introduction of a quadratic term). Given that this

study had three waves of data (grades 4, 5 and 6), an individual growth model with a linear

function was fitted. The multi-level models provided information about the average amount of

growth over the three grades, the amount of variation in children’s performance in grade 4

(initial status) and whether there was variation in the amount of growth.

In particular, monolingual and ESL groups were not examined individually to address the

second research question, as the main focus for this question was to explore individual

differences in the developmental progression and not to attempt to explain these differences at

this point. However, the models constructed in this question did provide indirect information

about monolingual and ESL group differences because when no variation in the amount of

change was detected, this result suggested that all children, regardless of their group status or any

other characteristics, demonstrated the same amount of growth over time.

Research Question 3: What variables measured in grade 4 predict writing skills in

grades 4 and 6, and their developmental progression from grades 4 through 6?

The third research question was designed to assess which skills (cognitive-linguistics and

reading skills) measured in grade 4 predict writing outcomes in grades 4 and 6. Further,

developmental progression from grades 4 through 6 was explored. This question was examined

by applying HLM6 growth models with each of the three writing measures as dependent

variables. The modeling strategies used for the three writing outcome variables varied depending

on the findings from models used in the second research question. Specifically, when variation in

the amount of growth in the models used for research question 2 was not significant, this

indicated that there were no differences in the amount of individual growth across students;

therefore, it was unnecessary to explore monolingual and ESL group differences in the amount

of growth and no predictor variables were used to examine growth for each group. In situations

where growth was significant but the variation in that growth was not different across children,

only the initial status in grade 4 and the final status in grade 6 were predicted. When there was

significant variation in growth across children, additional independent variables were included in

the model to predict both initial and final status (at grades 4 and 6) and variation in growth.

The decision to analyze the data together or separately for monolingual and ESL groups

was made based on the correlation matrices of the relationships among the variables in each

group. If the correlations were similar in the two groups, then they could be analyzed together, if

they were different, the L1 and L2 groups were analyzed separately.

The HLM6 model formulation for outcome variables that demonstrated no significant

variation in the amount of growth (no variation in slopes) was as follows:

Level-1:

Level:2:

The HLM6 model formulation for outcome variables that demonstrated significant

variation in the amount of growth (variation in slopes) was as follows:

Level-1:

Level-2:

Chapter Three: Results

This chapter will focus on findings from the descriptive statistics and present the results

for each research question. There were three writing outcome variables and ten predictor

variables that measure spelling, reading, cognitive, and linguistics skills in this study. Measures

were administered at three time points (grades 4, 5 and 6) with the following exceptions:

Phonological Awareness was administered twice, in grades 5 and 6, and Syntax and Nonverbal

Reasoning were administered only once, in grades 4 and 5, respectively (see Table 2). In an

effort to preserve as much data as possible, the two Phonological Awareness scores (measured in

grades 5 and 6) were converted into a single average score; this average score was used so that it

would be possible to compare Phonological Awareness with the other two variables (Syntax and

Nonverbal Reasoning) that were administered once. Raw scores were used to compute all

means, standard deviations, and correlations, and conduct comparisons between means when

examining separate variables.

Research Question #1

This section focuses on the relationships between variables (writing, reading, cognitive

and linguistics) and group differences between monolingual and ESL students. Additionally,

average changes in each measure over time and whether these changes are different for

monolingual and ESL groups were examined. The means and standard deviations for all

variables are presented in Table 3 for both language groups.

Descriptive statistics. The descriptive statistics indicated a general trend of

improvements over time for both monolingual and ESL groups for the cognitive-linguistics

variables (Vocabulary, Rapid Automatized Naming, Verbal Memory), word-level skills (Word

Reading, Pseudoword Reading and Spelling), and text-level skills (Reading Comprehension,

Writing Mechanics, Writing Syntax, and Story Quality). Although there was a small decline in

Verbal Memory for monolingual and ESL groups (from grades 4 to 5), both groups improved

from grades 4 through 6

Table 2 Tests Administered in Grades 4, 5, and 6

Note: RAN = Rapid Automatized Naming, PA = Phonological Awareness, + administered, – not administered

Measure Grade 4 Grade 5 Grade 6

Spelling + + +

Writing Mechanics + + +

Writing Syntax + + +

Story Quality + + +

Word Reading + + +

Pseudoword Reading + + +

Reading Comprehension + + +

Verbal Memory + + +

RAN + + +

PA – + +

Vocabulary + + +

Syntax + – –

Nonverbal Reasoning – + –

Table 3 Descriptive Statistics and One-Way Repeated Measures ANOVAs for Monolingual and ESL Children

N Reason = Nonverbal Reasoning, PA = Phonological Awareness, RAN = Rapid Automatized Naming, Memory = Verbal Memory, Word R = Word Reading, Pseudo W = Pseudoword Reading, R Comp = Reading Comprehension, S Quality = Story Quality, Lang = Language, TxL = Time by Language **< .01, *< .05

Grade 4 Grade 5 Grade 6 F Monolingual L2 Monolingual L2 Monolingual L2 Measures M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD Time Lang TxL N Reason ----- ----- ----- ----- 35.11 9.11 34.33 7.98 ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- Syntax 31.26 5.29 30.77 4.69 ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- Vocab 104.84 14.25 94.14 15.00 109.60 12.39 100.76 14.03 117.75 12.32 110.08 12.71 114.38** 21.43** 1.88 PA ----- ----- ----- ----- 26.91 8.14 27.78 7.09 29.33 6.21 29.40 6.64 ns ns ns RAN 2.10 0.45 2.09 0.46 2.37 0.54 2.29 0.48 2.41 0.56 2.47 0.50 81.56** 0.02 3.65* Memory 13.14 2.84 12.96 3.11 12.88 2.64 12.66 3.24 13.82 3.02 13.69 3.28 11.18** 0.16 0.02 Word R 33.63 4.53 33.62 5.85 37.30 5.60 36.79 6.17 38.32 5.29 38.23 6.17 110.16** 0.06 0.34 Pseudo W 27.18 8.20 26.78 9.46 30.65 7.62 30.23 8.74 32.26 7.98 31.57 8.59 79.77** 0.15 0.09 Spelling 28.84 4.80 28.70 5.39 31.93 4.85 31.61 5.67 33.18 4.18 33.53 5.01 226.35** 0.00 1.16 R Comp 478.00 42.52 461.29 42.16 496.77 48.94 481.21 53.23 500.21 56.77 483.86 55.01 26.71** 5.24* 0.02 Writing Mechanics 4.61 3.45 5.34 3.00 5.51 3.11 6.40 3.63 7.21 3.14 6.82 3.60 37.82** 0.76 4.62* Syntax 13.23 4.28 13.66 4.80 14.82 4.28 16.17 4.88 16.67 4.34 17.04 5.46 57.76** 1.10 1.52 S Quality 10.60 4.58 10.70 5.19 11.89 3.63 12.44 3.20 11.93 4.19 12.22 5.16 11.04** 0.29 0.25

To explore group differences between monolingual and ESL learners for all measures,

one-way repeated measures ANOVAs with three time points as a within factor and language

group as a between factor were conducted (see Table 4). There was a moderate main effect of

time for Verbal Memory, and a strong main effect of time for Rapid Automatized Naming and

Vocabulary, indicating significant improvements of these skills over time (see Figure 1). Post

hoc paired sample t-tests revealed that Vocabulary and Rapid Automatized Naming scores

significantly improved from grades 4 to 5 and grades 5 to 6. Verbal Memory significantly

increased only from grades 5 to 6 (see Table 4). There was a moderate main effect of language

status on Vocabulary, F(1, 173) = 21.43, p<.01, accounting for eleven percent of the variance;

the monolingual group outperformed the ESL group at each grade. A significant interaction

between time and language status for RAN suggested that the change between grades was

different for the monolingual and ESL groups. Post hoc repeated measures t-tests indicated that

both monolingual and ESL improved in their Rapid Automatized Naming scores from grades 4

to 5; however, only ESL students improved from grades 5 to 6. The effect size for the interaction

was modest, accounting for less than four percent of the variance.

The results of one-way repeated measures ANOVAs for Word Reading, Pseudoword

Reading and Spelling indicated no language group differences for these skills (see Figure 2).

There was significant improvement for each of the three variables across time for both

monolingual and ESL groups, as there was a strong main effect of time. Post hoc paired sample

t-tests indicated that the students improved from grades 4 to 5 and grades 5 to 6 on Pseudoword

and Spelling. Improvement for Word Reading was noted only from grades 4 to 5.

The gain in performance for Reading Comprehension was significant over time. In

particular, Reading Comprehension improved significantly between grades 4 and 5; no further

gain was noted between grades 5 and 6. The effect size for the effect of time was moderate,

accounting for 23 percent of the variance. A main effect of language status on Reading

Comprehension, F(1, 176) = 5.24, p < .05 was noted; monolingual students performed

significantly better than the ESL students. Again, the effect of language status on Reading

Comprehension was small, accounting for three percent of the variance.

There was a main effect of time for the three writing measures, indicating that

performances improved significantly over time (see Figure 3). Post hoc paired sample t-tests

indicated that the students improved from grades 4 to 5 and grades 5 to 6 on Writing Mechanics

and Writing Syntax. Improvement for Story Quality was noted only from grades 4 to 5. The

strength of the relationships of time to each writing variable, as measured by eta squared, ranged

from moderate to strong ( 2 = .11 to .39). There was a significant interaction between time and

language status for Writing Mechanics, F(2, 175) = 4.62, p < .05, suggesting that the changes

from grades 4 to 5 to 6 were significantly different for the monolingual and ESL groups;

although significant, the effect size was modest ( 2 = .05). Post hoc repeated measures t-tests

indicated that both monolingual and ESL improved in their Writing Mechanics scores from

grades 4 to 5; however, only monolinguals improved from grades 5 to 6.

Table 4

Summary of Post Hoc Analyses for Grade Effect on Cognitive-Linguistics, Reading, and Writing

Measures

Note: < significant increase, = no change

Measure Grade 4 to Grade 5 Grade 5 to Grade 6

Vocabulary < < Rapid Automatized Naming < <

Verbal Memory = < Word Reading < = Pseudoword Reading < < Spelling < < Reading Comprehension < = Writing Mechanics < <

Writing Syntax < < Story Quality < =

Figure 1. Monolingual and ESL Performance Means (in %) on Cognitive and Linguistics

Measures Across Grades 4, 5, and 6

*notes significant change from the previous year

Figure 2. Monolingual and ESL Performance Means (in %) on Word-Level Measures Across

Grades 4, 5, and 6

*notes significant change from the previous year

Figure 3. Monolingual and ESL Performance Means (in %) on Text-Level Measures Across

Grades 4, 5, and 6

*notes significant change from the previous year

For variables that were not administered at all three points (Syntax, Phonological Awareness and

Nonverbal Reasoning), L1 and L2 group differences were examined by conducting one-way

ANOVAs; the results of these analyses were non-significant, indicating that L1 and L2 groups

performed similarly on Syntax, Phonological Awareness, and Nonverbal Reasoning (see Table

5).

Table 5

The Effect of Language Group: Cognitive and Linguistics Variables Not Administered at All

Three Grades

Variables Source SS Df MS F p-value Syntax (Gr 4) Between Groups 9.48 1 9.48 0.40 0.53 Within Groups 4212.57 176 23.94 Total 4222.05 177 Nonverbal Reasoning (Gr 5) Between Groups 23.25 1 23.25 0.33 0.56 Within Groups 12296.15 176 69.86 Total 12319.4 177 Phonological Awareness (Gr 5 & 6) Between Groups 8.49 1 8.49 0.19 0.66 Within Groups 7746.64 176 44.02 Total 7755.13 177

Correlational analyses were conducted to explore the degree of associations among the

variables for monolingual and ESL groups at each grade (see Tables 6, 7, and 8 for correlations).

The ESL group correlations are above the diagonal and monolingual group correlations are

below the diagonal. Correlational analyses revealed high associations among the three word-

level skills across grades for both language groups, ranging from .71 to .82. Associations

between the writing measures ranged from moderate to high within both groups, suggesting they

shared common variance. Significant associations were noted among Reading Comprehension

and other measures for both groups across grades; however, some variability was noted for the

monolingual group, where some of the associations among Reading Comprehension and other

variables were non-significant. Overall, the pattern of correlations indicated moderate to strong

associations between the reading and writing skills.

There was some fluctuation of associations between the Vocabulary, Syntax, and

Nonverbal Reasoning measures with each other and with other variables across time; fewer

significant associations were noted, especially within the monolingual group. For example,

Vocabulary, Nonverbal Reasoning and Syntax had few significant associations with other

measures within the monolingual group. In fact, Syntax had no significant associations with any

of the four writing skills across time for the monolingual group; conversely, moderate

associations were noted over time for Syntax and text-level writing skills within the ESL group.

In summary, significant growth was noted for all cognitive-linguistics, oral language,

reading and writing measures; children demonstrated significant improvements on all skills

between grades 4 and 6. For the most part, the amount of growth experienced by monolingual

and ESL children was similar. That is, the rate of growth was not related to language status.

There were two exceptions: RAN and Writing Mechanics measures showed significant

differences in the amount of growth in monolingual and ESL groups. However, the differences,

as indicated by effect size, were very small. On most measures, the monolingual and ESL groups

had similar average scores. However, the monolingual significantly outperformed the ELS group

on Reading Comprehension (with a small effect size of 3%) and Vocabulary (with a moderate

effect size of 11%). No group differences were noted for variables that were not administered at

all three time points (Syntax, Phonological Awareness, and Nonverbal Reasoning).

Table 6

Intercorrelations of Variables for Monolingual and ESL Students at Grade 4 (Time 1)

Variables 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 1.Spelling .59** .70** .47** .71** .73** .59** .29** .44** .61** .34** .36** .10 2.Writing Mechanics .63** .57** .38** .57** .51** .55** .34** .20* .47** .25** .30** .25** 3.Writing Syntax .64** .73** .62** .60** .60** .53** .31** .47** .55** .35** .42** .20* 4.Story Quality .39** .47** .67** .43** .53** .45** .20* .35** .46** .32** .35** .18* 5.Word Reading .77** .47** .53** .38** .74** .50** .40** .39** .65** .32** .31** .22* 6.Pseudoword Reading .74** .46** .57** .41** .78** .42** .41** .48** .71** .26** .41** .11 7.Reading Comprehension .35** .38** .41** .48** .35** .38** .32** .30** .52** .56** .40** .41** 8.Memory .40** .39** .48** .23 .29* .44** .21 .25** .35** .11 .34** .34** 9.RAN .51** .59** .49** .36** .46** .51** .23 .29* .38** .14 .25** .02 10.PA .61** .38** .46** .38** .60** .74** .41** .41** .35** .38** .39** .20* 11.Vocabulary .12 .17 .27* .40** .10 .25 .54** .25 .15 .23 .38** .27** 12.Syntax .18 .09 .14 -.01 .17 .31* .30* .20 -.07 .25 .31* .24** 13.Nonverbal Reasoning .15 .08 .33* .27* .08 .20 .51** .30* .05 .27* .48** .30* **Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed), *Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed) Monolingual Correlations are below the diagonal, ESL Correlations are above the diagonal

Table 7

Intercorrelations of Variables for Monolingual and ESL Students at Grade 5 (Time 2)

Variables 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 1.Spelling .70** .69** .65** .78** .78** .48** .36** .57** .66** .35** .39** .13 2.Writing Mechanics .39** .79** .64** .61** .56** .52** .44** .37** .50** .31** .36** .17 3.Writing Syntax .55** .72** .76** .62** .66** .56** .52** .42** .58** .35** .41** .24** 4.Story Quality .50** .60** .75** .59** .66** .53** .39** .46** .59** .39** .45** .17 5.Word Reading .71** .33* .49** .44** .81** .54** .33** .45** .70** .38** .42** .08 6.Pseudoword Reading .83** .25 .54** .48** .77** .49** .33** .56** .77** .29** .36** .04 7.Reading Comprehension .32* .24 .41** .46** .43** .45** .40** .29** .52** .45** .39** .43** 8.Memory .56** .24 .40** .35** .58** .59** .25 .13 .40** .13 .42** .32** 9.RAN .50** .38** .44** .47** .31* .35** .14 .28* .45** .05 .23* -.05 10.PA .65** .20 .46** .41** .64** .78** .38** .37** .20 .38** .39** .20* 11.Vocabulary .22 .45** .44** .44** .32* 0.17 .63** .16 .21 .11 .33** .39** 12.Syntax .07 .16 .25 .08 .19 .28* .13 .08 -.06 .25 .30* .24** 13.Nonverbal Reasoning .11 .20 .34** .29* .32* .24 .51** .21 .01 .27* .49** .30* **Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed), *Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed) Monolingual Correlations are below the diagonal, ESL Correlations are above the diagonal

Table 8

Intercorrelations of Variables for Monolingual and ESL Students at Grade 6 (Time 3)

Variables 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

1.Spelling .70** .65** .53** .79** .82** .46** .42** .57** .72** .35** .39** .11 2.Writing Mechanics .60** .71** .47** .58** .57** .51** .41** .41** .53** .40** .42** .30** 3.Writing Syntax .52** .49** .65** .54** .53** .58** .40** .47** .54** .37** .45** .27** 4.Story Quality .32* .27* .36** .49** .49** .42** .30** .33** .51** .34** .49** .15 5.Word Reading .76** .53** .45** .40** .77** .45** .42** .44** .71** .42** .39** .08 6.Pseudoword Reading .77** .36** .35** .22 .74** .46** .43** .52** .75** .35** .38** .14 7.Reading Comprehension .29* .31* .36** .18 .50** .37** .37** .22* .49** .50** .43** .39** 8.Memory .58** .42** .57** .55** .56** .51** .38** .24** .45** .30** .36** .24** 9.RAN .55** .28* .39** .21 .41** .47** .12 .39** .40** .06 .11 -.04

10.PA .61** .33* .42** .41** .63** .70** .31* .53** .24 .41** .39** .20* 11.Vocabulary .40** .27* .38** .30* .35** .32* .68** .30* .18 .23 .42** .38** 12.Syntax .12 .22 .24 .14 .35** .21 .35** .05 -.12 .25 .31* .24** 13.Nonverbal Reasoning .11 .10 .46** .21 .26* .24 .52** .39** .00 .27* .59** .30* **Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed), *Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed) Monolingual Correlations are below the diagonal, ESL Correlations are above the diagonal

Research Question 2

The second question further examined developmental progression on the cognitive-

linguistics, reading and writing measures. The initial status of children at grade 4 and the growth

trajectory of each variable were examined by applying the hierarchical linear modeling (HLM)

technique, and the results which are presented explored change over time. Prior to specifying

models with predictors, it was useful to fit an unconditional model with a linear term (Time)

which did not include any predictor variables. The unconditional linear model provided

information about the average growth trajectory and individual variation in growth trajectories.

As previously indicated, monolingual and ESL groups were not examined individually for the

second research question. The main purpose of this question was to explore individual

differences in developmental progression and not to attempt to explain these differences.

However, group differences could be anticipated by examining the individual variation in change

from the unconditional models constructed for this question. When no individual variation was

detected in growth trajectories, this suggested that all children demonstrate a similar amount of

growth over time, thus indicating that the groups were not significantly different in their growth.

Cognitive-linguistics development. The Hierarchical Linear Models used to address this

research question produced two types of parameter estimates: fixed effects and random effects.

The fixed effects represent the average initial status (average scores at grade 4) and the average

growth rate (change in average scores in one year) within the population. The random effects

(variance components) indicate the amount of variation around the average initial status and the

average growth rate.

The results of HLM analyses showed that Vocabulary, Rapid Automatized Naming and

Verbal Memory improved significantly over time (see Table 9 for results). Note that the fixed

coefficient for Rapid Automatized Naming reflects the number of seconds needed for naming

letters; therefore, its negative value indicates improved speed. Only Vocabulary and Rapid

Automatized Naming had significant individual variation in growth rates. Variability among

individuals for Verbal Memory approached significant levels, at p =.06. The distribution of the

variance components was similar for all three measures, with the differences in initial status

accounting for 63.24% to 79.87% of the variance in the outcome scores and 2.74% to 4.77% of

the variance accounted for by the individual variation in growth trajectories. These results

suggested that children performed differently on Vocabulary, Rapid Automatized Naming and

Verbal Memory in grade 4; however, they changed similarly in their performances between

grades 4 and 6.

Table 9

Unconditional Linear Models of Growth in Vocabulary, Rapid Automatized Naming and Verbal

Memory

N=177 Vocabulary RAN Verbal Memory

Fixed effect

Average initial status, 00 97.07** (1.13) 24.95** (0.44) 12.80** (0.22)

Average linear growth rate, 10 7.51** (0.47) -1.85** (0.16) 0.36** (0.10)

Random effects

Level 1 Initial status, r0i 182.05** 29.76** 6.09**

Level 2

Growth rate, r1i 11.82** 1.02 ** 0.29 Level-1 error, eti 53.94 6.48 3.25

Variance partitioning:

total variance 247.81 37.26 9.63

initial status (%) 73.46 79.87 63.24 growth rate (%) 4.77 2.74 3.01 unexplained (%) 21.77 17.39 33.75

Note: **significant at the 0.01 level, *significant at the 0.05 level

Word-level development. Unconditional HLM models were fitted for Word Reading,

Pseudoword Reading and Spelling to explore their initial status and growth trajectories. All

three variable scores improved significantly over time; however, the random effect for the

growth rate was significant for only Pseudoword Reading, indicating that variation in growth

trajectories exists among individuals. The distribution of the variance components was similar

for all three measures, with the differences in initial status accounting for 72.97% to 87.28% of

the variance in the outcome scores and individual variation in growth trajectories accounting for

0.38% to 2.47%.

Table 10

Unconditional Linear Models of Growth in Word Reading, Pseudoword Reading, and Spelling

N=177 Word

Reading Pseudoword

Reading Spelling

Fixed effect

Average initial status, 00 33.95** (0.41) 27.24** (0.67) 28.96** (0.40)

Average linear growth rate, 10 2.34** (0.15) 2.45** (0.19) 2.32** (0.11)

Random effects Level 1 Initial status, r0i 22.81** 72.00** 25.45**

Level 2 Growth rate, r1i 0.12 2.05** 0.26 Level-1 error, eti 8.33 9.01 3.45

Variance partitioning total variance 31.26 83.06 29.16 initial status (%) 72.97 86.68 87.28 growth rate (%) 0.38 2.47 0.89 unexplained (%) 26.65 10.85 11.83

Note: **significant at the 0.01 level, *significant at the 0.05 level

Text-Level Development. HLM unconditional linear models were fitted for Reading

Comprehension, Writing Mechanics, Writing Syntax, and Story Quality to explore their initial

status and growth trajectories. All four text-level measures changed significantly over time;

improvement was noted for the three writing measures and Reading Comprehension. There was

significant individual variation in growth rates for Story Quality. Variability among individuals

for Writing Mechanics and Writing Syntax was not significant (p =.32 and p =.20, respectively).

The distribution of the variance components was similar for all three measures, with the

differences in initial status at grade 4 accounting for 58.34% to 63.77% of the variance in the

outcome scores, and individual variation in growth trajectories accounting for 0.77% to 11.46%.

Table 11

Unconditional Linear Models of Growth in Reading Comprehension, Writing Mechanics,

Writing Syntax and Story Quality

N=177 Reading Comprehension

Writing Mechanics Writing Syntax Story Quality

Fixed effect

Average initial status, 00 492.09** (4.16) 5.13** (0.23) 13.70** (0.34) 10.95** (0.34)

Average linear growth rate, 10 11.36 ** (1.64) 0.93** (0.11) 1.69** (0.15) 0.75** (0.19)

Random effects

Level 1 Initial status, r0i 2386.10** 6.05** 13.96** 14.34** Level 2 Growth rate, r1i 63.52 0.08 0.35 2.81** Level-1 error, eti 842.70 4.24 7.58 7.39

Variance partitioning:

total variance 3292.32 10.37 21.89 24.53

initial status (%) 72.47 58.34 63.77 58.42 growth rate (%) 1.93 0.77 1.60 11.46 unexplained (%) 25.60 40.89 34.63 30.13

Note: **significant at the 0.01 level, *significant at the 0.05 level

A summary of the findings from the analyses used to address this research question is

presented in Table 12. These results provided information to direct further steps for the

investigation of the third research question. As indicated in Table 12, all cognitive-linguistics,

oral language, reading and writing variables improved significantly between grades 4 and 6. The

individual variation in growth trajectories was significant for Vocabulary, RAN, Pseudoword

Reading, Reading Comprehension and Story Quality. For all other variables, individual

variation in growth trajectories was not significantly different among children, suggesting that

the rate of change was similar for all children, regardless of language group status or other

characteristics.

These findings informed subsequent analyses that addressed research question three.

Given that Story Quality was the only writing variable that had significant individual variation in

growth trajectory, predictors of growth were included in the models for this variable alone. For

Writing Mechanics and Writing Syntax, predictor variables were included in the models to

explore their relationships to the initial and final status (at grades 4 and 6), and there was no need

to predict individual growth because findings from the second research question indicated that

there was no significant individual variation in growth trajectories (Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002).

Table 12

Summary of Unconditional Linear Models of Growth Across Grades 4 to 6

Note: a + Significant Growth; b + Significant, – nonsignificant

Research Question 3

The third research question was designed to assess which cognitive-linguistics and

reading skills, measured in grade 4, predicted the three writing outcomes in grade 4 and

variations in developmental progression for Story Quality from grades 4 through 6. Before this

question could be addressed, possible data reduction had to be explored as the results from the

correlational analyses (see Research Question 1) indicated some clustering of variables; that is,

they share common underlying processes.

Data reduction and creating composite scores. Principal component analysis was

conducted to identify groups or clusters of variables for L1 and L2 groups at each time point.

Variables Average Growtha Individual Variation in Growth Trajectoriesb

Vocabulary + + Rapid Auto. Naming + + Verbal Memory + – Word Reading + – Pseudoword Reading + + Spelling + – Reading Comprehension + + Writing Mechanics + – Writing Syntax + – Story Quality + +

This statistical technique served three purposes at this stage of data preparation: 1) to explore and

understand the structure of the set of variables used; 2) to make the data set more manageable by

reducing the data into a smaller set of factors, while retaining as much of the original data as

possible; and 3) to address possible problems with multicollinearity for variables that were

collinear (see Table 13 to view factor groupings at each time point). Varimax rotation with

Kaiser Normalization was applied to each factor solution. This method of rotation attempts to

maximize the dispersion of loadings within factors, making clusters of factors more interpretable

as it tries to load smaller number of variables highly onto each factor (Field, 2005). An item was

considered to load on a factor if the loading was greater than or equal to .5.

Overall, two prominent factor loadings emerged at each grade (refer to Table 12 for

factor loadings) for both L1 and L2 groups, with one exception, where three factors emerged for

the monolingual group at grade 5. Given that only two factors emerged at the other grades, the

factor analysis for the L1 group at grade 5 was restricted to extract two factors. For the most

part, the variables loaded consistently on each of the two factors, with the exception of Verbal

Memory. Furthermore, the loadings were similar for both L1 and L2 groups. Significant

loadings on the first factor include word-level and phonological processing skills (Word

Reading, Pseudoword Reading, Spelling, RAN, and Phonological Awareness). The clustering of

these variables was not surprising, given the amount of research evidence that suggested

phonological processing skills have been found to be associated with word-level skills such as

word reading and spelling performance (Arab-Moghaddam & Senechal, 2001; Chiappe & Siegel,

1999; Chiappe, Siegel, & Wade-Woolley, 2002b; Geva et al., 2000; Wade-Woolley & Geva,

2000; Wade-Woolley & Siegel, 1997). Significant loadings on the second factor included

Reading Comprehension, Vocabulary, Syntax, and Nonverbal Reasoning. The clustering of

Vocabulary, Syntax, and Nonverbal Reasoning represents a shared variance that was best

described as cognitive-linguistic in nature. The results suggested that the complex task of

comprehension draws on some aspects of intelligence, vocabulary knowledge, and understanding

of syntax, whereas less demanding tasks (such as reading single words out of context) were

related to low-level phonological processing skills. Given that Reading Comprehension is a high-

order skill, it would not be expected to load with low-level phonological processing or word

level skills, as these skills were generally expected to have already been consolidated by grade 4

and there would be little variation in performance among students.

Table 13

The Results of Factor Analysis (Rotated Factor Loadings) for Monolingual and ESL Groups at Grades 4, 5, and 6

Grade 4 Grade 5 Grade 6 Monolingual ESL Monolingual ESL Monolingual ESL 1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2 Nonverbal Reasoning .04 .80 -.08 .78 .08 .80 -.17 .81 .11 .79 -.12 .76 Syntax .12 .59 .35 .54 .06 .53 .35 .55 .01 .64 .29 .62 Vocabulary .07 .79 .17 .71 .08 .81 .15 .69 .24 .77 .19 .77 Phonological Awareness .76 .30 .74 .35 .75 .25 .76 .39 .72 .27 .77 .38 RAN -.68 -.01 -.69 .04 -.56 .09 -.78 .09 -.68 .23 -.76 .14 Verbal Memory .47 .34 .40 .39 .71 .12 .28 .55 .69 .28 .43 .45 Word Reading .88 .06 .80 .29 .81 .33 .83 .31 .79 .36 .82 .30 Pseudoword Reading .89 .24 .89 .17 .90 .24 .90 .21 .86 .21 .87 .27 Spelling .87 .11 .81 .26 .91 .09 .83 .29 .90 .13 .88 .25 Reading Comprehension .30 .73 .42 .72 .29 .75 .41 .68 .27 .79 .37 .68

RAN=Rapid Automatized Naming Note: Bold type indicates significant factor loading

Based on the results of the correlational analyses, data reduction analyses, and theoretical

underpinnings, five variables were combined to create two new composite variables (hereafter

referred to as Word-Level and Phonological Processing) that reflected word-level and

phonological processing skills. Table 14 shows the means and standard deviations of the new

composite measures. The variables were created by requesting regression scores from the

exploratory factor analysis procedure in SPSS. Nine predictor variables were reduced to a total

of six after the data reduction phase.

The Word-Level variable was composed of Spelling, Word Reading, and Pseudoword

Reading, while the Phonological Processing variable was a combination of Rapid Automatized

Naming, Verbal Memory, and Phonological Awareness. Results of the one-way repeated

measures ANOVA, as reported above in Table 3, indicated that Reading Comprehension and

Vocabulary were the only two variables where group differences were observed and combining

them with other variables potentially would have attenuated this effect; thus, they remained in

further analyses as separate predictors. Correlational analyses indicated differing degrees of

associations between Syntax and Nonverbal Reasoning for the L1 and L2 groups. Keeping

Syntax and Nonverbal Reasoning separate, rather than collapsing them into a composite score,

allowed for the opportunity to explore the effects of these variables on their own. Thus,

composite scores for Word-Level and Phonological Processing were used in further analyses,

while other cognitive and linguistics measures were kept as separate predictor variables, so their

individual relationships to writing variables could be observed.

Descriptive statistics after data reduction. New descriptive statistics were computed to

explore the relationships of the composite variables with the other measures. Overall, both

groups showed a general trend of improvements over time for the Phonological Processing and

Word-Level variables. Correlational analyses were conducted to explore the degree of

associations of the new composite variables with the other variables (see Tables 15, 16 and 17,

for correlations). Overall, the pattern of associations of the new composite variables was similar

to previous correlation analyses conducted prior to performing the data reduction. Both

Phonological Processing and Word-Level variables were consistently associated with each other,

Reading Comprehension and all the writing variables, for both language groups at the three time

points. The cognitive-linguistics measures (Vocabulary, Syntax, and Nonverbal Reasoning)

fluctuated in their associations with other variables for monolingual students.

Table 14

Means and Standard Deviations for Composite Variables

Variables Monolingual ESL M SD M SD Phonological Processing Grade 4 -0.16 0.99 -0.17 1.02 Phonological Processing Grade 5 0.00 0.90 -0.05 1.02 Phonological Processing Grade 6 0.16 0.98 0.22 0.99 Word-Level Grade 4 -0.42 0.84 -0.45 0.98 Word-Level Grade 5 0.14 0.88 0.07 1.02 Word-Level Grade 6 0.35 0.84 0.34 0.97

Table 15

Monolingual and ESL Correlations Among Composite Scores and Variables of Interest at Grade 4 (Time 1)

Variables 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 Writing Mechanics .57** .38** .55** .61** .45** .25** .30** .25** 2 Writing Syntax .73** .62** .53** .70** .60** .35** .42** .20* 3 Story Quality .47** .67** .45** .53** .47** .32** .35** .18* 4 Reading Comprehension .38** .41** .48** .56** .51** .56** .40** .41** 5 Word-Level .57** .63** .43** .40** .73** .34** .40** .15 6 Phonological Processing .54** .60** .43** .37** .74** .27** .44** .25** 7 Vocabulary .17 .27* .40** .54** .18 .29* .38** .27** 8 Syntax .09 .14 -.01 .30* .25 .18 .31* .24** 9 Nonverbal Reasoning .08 .33* .27* .51** .16 .29* .48** .30* **Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed), *Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed) Monolingual correlations are below the diagonal, ESL correlations are above the diagonal

Table 16

Monolingual and ESL Correlations Among Composite Scores and Variables of Interest at Grade 5 (Time 2)

Variables 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 Writing Mechanics .79** .64** .52** .67** .57** .31** .36** .17 2 Writing Syntax .72** .76** .56** .71** .66** .35** .41** .24** 3 Story Quality .60** .75** .53** .68** .64** .39** .45** .17 4 Reading Comprehension .24 .41** .46** .54** .54** .45** .39** .43** 5 Word-Level .35** .57** .51** .43** .75** .37** .42** .09 6 Phonological Processing .34** .58** .55** .36** .84** .24** .47** .21* 7 Vocabulary .45** .44** .44** .63** .26* .20 .33** .39** 8 Syntax .16 .25 .08 .13 .20 .15 .30* .24** 9 Nonverbal Reasoning .20 .34** .29* .51** .24 .24 .49** .30* **Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed), *Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed) Monolingual correlations are below the diagonal, ESL correlations are above the diagonal

Table 17

Monolingual and ESL Correlations Among Composite Scores and Variables of Interest at Grade 6 (Time 3)

Variables 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 Writing Mechanics .71** .47** .51** .66** .58** .40** .42** .30** 2 Writing Syntax .49** .65** .58** .62** .61** .37** .45** .27** 3 Story Quality .27* .36** .42** .54** .51** .34** .49** .15 4 Reading Comprehension .31* .36** .18 .50** .50** .50** .43** .39** 5 Word-Level .54** .47** .34** .43** .78** .41** .42** .12 6 Phonological Processing .42** .58** .50** .35** .80** .35** .40** .18* 7 Vocabulary .27* .38** .30* .68** .39** .30* .42** .38** 8 Syntax .22 .24 .14 .35** .25 .09 .31* .24** 9 Nonverbal Reasoning .10 .46** .21 .52** .23 .30* .59** .30* **Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed), *Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed) Monolingual correlations are below the diagonal, ESL correlations are above the diagonal

HLM modeling of writing outcomes. The hierarchical model building approach was

used to address research question 3 and multiple models were built in a sequential manner to

investigate the individual contribution of predictor variables in explaining variance of the

outcome variables. Predictors of the initial status were explored for Writing Mechanics and

Writing Syntax variables, whereas predictors of both the initial status and growth trajectory was

explored for Story Quality. Given that there appeared to be differences between monolingual and

ESL students (according to the correlation matrices, we must address these differences by

analyzing monolingual and ESL groups separately), separate HLM models were built for

monolingual and ESL groups.

Age was the first predictor variable added to the model, followed by Nonverbal

Reasoning variables. In situations where neither Age nor Nonverbal Reasoning was significantly

related to the outcome measure, they were removed from subsequent models. Each model was

compared with the previous model using the deviances and chi square tests of goodness of fit.

Only the results for the final model will be presented for each outcome.

Age was not a significant predictor of initial status or variation in growth for all three

writing measures in both language groups. That is, student performance in grades 4 or 6 on the

Writing Mechanics or Writing Syntax writing measures could not be predicted by Age; similarly,

it did not predict initial status and variation in growth across children for the Story Quality

writing measure. Therefore, Age was not included in subsequent models. In contrast, Nonverbal

Reasoning was significantly related to the initial status at grades 4 and 6 for all three writing

outcome measures. This result suggests that children who had higher Nonverbal Reasoning

scores also demonstrated higher scores on each of the writing outcome measures in grades 4 and

6. However, Nonverbal Reasoning was not significantly related to the growth rate for Story

Quality. Given that Nonverbal Reasoning was a significant predictor of initial status in grades 4

and 6, it was retained for further modeling.

The results for the final models with all six predictor variables for the three writing

outcome measures for both groups are presented in Tables 18, 19, and 20. As can be seen from

Table 18, the HLM models indicated similar findings for monolingual and ESL students. Word-

Level and Reading Comprehension significantly predicted Writing Mechanics for both language

groups in grades 4 and 6. The parameter estimates for both Word-Level and Reading

Comprehension were positive, thus indicating that children who had higher Word-Level and

Reading Comprehension skills in grade 4 are more likely to have better Writing Mechanics skill

in grades 4 and 6; this was true for both language groups. It is interesting to note that the

differences in initial status accounted for approximately 38% of the variance in grades 4 and 6

for L1 children. However, in the ESL group, the variance increased from 35% to 55% between

grades 4 and 6. This increase suggests that ESL children demonstrated greater individual

variation in their Writing Mechanics skills in grade 6 then they did in grade 4.

The results of HLM modeling for Writing Syntax are presented in Table 19. They

indicated some differences between monolingual and ESL children. In particular, Nonverbal

Reasoning, Phonological Processing, Word-Level and Reading Comprehension significantly

predicted Writing Syntax for monolingual children in grades 4 and 6. All parameters estimates

for each prediction were positive, suggesting that children who had high Nonverbal Reasoning,

Phonological Processing, Word-Level and Reading Comprehension were more likely to perform

better on Writing Syntax. In comparison to ESL learners, monolingual children demonstrated

greater variance in both grades, approximately 43%, suggesting that they demonstrated greater

variation among individuals within the group. For ESL children, Syntax, Word-Level, and

Reading Comprehension predicted Writing Syntax in grades 4 and 6. Children with high Syntax,

Word-Level, and Reading Comprehension were more likely to have higher Writing Syntax. The

percentage of variance explained was 28%, suggesting that the ESL group had less variability

among individuals compared to their monolingual counterparts.

Table 20 presents the HLM modeling results for Story Quality. The outcomes indicated

that different variables predicted Story Quality for monolingual and ESL students, and between

grades 4 and 6. In grade 4, Syntax and Reading Comprehension significantly predicted Story

Quality. The parameter estimate for Syntax was negative, thus suggesting that monolingual

children who were lower in grammatical skills had higher Story Quality. Phonological

Processing significantly predicted Story Quality for monolingual students in grade 6. The

percentage of variance explained by the initial status decreased from 40% in grade 4 to 32% in

grade 6, suggesting that there was more variability among individuals in the lower grade. Story

Quality was significantly predicted by Word-Level in grade 4. ESL children who had higher

word-level skills were more likely to have better Story Quality. By grade 6, ESL student Story

Quality was predicted by Syntax, Word-level, and Reading Comprehension. The percentage of

variance explained by the initial status was 44% and 37% in grades 4 and 6 respectively.

Although an earlier HLM model of growth for Story Quality indicated there was significant

individual variation in growth among monolingual and ESL students for Story Quality, the

growth itself could not be explained by any of the predictor variables.

Overall, Age was not a significant predictor of the three writing performance measures in

grades 4 and 6; therefore it was not included in subsequent analyses. The results are presented

for models with intercepts for grades 4 and 6, for both monolingual and ESL students (see Table

21). Children performed similarly on Writing Mechanics, Writing Syntax and Story Quality

regardless of language status. Word-Level and Reading Comprehension skills were significant

predictors of all Writing Mechanics and Writing Syntax in grades 4 and 6, for both L1 and L2

learners. Children who demonstrated strong word-level and reading comprehension skills were

likely to have better knowledge of mechanics and grammar/syntax in composition writing.

Although the relationship between Word-Level and Reading Comprehension was a bit variable

for Story Quality across grades, a relationship did exist for each language group; thus it is fair to

suggest that children with strong word-level and reading comprehension skills produced stories

that were qualitatively better than those of their peers who had weaker skills. Syntax appears to

play a greater role in writing for ESL students, as it significantly predicted Writing Syntax (in

grades 4 and 6) and Story Quality (in grade 6). Phonological processing was important for ESL

learners in predicting Writing Syntax (in grades 4 and 6) and Story Quality (grade 6). Nonverbal

reasoning was significant in predicting Writing Syntax for monolingual learners in grades 4 and

6, but not any of the writing skills for ESL students. Finally, in terms of individual variation in

growth from grades 4 through 6, none of the predictor variables predicted Story Quality

performance across time. Although there was significant individual variation in growth, that

growth could not be explained by any of the predictor skills examined in this study.

Table 18

Two-Level Conditional Linear Model for Writing Mechanics with All Predictors

N=171 Writing Mechanics Monolingual-Gr4 ESL-Gr4 Monolingual-Gr6 ESL-Gr6 Fixed effect Model for initial status, 0i Intercept, 00 -3.93 (3.42) -1.87 (2.19) -1.29 (3.36) -0.41(2.12) Nonverbal Reasoning, 01 -0.03 (0.03) 0.03 (0.02) -0.03 (0.03) 0.03 (0.02) Phonological Processing, 02 0.38 (0.44) -0.02 (0.27) 0.38 (0.44) -0.02 (0.27) Vocabulary, 03 -0.03 (0.02) -0.01 (0.01) -0.03 (0.02) -0.01 (0.01) Syntax, 04 0.01 (0.04) 0.05 (0.04) 0.01 (0.04) 0.05 (0.04) Word-Level, 05 1.20* (0.54) 1.92** (0.31) 1.20* (0.54) 1.92** (0.31) Reading Comprehension, 06 0.03** (0.01) 0.01* (0.01) 0.03** (0.01) 0.01* (0.01) Model for growth rate, 1i Intercept, 10 1.32** (0.21) 0.73** ( 0.13) 1.32** (0.21) 0.73** (0.13) Random effects

Initial status, r0i 2.92** 2.20** 2.92** 2.19** Growth rate, r1i Level-1 error, eti 4.84 4.00 4.84 4.00

Variance partitioning: total variance 7.76 6.2 7.76 6.19 initial status (%) 37.63% 35.48% 37.63% 54.75% unexplained (%) 62.37% 64.52% 62.37% 64.62%

Table 19

Two-Level Conditional Linear Model for Writing Syntax with All Predictors

N=171 Writing Syntax Monolingual-Gr4 ESL-Gr4 Monolingual-Gr6 ESL-Gr6 Fixed effect Model for initial status, 0i Intercept, 00 2.95 (3.36) 1.49 (2.91) 6.29 (3.30) 4.87 (2.88) Nonverbal Reasoning, 01 0.09*(0.04) 0.02 (0.03) 0.09* (0.04) 0.02 (0.03) Phonological Processing, 02 1.19*(0.52) 0.71 (0.42) 1.19*(0.52) 0.71 (0.42) Vocabulary, 03 -0.03 (0.03) 0.00 (0.02) -0.03 (0.03) 0.00 (0.02) Syntax, 04 0.01 (0.05) 0.12* (0.05) 0.01 (0.05) 0.12* (0.05) Word-Level, 05 1.25* (0.61) 2.31** (0.38) 1.25* (0.61) 2.31** (0.38) Reading Comprehension, 06 0.02* (0.01) 0.02** (0.01) 0.02* (0.01) 0.02** (0.01) Model for growth rate, 1i Intercept, 10 1.67** (0.25) 1.69** ( 0.19) 1.67** (0.25) 1.69** ( 0.19) Random effects

Initial status, r0i 4.71** 3.23** 4.71** 3.23** Growth rate, r1i Level-1 error, eti 6.19 8.76 6.19 8.76

Variance partitioning: total variance 10.9 11.99 10.9 11.99 initial status (%) 43.21% 26.93% 43.21% 26.94% unexplained (%) 56.79% 73.06% 56.79% 73.06%

Table 20

Two-Level Conditional Linear Model for Story Quality with All Predictors N=171 Story Quality Monolingual-Gr4 ESL-Gr4 Monolingual-Gr6 ESL-Gr6 Fixed effect Model for initial status, 0i Intercept, 00 -1.75 (5.26) 1.96 (4.17) 2.76 (4.78) 1.16 (4.48) Nonverbal Reasoning, 01 0.03 (0.06) 0.01 (0.05) -0.02 (0.05) 0.04 (0.05) Phonological Processing, 02 0.46 (0.60) 0.58 (0.55) 1.85**(0.62) 0.74 (0.54) Vocabulary, 03 0.05 (0.03) 0.03 (0.02) 0.04 (0.03) -0.01 (0.03) Syntax, 04 -0.22* (0.06) 0.06 (0.09) 0.02 (0.10) 0.16* (0.08) Word-Level, 05 1.54 (0.78) 1.63** (0.55) -0.41 (0.62) 2.20** (0.52) Reading Comprehension, 06 0.03* (0.01) 0.01 (0.01) 0.01 (0.01) 0.03* (0.01) Model for growth rate, 1i Intercept, 10 2.25 (3.41) -3.89 (3.21) 2.25 (3.41) -1.94 (3.02) Nonverbal Reasoning, 11 -0.02 (0.04) -0.04 (0.03) -0.02 (0.04) 0.02 (0.03)

Phonological Processing, 12 0.70 (0.46) 0.41 (0.32) 0.70 (0.46) 0.03 (0.24)

Vocabulary, 13 -0.00 (0.02) -0.01 (0.02) -0.00 (0.02) -0.01 (0.01) Syntax, 14 0.12 (0.06) 0.09 (0.06) 0.12 (0.06) 0.04 (0.05) Word-Level, 15 -0.97 (0.52) -0.60 (0.38) -0.97 (0.52) -0.09 (0.27) Reading Comprehension, 16 -0.01 (0.01) 0.01 (0.01) -0.01 (0.01) 0.01 (0.01) Random effects

Initial status, r0i 6.66** 8.18** 4.65** 5.43** Growth rate, r1i 2.06** 3.00** 2.05** 0.40 Level-1 error, eti 7.77 7.30 7.78 8.47

Variance partitioning: total variance 16.49 18.48 14.48 14.3 initial status (%) 40.39% 44.26% 32.11% 37.97% growth rate (%) 12.49% 16.23% 14.16% 2.80% unexplained (%) 47.12% 39.50% 53.73% 59.23%

Table 21 Summary of Significant Predictors of Writing Outcome Measures

Predictor Variables Writing

Mechanics Writing Syntax

Story Quality

Mono Gr4

ESL Gr4

Mono Gr6

ESL Gr6

Mono Gr4

ESL Gr4

Mono Gr6

ESL Gr6

Mono Gr4

ESL Gr4

Mono Gr6

ESL Gr6

Predicting Intercept Status From Grade 4

Nonverbal Reasoning – – – – + – + – – – – – Phonological Processing – – – – + – + – – – + – Vocabulary – – – – – – – – – – – – Syntax – – – – – + – + + – – + Word-Level + + + + + + + + – + – + Reading Comprehension + + + + + + + + + – – + Predicting Growth Rate From Grades 4 Through 6

Nonverbal Reasoning – – Phonological Processing – – Vocabulary – – Syntax – – Word-Level – – Reading Comprehension – –

Note: + Significant, – Non-significant, Mono = monolingual

Discussion

The results of the present study indicate that children’s cognitive-linguistics, oral

language, word- and text-level reading and writing skills administered at the three grades

improved over time, from grades 4 through 6. The improvement in literacy skills is not

surprising, as it would be expected that children would improve simply due to cognitive maturity

and increased knowledge acquired from academic instruction each year. Additionally, the

findings show that monolingual and ESL children demonstrate similar skills on most of the

literacy skills measured in this study.

The Developmental Progression of Cognitive-Linguistics Skills

The results of the ANOVA analysis indicate that monolingual and ESL children

demonstrated similar performances on the Verbal Memory and RAN measures. There is

significant individual variation in growth among students for Verbal Memory; however, the

difference in growth trajectory is not related to language status. Similarly, monolingual and ESL

children’s performance on the Phonological Awareness measure is not significantly different.

Overall, the results of the present study suggest that monolingual and ESL students in grades 4,

5, and 6 share similar developmental pathways for phonological awareness, phonological

recoding in lexical access, and verbal memory. According to the existing literature, monolingual

and ESL children are similar in their phonological awareness skill development from an early

age and this pattern continues as they get older, although there appears to be a noticeable gap

between monolingual and ESL children, with monolingual children having an advantage for

lexical retrieval and verbal memory at the onset. However, ESL children eventually catch up,

sometimes even surpassing monolingual peers; the early gap between the children disappears

over time after increased facility with the language (Chiappe, Siegel, & Wade-Woolley, 2002;

Lesaux & Siegel, 2003; Geva et al., 2000). Taken together, the findings from this present study

are consistent with our hypothesis, that monolingual and ESL children would display similar

developmental pathways for cognitive-linguistics skills. By the time children reach grade 4, ESL

children are indistinguishable from their monolingual peers in terms of lower level cognitive-

linguistics skills.

The Developmental Progression of Oral Language Skills

In keeping with the existing literature, the results from this present study indicate that

monolingual students demonstrate significantly higher scores on Vocabulary in comparison to

the ESL group (Farnia & Geva, 2010). Monolingual children in grade 4 start out with higher

scores on Vocabulary, and this gap does not diminish over time. Vocabulary has significant

individual variation in growth rate; however, the variability among individuals is not attributed to

language status. Although the children perform differently on Vocabulary in grade 4, they

change similarly in their performances between grades 4 and 6.

In contrast to Ball’s (2003) study, a significant difference favouring the monolingual

group is not found in this present study for Syntax. Children in both groups are similar in their

syntactic knowledge measured in grade 4. The discrepancy between the findings from this

present study and Ball’s results can perhaps be explained by the differences between the two

tests used to measure syntactic awareness. The test used in this research requires students to

listen to sentences and determine whether they are syntactically correct or incorrect (receptive

language skills), whereas the task used in Ball’s study requires students to create

syntactically/grammatically correct sentences using key words (expressive language skills). Ours

is a test of receptive language, whereas Ball’s language measure places greater demands on

expressive language skills. It is possible that the syntax judgment task in this study is cognitively

less demanding in comparison to the formulated sentences task in Ball’s research because it

requires no oral expression or construction of ideas. The judgment task in this study requires the

recognition of something “sounding” correct or incorrect, whereas formulating a sentence may

be more cognitively demanding because it requires greater recall of syntax/grammar knowledge,

which is likely more difficult because there is no cuing involved. The non-significant finding in

our study may indicate that ours is a less sensitive test of oral language expression and not

linguistically demanding enough; a more challenging task may be required to be able to detect

the group difference in syntactic skills between ESL and monolingual groups, if it exists.

The Developmental Progression of Word-Level Reading and Writing Skills

The findings from this present study indicate there are no group differences for student

performances on any of the word-level tasks. Furthermore, in terms of growth, there is

significant individual variation in growth trajectory for Pseudoword Reading; however, the

variation cannot be attributed to language status. Individual variation in growth trajectories is not

significantly different among children for Word Reading and Spelling. This suggests that the

rates of change are similar for all children, regardless of language group status or other

characteristics. These results support previous findings that indicate monolingual and ESL

children demonstrate similar development for word-level skills. According to the literature, any

group differences that do exist for these skills have been shown to disappear in middle school

after greater exposure to literacy instruction (Chiappe, Siegel, & Gottardo, 2002; Chiappe,

Siegel, &Wade-Woolley, 2002; Droop & Verhoeven, 2003; Geva, et al., 2000; Lesaux & Siegel,

2004; Lipka & Siegel, 2007; Verhoeven, 1990; Wade-Woolley & Siegel, 1997; Wang & Geva,

2003).

Further evidence to suggest that there would be no language group differences among the

word-level skills is evident from the fact that there are non-significant language group

differences for the cognitive-linguistics skills in this study. The research literature examining L2

reading development provides evidence that implicates phonological processing skills,

phonological memory, and Rapid Automatized Naming as the underlying cognitive-linguistic

processes important for English reading and writing (Chiappe & Siegel, 1999; Jongejan et al.,

2007; Wade-Woolley & Geva, 2000; Wade-Woolley & Siegel, 1997). We did not expect to find

group differences for word-level reading and writing skills because of the well-established

relationships between these cognitive-linguistics skills and word-level reading and writing

outcomes. Overall, the findings from the present study provide support for our hypothesis that

there is no significant language group difference for lower-order text-level reading and writing

skills. A gap between the groups is not expected for word-level skills for children in this study,

especially since the ESL learners have had relevant literacy and language instruction. That is, by

the time ESL students reach grade 4, word-level skills is expected to function in the background

at an automatic level because the children have had adequate exposure to English instruction.

The Developmental Progression of Text-Level Reading and Writing Skills

At the same time, monolingual and ESL groups demonstrate significant growth over time

for Reading Comprehension. A closer examination of the trajectory of change indicates that all

the children demonstrate significant growth from grades 4 to 5, but not from grades 5 to 6. There

is a significant group difference for Reading Comprehension, where ESL children are

disadvantaged relative to monolingual children. This finding supports existing research and our

hypothesis that ESL learners would demonstrate lower levels of achievement on measures of

reading comprehension and that the gap between monolingual and ESL children does not close

over time (Aarts & Verhoeven, 1999; Leseaux et al., 2006; Verhoeven, 1990, 2000). Although a

group difference is observed between monolingual and ESL learners on Reading

Comprehension, we acknowledge that the relationship of language status and Reading

Comprehension in our study is weak, accounting for only 3% of the variance; therefore, caution

is warranted while interpreting this finding. The modest variance explained by the group

difference may explain why the individual variation in growth trajectories is not significant for

Reading Comprehension. Additional research with older subjects (e.g., high school and

university/college students) is required to further explore whether this difference in reading

comprehension between monolingual and ESL learners changes.

There are significant improvements over time for all writing measures, as indicated by

the children’s increase in scores across grades. The growth for Writing Mechanics and Writing

Syntax is significant across all grades; however, Story Quality improved from grades 4 to 5, but

not from grades 5 to 6. While it is not surprising to find that children demonstrated increases in

their writing skills for all three writing measures, it is interesting to note that their growth is

substantial, as the amount of growth of each writing variable ranges from moderate to strong.

The substantial growth suggests that the time period between grades 4 through 6 is potentially a

critical stage in the development of children’s writing skills, where the trajectory of growth is

occurring rapidly. The rapid change can be indicative of the change in curriculum expectations

across grades 4 through 6. As students reach this level in school, there is greater focus on writing

development. Teachers provide more instruction for writing (e.g., how to develop an argument,

edit, and proof read) and assign written tasks more frequently. Although in lower grades,

teachers test student knowledge by relying on oral or short written answers because children

cannot write long compositions, students in higher grades are expected to demonstrate their

knowledge through writing (e.g., essays, book reports) as they develop better writing skills.

In terms of group differences for writing skills, monolingual and ESL students perform

similarly on all three writing measures: Writing Mechanics, Writing Syntax, and Story Quality.

The lack of group differences for the writing subcomponents is consistent with our hypothesis,

that monolingual and ESL children would demonstrate similar development in their writing

skills. At the same time, there is significant interaction between time and language status for

Writing Mechanics, suggesting that the change between grades 4, 5, and 6 is significantly

different for the monolingual and ESL groups. However, a visual inspection of the graph of

performance means suggests that the pattern of change is not all that different between

monolingual and ESL children (see Figure 3); not surprising, the effect size for the interaction is

modest, indicating that although significant, the difference is not very large. Both monolingual

and ESL children demonstrate significant growth from grades 4 to 5; however, only monolingual

students improve significantly from grades 5 to 6.

The individual variation in growth trajectories is significant for Story Quality, but not for

Writing Mechanics or Writing Syntax. However, the individual variation in growth trajectory

for Story Quality is not related to a significant group difference. Overall, the analyses of the

growth patterns indicate that the majority of the variance is explained by children’s initial

performance in grade 4. In other words, very little of the variance for Writing Mechanics and

Writing Syntax performance can be explained by variation in the growth rate; thus there is a

huge portion of variance that cannot be explained.

Interestingly, a greater portion (11%) of the variance in the children’s performance on

Story Quality is explained by the variation in growth rate (Table 11); there is variation in growth

among students that is not explained by their initial status in grade 4. Further exploration of the

potential variables that can predict the growth trajectory of Story Quality is warranted. Our

results indicate that monolingual and ESL students’ writing quality is impacted by various

literacy skills.

Taken together, our findings provide evidence to support the notion that ESL children lag

behind their monolingual counterparts in reading comprehension. However, despite this

difference, a similar pattern is not discovered when we compare the students on the text-level

writing measures; both language groups demonstrate similar performances. Despite being at a

disadvantage in vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension development, ESL children

in grades 4 and 6 are able to write stories that are similar to L1 classmates. In terms of the

writing measures, most of the variance in growth is explained by the children’s initial

performance in grade 4 for Writing Mechanics, Writing Syntax and Story Quality. However,

individual variation in growth among children is noted only for Story Quality, suggesting that

something else, other than the initial grade 4 performance, may be impacting the growth of this

particular writing component. Although a group difference is not detected for Story Quality, the

significant variation in growth trajectory alludes to the possibility that there may be some other

variable(s) impacting individual differences in growth; for example, language status. It is

possible that data taken in later stages of learning, such as high school, could reveal a group

difference between L1 and L2 students. We know from the existing research for adult L2 writers

that poor vocabulary knowledge contributes to higher level skills such as reading comprehension

and writing difficulties.

Predictors of Writing Skills

Few researchers have examined the development of writing over time, and there is

limited knowledge to guide us in our hypotheses about variables that influence writing skills

development. Therefore we relied on existing literacy models (Simple View and Component

Model) to guide our understanding of writing development. The available research on reading

comprehension was also essential in guiding this research. We propose that Writing Mechanics,

Writing Syntax, and Story Quality are considered high-order skills, and comparable to reading

comprehension; therefore, we hypothesized that similar skills would predict writing and reading

comprehension. Using our understanding of reading comprehension development, L2 literacy

and literacy theories, we anticipated that aspects of the Simple View of Reading model, namely,

Phonological Processing, Word-Level, Syntax, Vocabulary and Reading Comprehension would

significantly predict each of the writing outcomes.

Overall, the HLM analyses indicate that Word-Level and Reading Comprehension skills

appear to be important for three writing measures. The pattern of relationship differences noted

between ESLs and monolinguals for Writing Syntax is contrary to what was expected, in that

lower-level phonological processing skills predicted writing for monolinguals but not ESLs. The

findings for Story Quality were difficult to interpret. It is unclear whether the pattern of

relationships seen here is related to a developmental shift or the product of the scoring

procedures for the Story Quality subtest. By keeping each of the writing variables separate, it

was possible to see how the various skills related to each aspect of writing.

Predictors of Writing Mechanics. The results for the final models with all six predictor

variables indicate that Word-Level and Reading Comprehension skills at grades 4 and 6 are

significant predictors of Writing Mechanics for both L1 and L2 learners. This result suggests that

having good word-level skills, such as word reading and spelling, is associated with having

better mechanical skills in writing (spelling, capitalization, and punctuation). Being proficient in

the lower word-level skills frees up mental energy for students to attend to the basic aspects of

writing (e.g., mechanics of writing). For example, children who struggle to spell expend

significant energy trying to recall accurate spelling of words, so that they often neglect basic

punctuation in writing (e.g., capitalization and periods). When the spellings of high-frequency

words are automatic, the writer can divert attention to other demanding tasks, such as grammar

and plot development (Bereiter, 1980; Gundlach, 1981; Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1986). The fact

that the Word-Level composite is a significant predictor indicates that, for the monolingual and

ESL children in this study, lower word-level skills are important and not functioning

automatically in the background, as would be expected by the SVR theory. The relationship

between the Word-Level composite (which includes Word Reading, Pseudoword Reading, and

Spelling) and Writing Mechanics is partly expected because one component of scoring for the

Writing Mechanics variable includes correct spelling within the story. There is evidence from

longitudinal studies that early word recognition significantly predicts later reading

comprehension (Cutting & Scarborough, 2006; Parrila et al., 2004). Given the significant

associations between word recognition and reading comprehension within the literature, along

with the finding that Word-Level is a significant predictor of Writing Mechanics in our study, we

are not surprised to find that Reading Comprehension also significantly predicts Writing

Mechanics. Children with good word-level skills appear to have better text comprehension. At

the same time various aspects of language, including Phonological Processing, Syntax, and

Vocabulary skills, do not predict Writing Mechanics, contrary to our initial hypothesis.

Predictors of Writing Syntax. Among monolingual learners, the ability to use complex

sentence structures when composing stories is predicted by Nonverbal Reasoning, Phonological

Processing, Word-Level and Reading Comprehension skills in grade 4. The results indicate that

better performances on these measures in grade 4 are related to higher Writing Syntax scores

concurrently and later in grade 6. Writing Syntax is composed of various aspects of language

used in writing, such as syntax, vocabulary and verb usage. The significant relationship between

Writing Syntax and Nonverbal Reasoning suggests that for monolingual children in this study,

nonverbal intelligence is important for writing grammatically coherent stories. This result is

unexpected, especially because the Nonverbal Reasoning measure is one that does not tap into

any aspects of verbal language functioning. This significant finding suggests there is another

aspect of intelligence, one that enables students to analyze and solve complex problems apart

from the constraints of language, that is related to being able to apply syntactic skills, verb usage

and vocabulary while writing. The importance of Nonverbal Reasoning suggests that

intelligence and problem solving are critical for being able to apply syntactic knowledge during

writing.

Phonological processing and lower order Word-Level skills remain important for

composition writing among monolingual students. The relationship between Phonological

Processing and Writing Syntax seems to suggest that, in grades 4 to 6, basic processing skills,

such as phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, and verbal memory remain

important in enabling children to produce complex sentences in writing. Furthermore, cognitive-

linguistics skills that are important for reading development are also important for writing. As we

anticipated, higher order text-level Reading Comprehension predicts text-level writing. Many of

the skills that predict Writing Syntax are also important for text comprehension; thus, it is

possible that comprehension and composing tap the same underlying components. In other

words, skills important for text comprehension are also essential for composition writing. It is

interesting to note that the relationship of Nonverbal Reasoning, Phonological Processing, Word-

Level and Reading Comprehension skills remains fairly constant over time for monolingual

learners, as the relationships are also observed later in grade 6. The consistency in the

relationships suggests that these lower level cognitive-linguistics processing skills continue to

exert their role in writing. It is possible that in upper grades, the relationships among these

processing variables may diminish. Instead, other skills, such as oral language, may gain greater

importance in the process of writing; this possibility warrants further exploration.

Among ESL learners, Syntax, Word-Level and Reading Comprehension significantly

predict Writing Syntax. The significant relationship between syntactic awareness and Writing

Syntax is in keeping with our hypothesis, which is based on our understanding of higher-order

text comprehension from studies that explored the relationship of syntactic awareness and word-

and text-level reading skills (Plaza & Cohen, 2003; 2004). Given that the Writing Syntax

variable measures syntax in writing, it is not surprising that a relationship would exist between

these two variables because they share a common construct. Our research sheds much needed

light on our understanding of the relationship between syntactic knowledge and composition

writing. The existing studies that focus on syntactic knowledge have predominantly explored

reading comprehension, and published research that has examined the importance of syntax to

composition writing has been nonexistent. Our results indicate that, for ESL learners, good

syntactic knowledge is an essential part of composition writing. Although both monolingual and

ESL students demonstrate similar syntactic skills, they appear to have different influences on

writing development for the two groups. The predictive relationship of the Word-Level

composite and Reading Comprehension to Writing Syntax among ESL students highlights the

connection between reading and composition writing. Word-level skills, such as word reading,

pseudoword reading, and spelling, are all important in predicting ESL children’s ability to apply

syntax during composing. Similar to their relationship with writing mechanics, word-level skills

do not function in the background and are related to syntactic awareness in writing. Having

strong word-level skills will make it easier for students to be able to apply correct grammar

during writing. The relationship of Reading Comprehension to Writing Syntax in our study

provides evidence that higher order text-level reading is related to syntactic knowledge in

composition writing. Although mixed findings have been noted, there is evidence that syntactic

knowledge is related to reading comprehension. Our finding provides further support for this

relationship, although in this case, the syntactic knowledge is involved in writing rather than

reading.

Contrary to our hypothesis, Vocabulary knowledge does not significantly predict Writing

Syntax for monolingual and ESL students, which is surprising since the scoring of Writing

Syntax includes students’ use of vocabulary in writing. According to some research, vocabulary

is believed to play a critical role in higher order text-level skills such as reading comprehension

and writing quality (Santos, 1988; Uzawa & Cumming, 1989). However, in actuality, little is

known about the relationship of vocabulary and text-level writing among children. Our findings

suggest that, for monolingual children, it is intelligence, phonological processing, word-level

skills and reading comprehension skills that are better indicators of writing potential. At least for

this stage in learning, possessing specific good vocabulary skills does not necessarily translate to

better vocabulary use in written expression. Similarly, Vocabulary knowledge does not

significantly predict Writing Syntax for ESL students. Guided by the empirical findings for L2

adult writing, which suggest that lack of vocabulary knowledge contributes to writing difficulties

(Santos, 1988), we anticipated that having good vocabulary knowledge would influence the

vocabulary children used during writing; this is not the case. Rather, ESL children’s syntax

knowledge, word-level, and reading comprehension skills are better indicators of writing

potential. The absence of a relationship between syntactic knowledge in writing and vocabulary

observed in our study may be related to a grade effect; the importance of vocabulary for written

expression may not become apparent until later, such as in high school, for both monolingual and

ESL learners.

Predictors of Story Quality. There is significant individual variation in the growth rate

for Story Quality; thus, predictors of both initial status and variation in growth trajectory are

considered in the final models. In terms of initial status for monolingual learners, Reading

Comprehension and Syntax skills significantly predict Story Quality performance in grade 4,

while Phonological Processing predicts performance in grade 6. The relationship between Syntax

and Story Quality is expected; however, it is surprising to find this relationship in grade 4 but not

6. With little research evidence available to use as a point of reference, we relied on the available

literature that explored the relationship between syntax skills and text-level reading

comprehension, which stipulates that oral language skills become more important in later

elementary school (Oakhill, Cain, & Bryant, 2003;Willows & Ryans, 1986), and that poor

comprehenders with intact pseudoword reading skills experience greater difficulties on measures

of syntactic awareness compared to good comprehenders (Oakhill et al., 2003). As a result, we

anticipated a positive relationship between Syntax and Story Construction, where having strong

syntactic awareness skills is related to a student’s ability to develop interesting plots and

characters in written stories. As noted for Writing Mechanics and Writing Syntax, Reading

Comprehension remains important for monolingual students’ Story Quality skills in grade 4.

With the exception of Story Quality in grade 6, Reading Comprehension is fairly consistent in

predicting all of the monolingual text-level writing measures. This suggests that good text

comprehension can predict monolingual children’s ability to simultaneously apply correct

mechanics, use of appropriate syntax, and create coherent plots and interesting characters while

composing. In grade 6, monolingual children’s Story Quality performance is best predicted by

the Phonological Processing composite. Given that we collapsed phonological awareness, rapid

automatized naming, and verbal memory into one composite score, it is not possible to determine

the degree to which each variable is individually related to story quality. Overall, the changing

relationships of predictors to Story Quality observed in grade 6 may reflect a developmental shift

for monolingual student writing skills. However, without data for students in later grades, it is

difficult to speculate what this shift suggests about the future for students in this study.

Story Quality performance among ESL students in grade 4 is predicted by the Word-

Level composite, while in grade 6, Word-Level along with Syntax and Reading Comprehension

predicts story quality. As we discovered for the monolingual learners, there is also a shift in the

relationships of predictor variables to Story Quality for ESL students, possibly suggesting a

developmental shift may be taking place during this time. Interestingly, the significant

relationship of ESL children’s word-level skills (word reading, pseudoword reading and

spelling) remains important here, suggesting that lower order skills contribute to the quality of

children’s story writing in grade 6. Once again, syntax and text comprehension skills are

important for ESL plot and character development. For the most part, word-level and text-level

skills consistently predict the three writing skills. From this study, we have established a solid

relationship between word-level and text-level skills for ESL learners. Additionally, syntax

knowledge is also important for text-level writing. Overall, the results from this study indicate

that monolingual and ESL learners share commonalities in their development of composition

writing. It appears that monolingual and ESL learners have similar development and are more

alike than they are different. The findings from our study provide support for the SVR, which

proposes that proficiency in lower-level skills (e.g., spelling) and language skills (e.g., syntax)

have significant impact on higher-order skills, such as writing quality.

In terms of individual variation in change, no variables predict the growth trajectory for

Story Quality across grades 4 through 6, in either language group. While there is variability in

growth, that growth cannot be explained by any of the predictor variables. It is interesting to note

that syntax knowledge for monolingual learners approaches a significant level for predicting

Story Quality growth, in both grades 4 and 6 (p=.054). It is possible that syntactic knowledge is

beginning to play a more important role for monolinguals writing development at this stage.

Additional data for students in grades 7 and 8 may very well reveal the possible connection of

syntactic awareness to text-level writing.

Taken together, our findings indicate that low- and high-order reading skills, cognitive-

linguistics and oral language predict writing outcome. In contrast to previous findings about the

relationship between word-level skills and reading comprehension, where the relationship has

been shown to decline with age, the relationship between word-level skills and writing skills in

this present study suggest that word-level skills remain essential for many aspects of written

expression (e.g., mechanics, syntax/grammar, quality). Further, the importance of both word-

and text-level skills to writing outcome in our study suggests that children at this stage are still in

the process of skill development, and have not yet mastered various writing skills to the point

where some skills are working in the background and functioning automatically. No doubt this

may be seen later as children develop greater proficiency in written expression. The relationship

of syntactic awareness to reading development has been variable (Bryant et al., 1990; Plaza &

Cohen, 2003, 2004). The finding in this study suggests that syntactic knowledge impacts the

expression of ideas and growth in writing.

Finally, the substantial growth for the three writing outcomes, among both monolingual

and ESL students, suggests that this is a critical time of development, where students are learning

to juggle various literacy language skills to apply them in composition writing. At this point,

many skills remain important; however, it is possible that the relationships between word- and

text-level skills, along with oral language and phonological processing skills, will begin to shift

as children enter grades 7 and 8, as has been shown with reading comprehension, and lower

order cognitive-linguistics and word-level skills may begin to lose their importance to text-level

composition writing. Eventually, skills such as grammar and vocabulary may play a greater role

in writing, while the lower order skills fade and function more automatically in the background.

Given that all three writing outcome variables in this study were obtained from the same story at

each time point, we acknowledge that Writing Mechanics, Writing Syntax and Story Quality

may be interconnected and not independent of each other.

Chapter 5. General Discussion

Contributions to the Literature and Future Directions

Text-level writing development has been largely overlooked within the literature and this

study provides much needed focus on this area. The findings indicate that for the most part,

reading and writing development is similar for monolingual and ESL students. Both

monolinguals and ESL students who have been studying in an English speaking school since

grade 1 demonstrate similar growth in their cognitive-linguistics skills and word-level reading

and spelling skills. However, similar to other studies, we discovered that ESL learners lagged in

comparison to their monolingual counterparts on measures of vocabulary knowledge and reading

comprehension. While there is evidence to suggest that monolingual and ESL children may

differ in their syntactic awareness skills, we do not find this to be the case in our work. Most

importantly, monolingual and ESL text-level writing were explored in this study, and the

evidence suggests that there is no language group difference across the grades when the task

involves writing narratives. While this research provides information about group differences for

various literacy skills, the use of HLM allows us to take advantage of the longitudinal nature of

the data, to explore the trajectory of growth for each of those skills. Not only do we explore the

potential changes from grade 4 through 6, HLM permits the exploration of individual variation in

growth among individuals to determine whether students change in different ways and whether

specific variables account for the differences in the students’ growth. HLM allows the researcher

to disentangle individual and group effects on the outcome of interest.

Although our work has provided some significant contributions to the field, there is an

overall need for additional research to explore text-level writing skills. In particular, further

research to explore text-level writing for children at all stages of development is important. The

current lack of research examining children’s writing makes it difficult to develop a full

understanding of the developmental influences on children’s writing skills for both monolingual

and ESL populations. It is possible that group differences may not be apparent at this stage, but

differences may be present within an older population in later grades. Our study explores ESL

students who received English instruction from a very early age. It will be interesting to examine

whether the developmental trajectory is different for ESL learners who arrive and receive formal

language instruction in later grades. It is also important to explore potential group differences

between children’s narrative and academic writing skills. Although our research demonstrates

that monolingual and ESL children are similar in their narrative writing skills, it is not clear how

they would compare on other writing tasks, such as academic writing. Although effective literacy

interventions have not been the focus of this study, there is a need for future researchers to

develop and examine interventions that specifically target both text-level comprehension and

writing to optimize classroom instruction and development evidence based teaching strategies

for monolingual and ESL children.

Classroom and Assessment Implications

The findings from our research provide information about monolingual and ESL writing

development that is potentially important for literacy instruction. The evidence suggests that

there is a need for a balance literacy approach for writing instruction, where there is focus on

phonological, grammar, word- and text-level skills for both monolingual and ESL learners.

Specific focus on vocabulary development and reading comprehension for ESL students is

particularly important given that our findings indicate they are at a disadvantage compared to

their monolingual peers. Without early intervention, it is unlikely that ESL learners will be able

to catch up over time. In writing, students have ample opportunity to contemplate and edit their

work. Providing students with greater vocabulary exposure, while teaching them about the

differences between colloquial and formal language, will help to increase appropriate vocabulary

use in children’s writing (Horowitz, 1994). Improving children’s vocabulary will improve

reading comprehension skills, which may have a spill-over effect to writing development.

Although vocabulary knowledge is not a significant predictor of writing skills in our work,

evidence from research with adult L2 learners suggests that vocabulary is important for later

writing success. It is conceivable that poor vocabulary knowledge interferes with text

comprehension, and this in turn would affect writing discourse. A balanced approach in teaching

that incorporates phonological, reading, writing and grammar instructions for all students, along

with instruction for vocabulary and comprehension development for ESL learners, will help to

facilitate writing development for children. Given that we do not have data for older students, we

can only speculate that explicit instruction for the aforementioned skills may be required into

high school. Based on what we have seen from this study, we know that children in grades 4

through 6 are experiencing significant growth; therefore, it is essential that they be provided with

adequate instruction during this time to facilitate growth.

It is important to understand that ESL children demonstrate similar development in their

writing skills, despite lower vocabulary and reading comprehension skills. Therefore, when a

student does not demonstrate equal skills with monolingual peers, it is not necessary for

educators to wait for oral language to improve before providing an assessment, as this is a

potential sign of writing difficulties. Early identification is important for early intervention.

Given that our findings suggest that reading and writing skills share common underlying

processes, the same skills that determine reading success can potentially be used to flag possible

writing weaknesses. Additionally, syntactic knowledge is also an important indicator of writing

success and can serve as a marker for potential writing problems for both language groups.

Limitations

The lack of significant findings for group differences among students on the dependent

writing measures may be a result of poor sensitivity in the measure we used to assess text-level

writing skills. It is possible that this tool was simply not sensitive enough to pick up any potential

group differences. While the TOWL-3 story composition task is a test of spontaneous writing,

the small amount of time allotted for the task does not permit students to engage in organizing,

planning, and editing activities that are essential in the composing process (e.g., pre-writing,

brainstorming). While this writing sample does provide a snapshot of student narrative writing, it

is unknown how it relates to writing tasks that do not impose time limits, where students are

permitted to select topics of interest, and are given sufficient time to edit their work. Additional

research is needed to explore the generalizability of the conclusions of this research to other

writing tasks.

Additionally, our use of story writing, rather than academic writing, to assess writing

outcome may also contribute to the lack of significant group differences among students. Story

writing carries an informal tone and is easier for novice writers. On the other hand, academic

writing requires a formal tone, precise vocabulary use, and clear focus about a particular topic

rather than the author’s opinion. It is possible that the latter style of writing may be more

sensitive to differences between monolingual and ESL learners. Finally, our research focuses on

children from grades 4 through 6. Ideally, including children in younger and older grades would

provide a more comprehensive picture of writing development.

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Appendix A:

Writing Mechanics Subtest Supplemental Scoring Criteria

General Note: When uncertain about a single letter in a word, look at how the child has formed the relevant letter in other

words(give the child the benefit of the doubt).

Score Scoring Criteria Details / Examples 0 = no 1 = yes

1. All sentences must begin with a capital letter If there is only one sentence and it begins with a capital

letter, then give a score of 1. If a full-stop (but not “!” or “?”) appears in the middle

of the sentence, then the following word should be capitalized (e.g. ‘. . . sent. To . . .’ ).

Does not pertain to direct speech.

E.g. a) The package was sent. To the grandmother. (even though this is incorrect sentence structure, “To” must be capitalized because of the period) Don’t count as incorrect: a) ‘how are you?’

0 = no paragraphs or 1 paragraph 1 = 2 paragraphs 2 = 3 or 4 paragraphs 3 = 5 or more paragraphs

2. Paragraphs in composition Paragraphs are identified by the convention of

indenting or at least having a space between paragraphs.

A single sentence may be considered a paragraph (not, however, if the child has written a large part of the story in single sentences separated by a line or two). This must be judged on a case by case basis, but give the child the benefit of the doubt.

Count unfinished paragraphs (where the child clearly ran out of time).

0 = no 1 = yes

3. Uses quotation marks Need not be used correctly. Context in which quotation marks appear is not

important (e.g. can be used for direct speech, to highlight words regarded as slang, jargon, or unfamiliar, or to highlight a proper noun).

E.g. a) He said, “Blast off!” b) They called it “nat” rock. c) The name of the spaceship is “Voyager.”

0 = no 1 = yes

4. Uses a comma to set off a direct quotation The comma may precede or follow the quotation

marks. Do not consider commas which appear inside or just

outside of quotation marks used to highlight words regarded as slang, jargon, or unfamiliar.

E.g. a) She said, “The sky is blue.” b) “The sky is blue,” she said. Do not count: a) They called it “nat,” rock.

0 = no 1 = yes

5. Uses an apostrophe in a contraction Need not be used correctly. Do not consider apostrophes used to denote possession.

E.g. a) is’nt Do not count: a) Bill’s rocket b) Alien’s are living on Mars

0 = no 1 = yes

6. Uses a colon, semicolon, or hyphen Need not be used correctly. Context in which colons, semicolons or hyphens appear

is not important. Do not consider hyphens used to split words non-

morphemically, except when they appear at the end of a sentence (i.e. there is not enough space on the line for the entire word) or when they are used for emphasis.

E.g. a) 11:35 b) 1-2-3-4-5 c) un-known d) cra-zy! Do not count: a) s-ample (non-morphemic)

0 = no 1 = yes

7. Uses a question mark The position of a question mark in the sentence is not

important. Do not consider question marks used in sentences that

are statements and not questions.

E.g. a) “How are you?” b) “?How are you” Do not count: a) I am 10?

0 = no 1 = yes

8. Uses an exclamation mark The position of an exclamation mark in a sentence is

not important. Do not consider exclamation marks used in sentences

where no exclamation is indicated.

E.g. a) Help! b) !Help Do not count: a) The dog has 4 legs!

0 = no, or not present in text 1 = sometimes 2 = always

9. Capitalizes proper nouns Consider only proper nouns (do not consider, for

example, the personal pronoun I) In the case of acronyms, only the first letter must be

capitalized. Do not consider cases where the need for capitalization

of a word is uncertain, in other words, where both a lowercase and a capitalized version are possible.

E.g. a) Bob b) Italy c) Earth d) Mars Do not penalize: a) moon b) mayor c) Kfc or Dna (acronyms) d) mom or dad

0 = poor (noticeably inadequate); 6 or more mistakes per 100 words 1 = average (acceptable, only a few mistakes); 3-5 mistakes per 100 words 2 = good (almost perfect); up to 2 mistakes per 100 words

10. Overall punctuation and capitalization Keep in mind the length and complexity of text. Count all mistakes related to punctuation and

capitalization. Count all seemingly ‘careless’ errors. Count duplicated mistakes as well. Count omissions of commas needed to set off direct

quotations as errors. Count the omission of quotation marks around direct

speech as two mistakes if it is missing at both the opening and closing of the speech.

Incorrect use of any punctuation rules (e.g. s-ample, boss’s) are counted as punctuation errors (as well as spelling errors).

Count all instances where a word should be capitalized but it is not.

Count all instances where a word is capitalized but it should not be.

Consider run on sentences without punctuation (i.e. 7-2b) as errors when tallying mistakes.

When calculating errors per hundred words, divide the number of errors by the number of words.

Round up to nearest whole number if greater than 0.5, and round down if less than 0.5.

Score intuitively, based on a general sense of the overall quality of the child’s punctuation and capitalization, if necessary.

When doing so, consider not only the child’s scores on #1 and #9 – if the child scores perfectly on both of these yet demonstrates a lack of consistency in the use of the rules of punctuation and capitalization, a score of 1 or 0 should be given.

E.g. a) my boss’s car b) I said “How are you?” (1 mistake) c) I said How are you? (2 mistakes) d) The alien called john over. e) I looked at the Sky and it was blue. Correct use of punctuation in direct speech: a) “I wonder,” John said, “whether I can borrow your bicycle.” b) Tell Richard, “You’re my best friend.”

0 = 6 or more words 1 = 3 to 5 words 2 = 0 to 2 words

11. Number of non-duplicated words misspelled Incorrect use of punctuation marks such as hyphens or

apostrophes are counted as spelling errors as well as punctuation errors (didnt=1 spell error for 6-11, did’nt=1spell error + 1punctuation error for 6-10)

Incorrect use of homophones is counted as errors. Incorrect spacing within words is counted as an error. Misapplied plurality rules are spelling errors. Do not consider proper names. Do not count words misspelled for emphasis as errors. Do not count made-up or unknown words as errors. Do not count reproductions of pronunciation or

colloquialisms as errors. If a word has been misspelled more than once it should

be counted as one mistake (unless the intended meaning or part of speech differs).

Incorrect use of syntax rules can be counted as spelling mistakes (e.g. digged)

Sloppy words can be counted as spelling mistakes (e.g. drean for dream, the for they)

E.g. a) every one, every where, every body, every thing (incorrect spacing) b) boss’s c) s-ample d) there for their e) century’s for centuries f) tryd, tride, triyd = 1 mistake g) techer, teeching, teech = 3 mistakes Do not count as errors: a) every day, everyday b) Jhon for John or Tomy for Tommy c) Looook! (emphasis) d) Yarks or Spearers (made-up words) e) yah

0 = poor (noticeably inadequate); 7 or more errors per 100 words 1 = average (acceptable, only a few mistakes); 3 to 6 errors per 100 words 2 = good (almost perfect); 0 to 2 errors per 100 words

12. Overall spelling Keep in mind the length and complexity of the text. Consider and count all spelling errors, including those

which are duplicated. When calculating errors per hundred words, divide the

number of errors by the number of words. Round up to nearest whole number if greater than 0.5,

and round down if less than 0.5. If a child uses an incorrect word in place of another,

check first to see if it changes the child’s score, count it as a spelling error if it matches your intuition about how the child is doing overall.

TOTAL =

Appendix B:

Writing Syntax Supplemental Scoring Criteria

Score Scoring Criteria Details / Examples

0 = yes 1 = no

1. Fragmentary Sentence Sentence without a verb or subject Don’t penalize if child has clearly run out of time and left

the last sentence unfinished

E.g.: a) “Looking tired and withdrawn” b) “Because I said so.” c) Three, two, one, blast off. Said the man. (no quotation marks) Don’t count as fragments: a) “Three, two, one, blast off.” Said the man. b) Three, two, on, blast off! (non-sentence) c) Wow! (non-sentence)

0 = yes 1 = no

2a. Run-on Sentence Series of 3 or more sentences usually connected by “and” Sentences beginning with “And…” can be counted as a

run-on sentence Sentences without punctuation are NOT counted as run-on

sentences In cases where the child’s story consists of only one long

sentence, a score of 0 should be given.

E.g. a) “And I saw her.” And she was big.” And I ran away.” (run on) Don’t count as run-ons: a) “I saw her she was big I ran away.”

0 = 3 or more 1 = 1 to 2 2 = none

2b. Run-on Sentence (without punctuation) An error in punctuation where one or more full stops are

omitted between sentences or independent clauses in the composition.

In cases where the child’s story consists of only one long sentence, a score of 0 should be given.

E.g. a) “Mrs. Lee is a great teacher she always explains things very clearly.” b) “I saw her she was big I ran away.”

0 = none 1 = 1 2 = 2-3 3 = 4 or more

3. Compound sentences 2 or more related sentences that are connected by a

conjunction (but, or, nor, until, etc), comma, semicolon, or colon

Use surface structure only, the compounds have to be able to stand on their own

Allow the conjunctive to open the sentence (i.e., “when he was half way across the mine he…”).

DO NOT count as a compound sentence when a child strings multiple ideas (that can stand alone on their own) together without any punctuation or conjunctions joining them (as in 2b)

DO NOT COUNT as a compound when it is poorly constructed

E.g. a) “They walked to the nearby creek, they laughed and played, and some of them fished.” b) “He laughed and she cried” c) “The dog jumped; the people cheered.” d) Unless it rains, we’ll play tennis. Types of Conjunctives:

Conjunctives: so that, as long as, as if Conjunctive adverbs: however,

nevertheless Coordinating conjunction: and, but Subordinating conjunctions: because,

when, unless, that

0 = none 1 = 1-2 2 = 3-5 3 = 5 or more

4. Introductory phrases or clauses 2 or more words introducing a complete sentence; need not

be set off by a comma; may not be attached to a run-on sentence.

Has to be preceded by a period. Cannot exist on its own. Cannot be meaningful information introduced to the story. Words that might be found opening an introductory clause

include: after, although, as, as if, as long as, because, before, if, in order that, since, so that, though, unless, until, when, whenever, where, wherever, and while.

If the phrase is very short, the comma is sometimes omitted - use your judgment.

If it a subordinating conjunction is used, but it is not a good opening phrase DO NOT COUNT

E.g. a) In the future, b) Once upon a time, c) One day, d) Every day e) A long time ago, c) Far, far away Don’t count as introductory phrases: a) Three days later, b) Later that afternoon,

0 = no 1 = 1-3 2 = 4 or more

5. Uses coordinating conjunctions other than and A Coordinating conjunction is a word which joins words,

phrases, or clauses together. These coordinating conjunctions join linguistic units which are equivalent or of the same rank.

Count a word only once. Stick with simple coordinating conjunctions. It is acceptable for the conjunction to be placed at the

beginning of the sentence.

E.g. (but, or, nor, for, yet, so) a) “I ran but he caught me.” b) “Do this or that.” c) “So, they set off into the forest.”

0 = > 1 error 1 = 1 error 2 = no errors

6. Subject-verb disagreements Disagreement with singular and plurals between the subject

and verb Do not count mistakes with tense agreement (e.g. mixing

present and past tense incorrectly)

E.g. a) “He love to do it” b) “Man love to eat the mammoth.”

0 = 1 par, 1 sentence 1 = 1 par, 2< sentences 2 = 2< par, 2< sentences

in at least 1 par 3 = 2< par, 2< sentences in at least 2 par

7. Sentences in paragraphs(s)

Composition is composed of: 0 = mostly fragments, run-ons, or badly constructed sentences 1 = mostly simple sentences with prepositional phrases 2 = a variety of simple, compound, and complex sentences complete with embedded clauses

8. Sentence Structure Count ‘stand alone’ sentence or t-units (one complete

thought with subject and object) for simple, compound, complex sentences

T-units are also counted in run-ons and badly constructed sentences.

Although fragments do not contain complete t-units, they should still be tallied and considered when deciding the overall score.

Use the surface structures of sentences (e.g. subject must be repeated for compound sentences)

Count all T-units and decide where most of the units exist: in badly constructed, simple, compounds, or complex sentences. Don’t double count.

Calculate the percentage of t-units found in badly constructed, simple, and compound/complex sentences by dividing the number by the total number of t-units in the story. Record the percentages for each of the three areas, to 2 decimal places of accuracy (e.g. 52.37%).

Give more weight to well-constructed compound and complex sentences when deciding between a score of 1 and 2.

Speech—count what is in the quote as a the T-units. Poorly constructed sentences are considered in 7-2a and 7-2b, and poorly punctuated sentences. Outside of 7-2a or 7-2b, a sentence can also be poorly constructed if it uses very bad English

Sentences in composition: 0 = are random, not related to each other 1 = contribute to the development of the topic or theme

9. Development of a Topic or Theme Even pure descriptions of the story can receive a 1 if it

sticks to a consistent overall topic (e.g. space, or hunting)

0 = none 1 = 1 to 3 2 = 4 or more

10. Names objects shown in picture Prehistoric Scene: (people, baby, mother, woman, girl, men, boys, hunters, villagers, cavemen, Indians, animal skins, mammoths, elephants, creatures, monsters, beasts, animals, tusks, horns, trunks, river, water, lake, rocks, mountains, forest, jungle, trees, woods, bushes, plants, trail, mud, spears, weapons, sticks, harpoons, tools, swords, arrows, village, town, city, huts, houses, homes, tents, fire, smoke) Space Scene: (space, space cadet, space station, space lab, space tower, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn machinery, rock, tusk, spear, people, astronauts, ships, rockets, boulders, planet, writing, plate, moon, earth, satellite, stars, tractor, train-transit, tunnel, tool, ax, shovel, space suit, mountain, hill, space city, laboratory, plane, scientist, crew, farm house, any building, city, town)

0 = 0-3 1 = 4-7 2 = 8-14 3 = 15 or more

11. Number of correctly spelled words having seven or more letters

Count a word only once.

0 = 0-2 1 = 3-4 2 = 5 or more

12. Number of words with 3 syllables or more that are spelled correctly

Count a word only once

E.g. a) Different b) Aliens

0 = no a or an used 1 = a used at least once 2 = an used at least once

13. Uses a and an appropriately

0 = sparse, immature 1 = more or less adequate 2 = rich, mature

14. Vocabulary selection To get a score of 2, language must contain exceptional

vocabulary. If in question, write down the rich words that you think are

exceptional Consider the child’s scores of 7-11 and 7-12 when scoring

this item.

TOTAL =

Appendix C: Story Quality Supplemental Scoring Criteria

Score Scoring Criteria Details / Examples 0 = none, abrupt 1 = weak, ordinary, serviceable 2 = interesting, grabbing

1. Story beginning Do not consider only the first sentence.

E.g. a) “When I was young I always wanted to go to Mars” = Score of 1

0 = no 1 = yes

2. Story somehow relates to the picture E.g. a) Mammoth story must be related to Mammoths, fighting, hunting or cavemen. b) Space story must mention Space.

0 = no 1 = yes

3. Story definitely refers to a specific event occurring before or after the picture

Event may be immediately before the picture.

E.g. b) He walked around looking for something.

0 = none, a series of random statements 1 = rambles, but has some sequence 2 = moves smoothly from start to finish

4. Story sequence Do not penalize for incomplete stories where the child

clearly ran out of time, consider the sequence in the text that is present.

Consider whether one idea follows logically from the one before it.

A score of 2 is appropriate for stories that are average and above-average.

A score of one is appropriate for stories that are below average.

A story in which the order of sentences may be changed around without affecting the overall meaning or comprehensibility of the story should be given a score of 0.

Stories that are purely descriptions of the picture should be given a score of 0.

0 = none, incoherent statements in a random order 1 = weak, meager, spotty 2 = logical, complete

5. Plot Plot refers to the series of events that constitute the action

of a story. Consider the pace, build up, and resolution of the story,

as well as whether it is comprehensible. Do not penalize for incomplete stories where the child

clearly ran out of time, consider the plot in the text that is present.

A score of 2 is appropriate for stories that are average and above-average.

A score of one is appropriate for stories that are below average.

Stories that are purely descriptions of the picture should be given a score of 0.

0 = no 1 = some emotions/ low-affect story line 2 = strong emotion clearly evident in at least one character

6. Characters show feelings/emotions Consider the intensity of the emotional words being used. Consider also the feelings that the story evokes in

addition to the emotive words. When the situation being written about should be

intensely emotional, but does not evoke emotions in the reader, it should be given a score of 0 or 1.

E.g. a) Father was fighting hard because he was afraid the baby would be hurt = Score of 2 b) He was very angry = Score of 2 c) He died a slow and painful death = Score of 2. d) And then their food ran out and everyone died = Score of 0.

0 = no 1 = yes, but weakly stated, inferred 2 = overtly, clearly stated

7. Story expresses some moral or philosophic theme If a child mentions the themes cited as examples, give

them a score of 1. If a child really emphasizes one of the themes, give them

a score of 2.

E.g. a) Right or wrong b) Love c) Pursuit of wisdom d) Search for knowledge e) Justice / fairness f) Reference to religion or supernatural powers. Space story: Score of 0: a) Going to space to see what it looks like Score of 1: a) Searching for one specific thing like a tablet on the moon (going to space to find something) Score of 2: (emphasis is important) b) Exploring space c) Searching for Artificial Intelligence d) Risking your own life to rescue others trapped in space Mammoth Story: a) Protecting or caring for your loved ones / Family love b) Providing clothes and/or food etc for others / the community c) Hard work d) Protecting one’s resources (e.g. land or food) e) Self-sacrifice f) Preservation of life. g) Avoiding cruelty to animals, being kind to nature.

0 = no action 1 = boring, tedious (below average) 2 = run-of-the-mill, predictable (average) 3 = exciting, interesting (above-average)

8. Story action or energy level A story that is purely descriptive should be given a score

of 0.

0 = none, abrupt 1 = weak 2 = logical and definite ending

9. Story ending If a story ends in the middle of the last sentence, the child

should be given a score of 0. If a story ends with a finished sentence or idea, but it

seems that there should be more that follows, or if the final idea is illogical, the child should be given a score of 1.

If an ending is definite and logical (it does not have to be ‘good’ or ‘exciting’, just complete) give the child a score of 2.

The use of “The End” should be disregarded when deciding if the story should be scored a 0, 1 or 2. The actual ending of the story is to be considered when scoring this item (i.e. the events and ideas in the last few sentences).

0 = immature (below average) 1 = ordinary, serviceable, matter-of-fact, (average) 2 = artful, stylish (above average)

10. Prose A score of 2 may be given for the use of colorful and rich

language, sophisticated vocabulary, good grammar, competency in delivering thoughts via written expression, skillfully describing thoughts in an interesting way, use of literary devices such as alliteration and/or metaphor etc.

A score of 1 may be given for a story that is written in a simple or average manner (i.e. the use of language in written expression does not impede comprehension, but does not stand out as being exceptional either).

A score of 0 may be given is the story has poor direction, flow, fluency, sequencing, language use etc.

0 = dull, merely describes picture 1 = simple, straightforward 2 = interesting, unique, coherent

11. Story overall

Total:

Appendix D:

Monolingual and ESL Performance Raw Mean Scores on

Cognitive and Linguistics Measures Across Grades 4, 5, and 6

Appendix E:

Monolingual and ESL Performance Raw Mean Scores on

Word-Level Reading Measures Across Grades 4, 5, and 6

Appendix F:

Monolingual and ESL Performance Raw Mean Scores on

Text-Level Reading and Writing Measures Across Grades 4, 5, and 6

Note: ESS scores were used instead of raw scores