Assessing Decoding Skills in Newcomer Children: An Analysis of Word and Pseudoword Decoding Scores in Light of Some Contextual Factors.

Purpose: Most studies about reading development in second-language learners have been carried out on children exposed to the second language from kindergarten. They have shown that decoding skills develop in a similar way to those of monolingual children. We wondered whether this holds for primary school newcomer non-native-speaking children. This study aimed to compare their decoding skills with those of native monolingual and bilingual French-speaking children and to explore the role of contextual factors that might have an impact on these skills.

Method: We recruited 180 nonnative French-speaking newcomer children, 176 monolingual native French-speaking children, and 80 bilingual native French-speaking children matched on duration of primary school attendance in France. They performed word and pseudoword reading tasks in French, and their families completed questionnaires on the children's linguistic and school history.

Results: Newcomer children obtained lower scores than both monolingual and bilingual native French-speaking children in both reading tasks. The gaps were greater for word reading scores, suggesting that vocabulary partly mediates this phenomenon. Moreover, we found that having started to learn to read, having been exposed to a Latin orthography before arriving in France, and having arrived after the first grade had a positive effect on the reading scores of newcomer children.

Conclusions: Newcomer children had difficulties in learning to read in the additional language compared to native children, even when the groups were matched for duration of primary school attendance. We discuss the implications of these results for the identification of children at risk of reading failure.

Supplemental material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.30220252.