Language skills and reading comprehension in English monolingual and Spanish-English bilingual children in grades 2-5

The present study investigated language skills and reading comprehension with English monolingual and Spanish-English bilingual children in grades 2-5. Of the 377 children in the sample, 207 were English monolingual and 170 were Spanish-English bilingual. Data were collected within a cohort-sequential design for two academic years in the fall and spring of each year. Growth modeling was used to estimate initial status on measures of vocabulary breadth, vocabulary depth, morphological awareness, and syntactic skill. A latent variable was created to capture the construct of reading comprehension, and growth modeling was used to estimate growth and ending status in latent reading comprehension. Analyses controlling for initial status in word recognition investigated relationships between initial status in language skills and growth and ending status in reading comprehension. Results showed that initial status on vocabulary breadth was related to growth in reading comprehension and initial status in vocabulary depth and syntactic skill were related to ending status in reading comprehension. Limitations and implications for future research are discussed.