Reading Efficiency in Native English-Speaking and English-as-a-Second-Language Children: The Role of Oral Proficiency and Underlying Cognitive-Linguistic Processes

The research examined the extent to which (a) Grade 2 English-as-a-second-language (ESL) and English-as-a-first-language (EL1) children resemble each other on word and text reading efficiency and (b) whether individual differences in word and text reading efficiency in the two language groups can be understood in terms of similar underlying component processes. Despite an oral language proficiency advantage in the EL1 group, no EL1 advantage existed on any of the cognitive and reading measures. Oral language proficiency, phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, and accurate word recognition were significant predictors of word and text efficiency in the ESL group. Only rapid automatized naming and word recognition were significant in the EL1 group. Overall, with the exception of English-language oral proficiency skills, EL1 and ESL profiles of three efficiency subgroups (poor decoders, low efficiency, and high efficiency) were highly similar.