Growth Trajectories of Vocabulary and Reading Comprehension in English Language Learners: An examination of cognitive-linguistic and sociocultural factors
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In this longitudinal project, 49 monolingual English-speaking students (EL1s) and 55 English Language Learners (ELLs) living in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) were followed for two years (i.e., grades 4-6/5-7) across three testing points (Time 1 – Time 3). The overarching goal was to (1) examine the reading comprehension and vocabulary growth patterns of mid elementary EL1s and ELLs with varying levels of exposure to English; and (2) investigate the contribution of cognitive, linguistic, and sociocultural factors underlying the development of these literacy skills. In Study 1, EL1 and ELL growth trajectories were compared using multi-level modeling (MLM). An augmented model of the Simple View of Reading (SVR) that included not only decoding and vocabulary, but also cognitive processes (e.g., nonverbal reasoning, phonological processing, and morphological awareness) and sociocultural variables (e.g., maternal education) was examined. Results revealed significant growth in ELL reading comprehension but limited growth in EL1 reading comprehension. At Time 3, EL1 and ELL students had comparable performance in reading comprehension and the same cognitive-linguistic factors emerged as significant contributors. Nonverbal reasoning ability and complex vocabulary knowledge significantly contributed to EL1 and ELL reading comprehension. Next, the contribution of length of exposure to English (LOE) to ELL reading comprehension was explored. LOE was indirectly related to reading comprehension through vocabulary. In Study 2, a composite vocabulary measure, which included receptive/expressive vocabulary breadth and vocabulary depth, was used as the outcome variable. Both EL1 and ELL students showed gradual linear improvements in vocabulary; however, ELLs consistently underperformed EL1s. Examination of underlying processes revealed that in both groups, morphological awareness is a unique contributor to vocabulary. For EL1s, nonverbal ability, phonological awareness, and maternal education were also significant contributors. Basic word reading and morphological awareness were the only predictors of ELL vocabulary. A direct link between vocabulary and LOE was confirmed at all time points for ELLs. Results revealed marginal evidence of transfer between L1 and L2 vocabulary. In Study 3 the relationship between reading comprehension and vocabulary breadth and depth was explored. Both vocabulary breadth and depth played significant roles in explaining individual differences in EL1 and ELL reading comprehension.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".