Assessment of Reading Ability in French immersion Students

Assessment of Reading Ability in French immersion Students Written by: Debra Jared, Department of Psychology, University of Western Ontario Introduction Because Canada is an officially bilingual country, many English-speaking parents choose to place their children in French immersion programs so that they can learn to speak the other official language. Parents often hope that this will give their children an advantage later in life. However, not all children are successful in early French immersion programs; some struggle and eventually switch to English-only programs (Bruck, 1985; Obadia & Thériault, 1997). It would be advantageous to be able to assess children when they are in kindergarten to determine which children are likely to have difficulty so that remedial help can be given as soon as possible. The first section of this entry discusses studies that have investigated whether any of a variety of measures that can be given in kindergarten are good predictors of future English and French reading ability in French immersion students. Once formal reading instruction begins, accurate assessment of students reading ability is essential to plan instruction and to evaluate the effectiveness of French immersion programs. While there are many tests available to assess English reading ability, largely due to the products developed for the American market, there are few available to assess children s French reading ability, and even fewer designed for students who are learning French as a second language. The second section of this entry discusses literacy assessment tools for French immersion students. Key Research Questions 1. Do any of French immersion students abilities, when assessed in kindergarten, predict their later English and French reading abilities? 2. Should early assessments of French immersion students be given in English or in French, particularly when predicting later French reading ability? 3. Are any aspects of a students home literacy environment related to later reading ability? 4. What tests are available to assess French immersion students reading ability in French? Jared, D. Page 1 of 8 http://www.literacyencyclopedia.ca

Recent Research Findings Predictors of Individual Differences in Literacy Skills Even when only one language is involved, predicting future reading ability when a child is in kindergarten is not an easy task. Many factors influence a child s reading ability, some of which are hard to assess. Research on early predictors of reading ability conducted in Canada, the U.S., and elsewhere with English students has generally been less successful in identifying students who will be weak readers than in predicting the spread of scores among students who are stronger readers (Bowey, 2005; Scarborough, 1998). Prediction of reading ability is even more complex for students in French immersion, because one needs to consider both the prediction of English and French reading ability, as well as the question of whether the tests used in predicting reading ability in each language should be administered in English or in French. There are only a few studies that have examined predictors of reading development in French immersion students (for a review see Genesee & Jared, 2008). A finding common to each of these studies is that phonological awareness assessed in English is a good predictor of later word reading ability in both English and French (Comeau, Cormier, Grandmaison, & Lacroix, 1999; Deacon, Wade-Woolley, & Kirby, 2007; MacCoubrey, Wade-Woolley, Klinger, & Kirby, 2004). Phonological awareness is the understanding that spoken words are made up of component sounds. Comeau et al. (1999) gave students a phonological awareness test in French as well as in English and found scores on the two phonological awareness tests were highly correlated and were equally good predictors of French and English word reading accuracy one year later. Other English tests that were predictors of later French word reading ability in these studies assessed knowledge of a particular English grammatical structure (Deacon et al., 2007) and ability to rapidly name letters and numbers (MacCoubrey et al., 2004). Jared, Cormier, Levy, and Wade-Woolley (submitted) recently completed a CLLRNet funded study that examined kindergarten predictors of reading ability in French immersion children. Children were given a large battery of cognitive tests when they were in kindergarten. One test was a reasoning task that did not involve language (nonverbal IQ). Other tests were given only in English, including phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming or RAN (naming digits presented in 4 rows of 10 digits each as quickly as possible), and several working memory tests. Still other tests were given in both English and French, including measures of vocabulary and grammatical ability, knowledge of letter names and letter sounds, and word reading ability. Every year from Grade 1 to Grade 3 the students reading ability was tested in both English and French. Reading was assessed using tests of word and passage reading accuracy and speed, as well as reading comprehension. Scores on the French tests given in kindergarten were not as good predictors of French reading ability in Grade 3 as the corresponding measures in English. Although French oral language abilities (vocabulary and grammatical knowledge) at the end of kindergarten did not predict French reading ability in Grade 3, further analyses showed that children who had lower scores on tests of French receptive vocabulary and Jared, D. Page 2 of 8 http://www.literacyencyclopedia.ca

grammar at the end of Grade 1 were likely to have weak French reading comprehension scores at the end of Grade 3. Children who have poor French oral language development after two years of exposure to the language may benefit from extra help in acquiring spoken French as this may improve French reading comprehension. Scores on several of the English tests given in kindergarten were good predictors of reading ability in Grade 3. Phonological awareness was a very good predictor of scores on all five English reading tests in Grade 3, and a good predictor of French word reading accuracy. Knowledge of English letter sounds was also a good predictor of French word and passage reading accuracy in Grade 3, as well as French passage comprehension. This finding indicates that students who have grasped the alphabetic principle in their native language are at an advantage to learning to read in their second language. RAN scores predicted word and passage reading speed and accuracy in both languages. However, the precise cognitive abilities assessed by the RAN test are a topic of debate among researchers. The ability to read English words in kindergarten was a good predictor of Grade 3 passage reading speed in both languages, although was a weaker predictor of performance on the other reading tests. Scores on the tests of English grammatical knowledge and reasoning ability were good predictors of reading comprehension in both languages. The finding that a test of English grammatical ability predicts reading comprehension in French suggests that sensitivity to grammatical structures in one language facilitates the understanding of the structures in a second language. The best kindergarten predictors together accounted for about a third of the variability in the scores on tests of word and passage reading accuracy and speed in English when students were in Grade 3, 60% of the variability in Grade 3 English reading comprehension scores, and about a quarter of the variability in scores on the French versions of the reading tests. The above study also examined whether a variety of home variables assessed in kindergarten improved the prediction of later reading abilities. Parents self-ratings of their French language abilities were weakly related to their children s French reading ability in Grade 3 and did not improve predictions of reading ability beyond the cognitive tests. Children whose mothers had higher levels of education had higher English passage comprehension scores in Grade 3. Parental reports of the amount of time they spent reading to their children in kindergarten in English or in French were only weakly related to later reading ability. Interestingly, however, the number of English children s books in the home was a good predictor of reading ability in Grade 3, even in French. The number of books in the home may reflect the importance parents place on reading. Currently, the prediction of future reading ability is not an exact science. If children complete a series of tests such as the ones described above in kindergarten, researchers cannot be certain from their scores whether they will learn to read effortlessly or will struggle in a French immersion program. Exposure to excellent teaching and a high quality beginning reading program may help all students in a French immersion class to become successful readers. Therefore, performance on tests such as these should not be used to exclude students from French immersion. The research does suggest that students who have weaker scores on these tests are at a Jared, D. Page 3 of 8 http://www.literacyencyclopedia.ca

greater risk of having difficulty learning to read than students with stronger scores, and should be monitored closely in the first few grades. Future directions for predictors. A direction for future research is to seek measures that can more accurately predict which French immersion students will have difficulty learning to read while students are still in kindergarten. Early identification is important so that students can be given help quickly, before they perceive themselves as poor at reading. Skills that could be investigated in more detail are children s receptive and productive grammatical ability in English, and their phonological processing ability. Researchers might also consider using dynamic testing methods, which assess a child s ability to learn, particularly their ability to learn new French words. Literacy Assessment Tools for French immersion Students There are numerous published tests that assess English reading ability, most of which have been developed in the United States (see entry by Scott G. Paris on assessment of reading comprehension in English http://literacyencyclopedia.ca/index.php?fa=items.show&topicid=226). The use of these tests is appropriate for French immersion students who have had some English reading instruction. However, weak performance on these tests before students have had reading instruction in English does not mean that they are having difficulty learning to read in English. Most tests assess word identification accuracy and reading comprehension. Reading fluency develops with practice, and French immersion students may get less practice reading English than regular program students; thus, it may also be of interest to assess reading fluency. The Test of Word Reading Efficiency (Torgesen, Wagner, & Rashotte, 1999) and Gray Oral Reading Test (Wiederholt & Bryant, 2001) assess word and passage reading fluency, respectively. Assessment of French immersion students reading abilities in French is hampered by the lack of French reading tests appropriate for young second language learners that are technically sound and that have been normed on a sample of French immersion students. These types of tests would allow the person administering the test to determine whether a student s French reading development is typical, behind, or ahead of peers. Several Canadian provinces (e.g., Alberta, New Brunswick, and PEI) have developed French reading comprehension tests for French immersion students, but these are not available for use beyond the provincial testing programs. In the early years of French immersion, a few tests were developed by French immersion researchers, such as the Test de Lecture by Barik and Swain (n.d) for students in Grades 2-6 and the French Diagnostic Reading Tests for Early French immersion Primary Classes by Tourond (1982). These were published by OISE Press, which no longer exists. The Canada French immersion Achievement Test (Wormeli & Ardanaz, 1987), which was published by the Faculty of Education at UBC, assesses French word identification and reading comprehension of students in Grades 1-7. A drawback of the reading comprehension test is that it uses the CLOZE procedure, in which a word is missing from a sentence or pair of sentences and the student must produce the missing word. Students might be able to read and understand the context but not know how to Jared, D. Page 4 of 8 http://www.literacyencyclopedia.ca

say the missing word in French. The test might, then, underestimate French reading comprehension ability. There are few published French reading tests even for francophones in Canada (see entry by Natacha Trudeau http://literacyencyclopedia.ca/index.php?fa=items.show&topicid=231). Unpublished French tests include a phonological awareness test developed by Cormier and colleagues (Cormier, MacDonald, Grandmaison, & Ouellette-Lebel, 1995), and a battery under development as part of a CLLRNet project by Desrochers and colleagues (Cormier, Desrochers, & Sénéchal, 2006) that assesses French word and pseudoword reading ability. The latter test was used in the study of French immersion students by Jared et al. (submitted) reported above. Jared et al. translated an English reading test to assess French passage reading accuracy, fluency, and comprehension in their study. This is not ideal because the difficulty level of passages may change with translation. For example, the English word FRIEND is a fairly complex word, with consonant clusters at the start and end (FR, ND), and an atypical spelling-sound correspondence for the vowel pair, whereas the French translation AMI is much simpler to read. Syntactic structures used to express the same idea may differ in their complexity in English and French. Furthermore, some passages will not translate well. For example, one passage on an English reading test discusses the different uses of the terms movie and film, a distinction not made in French. Future directions for assessment. There is clearly a need for reliable, accurate, and widely available, tests of both French reading comprehension and reading fluency for French immersion students. A valuable reading comprehension test would assess a student s abilities in higher-order comprehension skills, such as making inferences and constructing a mental model of the text. Another important assessment tool would be one that assesses French vocabulary knowledge, as a lack of French vocabulary has been mentioned by students as an impediment to their comprehension of French texts (Romney, Romney, & Menzies, 1995). There is a French version of the widely used Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test called the Echelles de Vobabulaire en Images Peabody (Dunn, Thériault-Whalen, & Dunn, 1993), which was designed for Canadian francophones. However, the test increases in difficulty quite quickly and therefore is likely not very sensitive to individual differences in the vocabularies of French immersion students. An additional problem is that this test contains numerous cognates (words that exist in English and French, e.g., dentist, dentiste). English-speaking participants with no knowledge of French may score correctly on these items, and so these items do not reflect knowledge of French vocabulary. Conclusion Researchers have made some progress in understanding the skills that need to be in place in kindergarten for a French immersion student to become a successful reader in English and French. The development of a good test of French reading comprehension is essential both for further progress to be made in the early identification of reading difficulty and for understanding the ways in which the French reading of children in Jared, D. Page 5 of 8 http://www.literacyencyclopedia.ca

French immersion differs from native speakers of French. Knowledge of the latter could be used to strengthen existing reading instruction. Published online: 2008-03-26 14:43:42 Jared, D. Page 6 of 8 http://www.literacyencyclopedia.ca

References Barik, H. C., & Swain, M. (n.d.). Test de Lecture. Toronto: OISE Press. Bowey, J. A. (2005). Predicting individual differences in learning to read. In M. J. Snowling & C. Hulme (Eds.), The science of reading: A handbook. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Bruck, M. (1985). Predictors of transfer out of early French immersion programs. Applied Psycholinguistics, 6, 101-120. Comeau, L., Cormier, P., Grandmaison, E., & Lacroix, D. (1999). A longitudinal study of phonological processing in children learning to read in a second language. Journal of Educational Psychology, 91, 29-43. Cormier, P., Desrochers, A., & Sénéchal, M. (2006). L élaboration d une batterie de tests en français pour l évaluation des compétences en lecture. Revue des Sciences de l Éducation, 32, 205-225. Cormier, P., MacDonald, W., Grandmaison, E, & Ouellette-Lebel, D. (1995). Développement d un test d analyse auditive en français : Normes et validation de construit. Revue des Sciences de l Éducation, 21, 223-240. Deacon, S. H., Wade-Woolley L., & Kirby, J. (2007). Crossover: The role of morphological awareness in French immersion children s reading. Developmental Psychology, 43, 732-746. Dunn, L. M., Thériault-Whalen, C. M., & Dunn, L. M. (1993). Échelle de Vocabulaire en Images Peabody. Toronto: Psycan. Genesee, F. & Jared, D. (2008). Literacy development in early French immersion programs. Canadian Psychology. Jared, D. Cormier, P. Levy, B. A., & Wade-Woolley, L. (submitted). Becoming biliterate: A four-year longitudinal investigation of reading growth in children in French immersion. Journal of Educational Psychology. MacCoubrey, S. J., Wade-Woolley, L., Klinger, D., & Kirby, J. (2004). Early identification of at-risk L2 readers. The Canadian Modern Language Review, 61, 11-28. Obadia, A., & Thériault, C. M. L. (1997). Attrition in French immersion programs: Possible solutions. The Canadian Modern Language Review, 53, 506-529. Romney, J. C., & Romney, D. M., & Menzies H. M. (1995). Reading for pleasure in French: A study of the reading habits and interests of French immersion children. The Canadian Modern Language Review, 51, 474-511. Scarborough, H. S. (1998). Early identification of children at risk for reading disabilities: Phonological awareness and some other promising predictors. In B. K. Shapiro, P. J. Pasquale, & A. J. Capute (Eds.), Specific reading disability: A view of the spectrum (pp. 75-119). Timonium, MD: York. Torgesen, J. K., Wagner, R. K., & Rashotte, C. A. (1999). Test of Word Reading Efficiency. Austin, TX: Pro-Ed. Tourond, M. (1982). French Diagnostic Reading Tests for Early French immersion Primary Classes, Grades 1, 2, and 3. Toronto: OISE Press. Wiederholt, J. L., & Bryant, B. R. (2001). Gray Oral Reading Tests 4. Austin, TX: Pro- Ed. Wormeli, C. T., & Ardanaz, N. (1987). Canadian French immersion Achievement Test. Vancouver, British Columbia: Education Clinic, Faculty of Education, University of British Columbia. Jared, D. Page 7 of 8 http://www.literacyencyclopedia.ca

To cite this document: Jared, D. (2008). Assessment of reading ability in French immersion students. Encyclopedia of Language and Literacy Development (pp. 1-7). London, ON: Canadian Language and Literacy Research Network. Retrieved from http://www.literacyencyclopedia.ca/pdfs/topic.php?topid=239 Jared, D. Page 8 of 8 http://www.literacyencyclopedia.ca