THE WITHIN- AND CROSS-LANGUAGE ROLE OF SYNTACTIC …...syntactic awareness and French reading comprehension in Grade 3 .....63 Figure 5 Indirect (full mediation) effects of English

THE WITHIN- AND CROSS-LANGUAGE ROLE OF

SYNTACTIC AWARENESS IN READING COMPREHENSION

AMONG FRENCH IMMERSION STUDENTS

by

Juwairia Sohail

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements

for the degree of Master of Arts

Graduate Department of Applied Psychology & Human Development

Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

University of Toronto

© Copyright by Juwairia Sohail 2015

ii

THE WITHIN- AND CROSS-LANGUAGE ROLE OF

SYNTACTIC AWARENESS IN READING COMPREHENSION

AMONG FRENCH IMMERSION STUDENTS

Master of Arts

Juwairia Sohail

Department of Applied Psychology & Human Development

Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

University of Toronto

2015

Abstract

Two related studies examining the within- and cross-language transfer of syntactic awareness

(SA) to concurrent measures of reading comprehension (RC) between English and French are

reported. Participants were first- and third-grade Canadian French immersion students. Results

indicated that Grade 1 English SA significantly predicted French RC after cognitive and within-

language controls, while Grade 1 French SA did not. In Grade 3, by contrast, English SA was

unrelated to either English or French RC, while French SA was predictive of both. In all cases,

SA was indirectly related to RC both within and across languages. Adding to the limited

research on metalinguistic transfer, these results support hypotheses for the transferability of SA

and provide preliminary evidence for its crossover role in reading across languages. The

findings call for increased theoretical and academic attention to, and pose educational

implications for, the involvement of SA in models of within- and cross-language RC.

iii

Acknowledgements

The existence of this thesis would not have been possible without the generous

contributions of many individuals. First, I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to my

wonderful supervisor and mentor, Dr. Xi Chen, who guided, supported, and enriched my work

throughout the course of this thesis. Thank you for the tireless feedback and constructive

recommendations you have offered in making this thesis a reality. I would also like to express

my thankfulness to my second reader, Dr. Kathleen Hipfner-Boucher, for all of her invaluable

insights, encouragement, and keen eye for detail. Thank you for responding instantly to my

‘emergency’ queries, regardless of the day or time. A special thank you is also extended to Dr.

Adrian Pasquarella, for his generous input and guidance at key moments in the development of

this work. Many thanks also to the hardworking lab members – the research assistants,

volunteers, undergraduate, and graduate students – and all the generous parents, teachers, and

participants in the research project without whom this study would quite literally not have been

possible. Finally, a grateful thank you to my supportive fellow graduate students in the Lab for

their valuable advice when I needed it most.

Utmost gratitude is given to my wonderful parents, who have nurtured, guided, loved,

strengthened, improved, and encouraged me at every step of my personal and academic

development. Without your selfless and unconditional support in every conceivable realm of

life, I would certainly not be anywhere here. Likewise to my family, who have done every little

and big thing to help me pursue my dreams and goals. Immense gratefulness is also expressed

to my undergraduate supervisor, Dr. Elizabeth Johnson, without whose continuous guidance,

unwavering support, and sheer generosity over the years, I would have been unable to discover,

pursue, and realize my academic and professional dreams. Thank you for always encouraging

iv

me to challenge my limits and for enabling me with opportunity after opportunity, all of which

have collectively led me here. Undoubtedly, a hefty proportion of gratefulness and appreciation

also goes to the wonderful friends and loved ones that I get to call mine, for all the

encouragement, reassurance, and emotional stability that they have relentlessly offered during

this long, and sometimes-overwhelming, journey.

Finally, I give thanks to God Almighty, who has blessed me with all the above and

immeasurable more, and who has enabled me to achieve every single thing that I have ever

achieved. Unto You belongs all Praise, Thankfulness, and Glory.

v

Table of Contents

Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... ii

Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................................... iii

Table of Contents ......................................................................................................... v

List of Tables .............................................................................................................. vi

List of Figures ........................................................................................................... vii

List of Appendices ................................................................................................... viii

Chapter 1: Introduction .................................................................................................................. 1

Chapter 2: Literature Review ......................................................................................................... 4

2.1 The Role of Syntactic Awareness in Reading .................................................................. 4

2.2 Assessing Syntactic Awareness ............................................................................. 6

2.3 Syntactic Awareness and Reading Comprehension among Monolingual Children ......... 9

2.4 Syntactic Awareness and Reading Comprehension among Bilingual Children ............ 14

2.5 Cross-Language Transfer of Metalinguistic Skills ......................................................... 16

2.6 Cross-Language Transfer of Syntactic Awareness in Reading Comprehension ............ 20

Chapter 3: The Present Research ................................................................................................. 25

Chapter 4: Study 1 ....................................................................................................................... 27

Method

4.1 Participants................................................................................................................. 27

4.2 Measures .................................................................................................................... 27

4.3 Procedure ................................................................................................................... 31

4.4 Data Analysis ............................................................................................................. 32

4.5 Results ............................................................................................................................ 33

4.6 Discussion ...................................................................................................................... 45

Chapter 5: Study 2 ....................................................................................................................... 49

Method

5.1 Participants................................................................................................................. 49

5.2 Measures .................................................................................................................... 49

5.3 Procedure ................................................................................................................... 51

5.4 Data Analysis ............................................................................................................. 51

5.5 Results ............................................................................................................................ 52

5.6 Discussion ...................................................................................................................... 73

Chapter 6: General Discussion .................................................................................................... 78

References .................................................................................................................. 86

vi

List of Tables

Table 1 Descriptive Statistic and Reliabilities (α) for All Measures in Grade 1 .................... 34

Table 2 Pearson Correlations among all Measures of Study 1 ............................................... 35

Table 3 Hierarchical Linear Regression Predicting French Reading Comprehension

in Grade 1 ............................................................................................................ 38

Table 4a Unstandardized Coefficients for the Mediation Model of French Syntactic

Awareness and French Reading Comprehension in Grade 1 .................................... 40

Table 4b Indirect (Mediated) Effects of French Syntactic Awareness on French Reading

Comprehension in Grade 1 .................................................................................. 40

Table 5a Unstandardized Coefficients for the Mediation Model of English Syntactic

Awareness and French Reading Comprehension in Grade 1 ............................. 41

Table 5b Indirect (Mediated) Effects of English Syntactic Awareness on French Reading

Comprehension in Grade 1 ................................................................................. 42

Table 6 Descriptive Statistics and Reliabilities (α) for All Measures in Study 2 ................. 52

Table 7 Pearson Correlations among all Measures of Study 2 .............................................. 54

Table 8 Hierarchical Linear Regression Predicting French Reading Comprehension

in Grade 3 ............................................................................................................ 57



Table 9b Indirect (Mediated) Effects of French Syntactic Awareness on French Reading




Table 10b Indirect (Mediated) Effects of English Syntactic Awareness on French Reading


Table 11 Hierarchical Linear Regression Predicting English Reading Comprehension

in Grade 3 ............................................................................................................ 66


Awareness and English Reading Comprehension in Grade 3 ............................. 67

Table 12b Indirect (Mediated) Effects of English Syntactic Awareness on English Reading



Awareness and English Reading Comprehension in Grade 3 ............................. 71

Table 13b Indirect (Mediated) Effects of French Syntactic Awareness on English Reading


vii

List of Figures

Figure 1 Indirect (full mediation) effects of French word identification on the within-

language relationship between French syntactic awareness and French reading

comprehension in Grade 1 ................................................................................... 43

Figure 2 Indirect (partial mediation) effects of French word identification on the cross-

language relationship between English syntactic awareness and French reading


Figure 3 Indirect (partial mediation) effects of French word identification and vocabulary on

the within-language relationship between French syntactic awareness and French

reading comprehension in Grade 3 ...................................................................... 60

Figure 4 Indirect (full mediation) effects of French word identification, vocabulary, and

syntactic awareness on the cross-language relationship between English

syntactic awareness and French reading comprehension in Grade 3 .................. 63

Figure 5 Indirect (full mediation) effects of English vocabulary on the within-language

relationship between English syntactic awareness and English reading


Figure 6 Indirect (partial mediation) effects of English vocabulary on the cross-language

relationship between French syntactic awareness and English reading


viii

List of Appendices

Appendix A Practice and Test Items of the English Syntactic Awareness Task

in Grades 1 and 3 ........................................................................................... 93

Appendix B Practice and Test Items of the French Syntactic Awareness Task

in Grades 1 and 3 ........................................................................................... 95

1

Chapter 1: Introduction

Reading comprises one of the most fundamental skills of human life. In particular,

reading comprehension is essential to function in multiple domains across the lifespan.

Beginning in the childhood years, competent reading comprehension is necessary for

succeeding in the academic realm (Xiuli Tong, Deacon, & Cain, 2014). What initially begins as

“learning to read” soon transforms into “reading to learn” midway through the elementary

years, when expertise in reading becomes a prerequisite to accessing greater and superior

breadth and depth of knowledge. By adulthood, successful reading skills are required in order to

participate and thrive in nearly all aspects of societal living.

A similar sentiment applies when considering formal education conducted in a language

other than one’s native tongue. Learning to read in a second language can pose additional and

more unique challenges for a beginner learner. Bilingual education and literacy have met with

increased research interest in recent years, and not surprisingly so. With the rise in recent

decades in the number of students from diverse linguistic backgrounds being educated in non-

native languages, the understanding of literacy development through a monolingual lens needs

to be revisited. In 2011, 17.5% of the Canadian population spoke more than one language at

home, and 20.6% of Canadians – over one-fifth of the population – reported a mother-tongue

other than English or French (Statistics Canada, 2012). Children from these families are

inevitably raised in multilingual contexts, and by and large schooled in a language other than

their native vernacular.

Among the rising trends of bilingualism, Canadian French immersion programs have

also surged in numbers. Census data from 2011 reveal that enrolment in French immersion

programs across Canada has increased by 28% since 1991/1992 (Statistics Canada, 2013). Early

2

French immersion programs are publicly-funded education options offered by Canadian English

school boards, providing integrated language, literacy, and academic instruction to students in

French beginning in kindergarten or the first grade. Students are generally taught exclusively in

French until Grade 3 or 4, at which point English language instruction is introduced into the

curriculum. English instruction gradually increases over the grades until it reaches

approximately 50% by the end of middle school. Children attending these schools are typically

non-Francophone and, given the evolving demographics of the Canadian population, are now

more and more often from diverse linguistic backgrounds (Swain & Lapkin, 2005). Thus, in-

school French language learning in these immersion programs entails the acquisition of a

second language for the majority of students, and a third language (or more) for a sizeable

minority.

A recent review by Lazaruk (2007) shows that Canadian French immersion programs

effectively enhance students’ linguistic, academic, and cognitive development in both English

and French. The literature suggests that immersion students benefit from additive bilingualism,

in which French as a second language instruction in no way compromises their English

language proficiency (Lazaruk, 2007). For example, Turnbull, Lapkin, and Hart (2001)

demonstrated that third-grade French immersion students’ performance on a standardized,

province-wide assessment of English reading and writing displayed equal, or superior,

performance to that of non-immersion students. Further, performance by the same population

on the sixth-grade assessment significantly surpassed that of non-immersion students, despite

the former having received less formal English academic instruction (Turnbull, Hart, & Lapkin,

2003). Due to these identifiable benefits, the mechanisms through which French immersion

students are able to acquire bilingual proficiency has sparked considerable research interest.

3

Within this spotlight on second-language literacy development, the focus of the present

thesis lies on higher-order reading achievement. The thesis examines the contribution of

syntactic awareness to reading comprehension in the context of early French immersion

education, in which French typically represents a student’s second (or third) language. It

employs this context with the purpose of uncovering specific within- and cross-language

relationships between syntactic awareness and reading comprehension in students’ first

language (L1) and second language (L2). The findings of this research are important to

advancing our theoretical understanding of second-language reading acquisition as well as

developing appropriate educational curricula for L2-learners.

4

Chapter 2: Literature Review

Successful acquisition of literacy requires the direct and indirect contribution of

underlying metalinguistic skills (Kuo & Anderson, 2008). Metalinguistic awareness, referring

to the capacity to label, scrutinize, and manipulate the structural features of a language, has

been shown to play an essential role in learning to read within and across languages (Koda &

Zehler, 2008). In recent years, components of metalinguistic awareness – i.e., phonological,

morphological, and syntactic – have become increasingly pertinent to the research on bilingual

reading acquisition and cross-language transfer. In this thesis, I focus on the metalinguistic skill

of syntactic awareness and its relationship to higher-order reading outcomes in emerging

bilinguals’ second language.

In the present chapter, I begin with the definition of syntactic awareness and consider

the role it plays in reading comprehension. I then introduce the tasks typically used in research

to measure this skill and review the literature on the relationship between syntactic awareness

and reading comprehension in monolingual and bilingual children. Finally, I explore theories on

the cross-language transfer of metalinguistic skills and present the limited but continually

emerging research on the cross-language role of syntactic awareness in reading comprehension.

2.1 The Role of Syntactic Awareness in Reading

Syntactic awareness, known also as grammatical sensitivity or metasyntactic ability,

refers to the ability to notice and manipulate the grammatical structure of sentences (Cain,

2007; Durgunoğlu, 2002). It involves understanding the rules of grammar and recognizing how

sentences are assembled (Tunmer & Hoover, 1992 cited in Xiuhong Tong, Tong, Shu, Chan,

Mcbride-Chang, 2014). This internal structure, while not necessarily verbally describable by a

child, is nevertheless noticeable and open to manipulation. As described next, syntactic

5

awareness is an important metalinguistic ability that plays at least three important roles in the

comprehension of text.

First, researchers have argued that sensitivity to the grammatical structure of a language

allows a reader to monitor the text for reading errors as he or she reads, thereby aiding in

accurate comprehension (Cain, 2007; Durgunoğlu, 2002). In comprehension monitoring, a

reader measures the success of his/her comprehension to ensure that it is proceeding smoothly,

and that any error is amended if necessary (Baker & Brown, 1984, p. 355 cited in Tunmer,

Nesdale, & Wright, 1987). For example, misreading the verb ran for the noun rain in the

sentence The boy ran down the street would likely alert a reader, via awareness of the confines

and rules governing English grammar, that an error has been committed wherein a verb has

been replaced by a noun. Often, beginner readers are unable to detect failures in comprehension

and/or the point of breakdown, as well as the necessary remediation strategies required to

recover their understanding of the text. Children with well-developed syntactic awareness,

however, are able to use the syntactic form of a sentence to ensure that their word responses

conform to the surrounding syntactic context (Tunmer et al., 1987). Thus, Bowey (1986b)

argues that syntactic awareness directly influences reading comprehension through

comprehension-monitoring.

The second contribution of syntactic awareness to reading comprehension lies in its role

in deriving the meanings of unfamiliar words (Durgunoğlu, 2002). A reader may be able to use

sentence context to extract, or decipher, the possible meaning of an unknown word. Tunmer et

al. (1987) proposed that children who demonstrate syntactic awareness are able to use their

emerging knowledge of word spellings along with contextual information to decode an

unfamiliar word correctly. In a longitudinal study involving 57 children, Rego and Bryant

6

(1993) showed that syntactic awareness at the age of five-and-a-half was predictive of

children’s decoding progress six months later (Rego & Bryant, 1993a,b, cited in Rego, 1997).

Furthermore, the evidence supported the notion that syntactic awareness, combined with

decoding skills, enabled children to read unfamiliar words (Rego, 1997). Third and relatedly,

syntactic awareness can also facilitate the recognition of homographic words. Children must

engage their syntactic knowledge in order to accurately read words such as read, for example,

that have more than one possible pronunciation (Demont & Gombert, 1996).

Having briefly discussed the proposed mechanisms by which syntactic awareness

supports reading comprehension, we turn now to the literature concerning the relationship

between syntactic awareness and reading in monolingual and bilingual populations and the

specific techniques used to assess the construct.

2.2 Assessing Syntactic Awareness

Several aural, visual, or combined aural-visual assessments have been devised by

researchers in order to measure a child’s syntactic awareness. This section describes those

measures that are most frequently cited in the syntactic awareness literature, namely the error-

correction, grammatical judgment, error-imitation, word-order correction, and oral cloze tasks.

An error-correction task (e.g., Bowey, 1986a,b; Bowey & Patel, 1988; Cain, 2007;

Siegel & Ryan, 1988; Xiuli Tong et al., 2014; Tunmer et al., 1987), also known as a sentence-

correction, oral-correction, or morphosyntactic-correction task, requires examinees to correct a

grammatically-deviant sentence presented to them by the experimenter. Children are informed

that each presented sentence contains a mistake that causes it to sound wrong, and are asked to

“fix it up” so that it sounds right. The sentences may be presented aurally and/or visually and

7

generally contain agrammaticalities in the form of violations of tense agreement, subject-verb

agreement, subject-copular verb agreement, gender agreement, prepositions, determiners, and

word-order, among other possible violations (Siu & Ho, 2015). It should be noted, however,

that not all error-correction tasks involve morphological violations (e.g., Xiuli Tong et al.,

2014), in an attempt to maintain the purity of the syntactic awareness measure.

A similarly-structured syntactic awareness task, the grammatical judgement task (e.g.,

Cain, 2007; Demont & Gombert, 1996; Plaza & Cohen, 2003) presents sentences that are either

grammatically sound or agrammatical. The child is required to indicate whether the

grammatical structure of the sentence is correct or incorrect. Often, researchers combine the

grammatical judgement and sentence correction tasks (e.g., Plaza & Cohen, 2003), awarding the

child points for correctly judging the correctness of the sentence and then correcting the error.

Many studies use an error-imitation task (e.g., Bowey, 1986a,b; Cain, 2007; Siegel &

Ryan, 1988; Verhoeven, 2015). As in the error-correction task, the child is presented with a

grammatically-incorrect sentence, but instead of correcting it, is asked to imitate the incorrect

sentence verbatim (i.e., without correcting it). The ability to accurately repeat the sentence

without corrections, when it evidently defies the speaker’s accustomed syntax, suggests that

he/she is able to attend to the grammatical structure of the sentence and not to its meaning

(Bowey, 1986b). Bowey (1986b) notes that spontaneous correction of a sentence in this task

reflects a failure to acknowledge the grammatical deviance present, and can thus serve as an

indirect measure of one’s level of syntactic awareness. In some cases, researchers correct a

child’s score on the error-correction task by accounting for his or her score on the error-

imitation task, given that younger children have a propensity to spontaneously amend the

agrammatical sentence (Bowey, 1986a,b; Cain, 2007).

8

Word-order correction tasks (e.g., Blackmore & Pratt, 1997; Muter, Hulme, Snowling,

and Stevenson, 2004; Nation & Snowling, 2000; Tunmer et al., 1987) present the participant

with a scrambled sentence. The child is asked to repeat the sentence and then rearrange the

words into their correct order without altering the fundamental meaning of the sentence, thereby

providing a measure of his/her knowledge of the conventional order of words in a sentence.

Finally, in an oral cloze, or grammatical closure, task (e.g., Blackmore & Pratt, 1997;

Lesaux, Lipka, & Siegel, 2006; Siegel & Ryan, 1988; Tunmer et al., 1987), a sentence with a

missing word is aurally presented. The location of the missing word is signaled and the child is

required to fill in the missing word (which may be of any class, e.g., nouns, pronouns, verbs,

adverbs, conjunctions, adjectives) in its appropriate grammatical form. The oral cloze task is

considered a more comprehensive measure of syntactic ability, as it commands both word order

and morphosyntactic knowledge, whereas word-order tasks assess only the former and error-

correction tasks assess only the latter, although both are being implemented in contemporary

research with increasing frequency (Siu & Ho, 2015).

Note that studies frequently utilize multiple measures to comprehensively assess

children’s sensitivity to the grammatical structure of sentences.

In the present thesis, an error-correction task was chosen as a measure of syntactic

awareness for several reasons. First, as is typical in measures of metalinguistic awareness, the

error-correction task requires a greater degree of active manipulation of language than many of

the other tasks described above (Blackmore & Pratt, 1997). Furthermore, it is one of the

syntactic tasks that has repeatedly been found to relate to reading performance in young

children (e.g., Bowey, 1986a; Plaza & Cohen, 2003; Tunmer et al., 1987). Finally, because it is

by nature a production task, the error-correction task assesses greater syntactic processing than

9

a judgement task. Finally, although it was administered both aurally and visually in the present

studies, the task was chosen because its aural presentation ensures that reading ability is not a

confounding factor influencing participants’ performance. To maintain its syntactic purity, the

error-correction task used in the present research was developed to ensure that morphological or

semantic corrections were not required.

2.3 Syntactic Awareness and Reading Comprehension among Monolingual Children

A sizeable number of studies have established the relationship between syntactic

awareness and reading comprehension among monolingual children. While there are some

inconsistencies in the literature, the majority of studies support the existence of such a

relationship, even after controlling for non-verbal cognitive intelligence (e.g., Demont &

Gombert, 1996; Nation & Snowling, 2000; Willows & Ryan, 1986), word-reading (e.g., Plaza

& Cohen, 2003, 2004; Muter et al., 2004), phonological awareness and decoding (e.g., Demont

& Gombert, 1996; Nation & Snowling, 2000; Tunmer et al., 1987), vocabulary (e.g., Demont &

Gombert, 1996; Willows & Ryan 1986), short-term memory (e.g., Rego & Bryant, 1993a,b

cited in Rego, 1997; Willows & Ryan, 1986) and working memory (Low & Siegel, 2005).

Beginning with correlational evidence, Bowey (1986b), for example, demonstrated that

syntactic awareness in fourth- and fifth-graders, measured with error-correction and error-

imitation tasks, was significantly correlated with performance on reading comprehension tasks,

as well as with a task measuring reading comprehension monitoring. This finding demonstrates

that syntactic awareness is linked to both comprehension and comprehension monitoring among

middle-upper elementary school readers (Bowey, 1986b). Similarly, Mokhtari and Thompson

(2006) found significant correlations between monolingual English fifth-graders’ syntactic

awareness and reading comprehension. The authors point out that, while difficulties in text

10

comprehension are often attributed to phonological or decoding ability, these skills alone do not

always adequately explain the reading development difficulties observed in struggling readers;

syntactic awareness skills are an important piece of the puzzle and are closely tied to reading

comprehension outcomes (Mokhtari & Thompson, 2006).

While previous studies had established strong correlational links between syntactic

awareness and reading comprehension, the question of whether superior syntactic awareness in

good readers is a product of greater exposure to written language remained unresolved. To

address this confound, Tunmer et al. (1987) matched younger, good readers with older, poor

readers on measures of verbal intelligence, reading fluency, decoding, and reading

comprehension in order to control for the possibility that differences in syntactic ability are due

to greater reading exposure and experience in superior readers. Results revealed that younger,

good readers outperformed older, poor readers on all measures of syntactic awareness,

indicating that syntactic awareness in the latter group was developmentally delayed.

Furthermore, within each age group, better readers also performed better on each task of

syntactic awareness. Together, these results rule out the possibility that differences in syntactic

awareness in readers are due simply to differences in text exposure, and supports the hypothesis

that syntactic awareness is linked to reading comprehension (Tunmer et al., 1987).

Other assessments of poor versus average readers show similar patterns of relationship

between syntactic awareness and reading comprehension. Nation and Snowling (2000) found

impairment in the syntactic awareness performance of poor comprehenders compared to normal

comprehenders. Given that poor and normal comprehenders in this study were matched for age,

decoding, and non-verbal ability, the weaker syntactic awareness of the poor comprehenders

could not be attributed to potential phonological impairments (Nation & Snowling, 2000).

11

Likewise, Siegel and Ryan (1988) found that children with reading disabilities displayed

syntactic sensitivity significantly later than average readers, and that the lag persisted

throughout childhood. Xiuli Tong et al. (2014) further disentangled metalinguistic difficulties in

struggling readers. Fourth-grade poor and average comprehenders were matched on age, non-

verbal intelligence, vocabulary, and word-reading speed and accuracy. While both groups

performed comparably on phonological awareness, poor comprehenders demonstrated

significantly weaker performance on measures of morphological and syntactic awareness,

suggesting that deficits in syntactic awareness may lead to poor comprehension (Xiuli Tong et

al., 2014).

Studies have also demonstrated the predictive relationship between syntactic awareness

and reading comprehension among monolingual readers (e.g., Demont & Gombert, 1996;

Mélançon & Ziarko, 1999; Mokhtari & Niederhauser, 2013; Muter et al., 2004; Plaza & Cohen,

2003), including non-alphabetic languages such as Chinese (Xiuhong Tong et al., 2014). For

example, Mokhtari and Niederhauser (2013) found that syntactic awareness uniquely explained

33% of the variance in reading comprehension in monolingual English fifth-graders, emerging

as a stronger predictor than vocabulary. Muter et al. (2004) also reported in a two-year

longitudinal study that syntactic awareness measured in the first year of reading instruction

predicted comprehension one year later. Similar findings have also been reported in French-

speaking children: Plaza and Cohen (2003) found that performance on a syntactic awareness

task was predictive of sentence-level reading comprehension among French-speaking students

in Grade 1, independent of the contributions of phonological awareness and naming speed. In a

three-year longitudinal study, Demont and Gombert (1996) demonstrated that performance on

syntactic measures administered in kindergarten and Grade 1 was predictive of reading

12

comprehension performance in the second and third grade. In fact, compared to phonemic or

phonological awareness, syntactic awareness was a better predictor of sentence-level

comprehension among the 8-to-9-year-olds. Notably, syntactic measures were also the only

significant contributors to comprehension beyond the end of Grade 2, replacing non-verbal

intelligence as the strongest predictor. The authors conclude that knowledge of the structure and

organization of sentences plays a larger role in children’s reading comprehension than do

general cognitive and verbal ability in the upper elementary years (Demont & Gombert, 1996).

At the same time, other studies, while confirming correlational links, have found no

evidence for independent contribution of syntactic awareness to reading comprehension

(Blackmore & Pratt, 1997; Bowey & Patel, 1988; Cain, 2007; Oakhill & Cain, 2012). Bowey

and Patel (1988), for example, found no significant contribution of syntactic awareness to

reading comprehension among first-grade English-speaking children, after controlling for

general language ability, including vocabulary. The authors attribute the lack of independent

contribution of metalinguistic ability to its shared commonality with general language abilities,

stating that the former cannot be deemed an ability that emerges independently of the latter

(Bowey & Patel, 1988). Cain’s (2007) assessment of 8-to-10-year-old monolinguals on two

separate tasks of syntactic awareness also yielded no independent contribution to reading

comprehension; here, vocabulary, grammatical knowledge, and memory skills appeared to have

mediated in the regression analysis what had been a strong correlational relationship between

the two. Oakhill and Cain’s (2012) three-year longitudinal study also did not produce evidence

of an independent contribution of early grammatical knowledge to later reading comprehension,

although the two were highly correlated at each timepoint. However, the authors negate the

claim that syntactic skills are unimportant for reading comprehension; the strong correlations

13

but lack of unique prediction suggests that, while important, grammatical skills do not

contribute additional variance over and above that which is already explained by initial reading

comprehension, language, and semantic abilities (Oakhill & Cain, 2012).

Discrepancies in the findings between previous studies are likely a result of the differing

measures of syntactic awareness employed across studies. Cain’s (2007) analyses confirm that

distinct language and memory skills are associated with distinct measures of syntactic

awareness. For example, performance on word-order correction and error-correction tasks in

her study were linked uniquely to performance on control measures of vocabulary, memory,

and grammatical knowledge and these relationships changed with age (Cain, 2007). This

example is illustrative of the unique dependencies of various measures of syntactic awareness

on other, underlying language, literacy, and memory skills. This phenomenon likely also

extends to the varying measures of reading comprehension applied across studies; measures

used in the cited literature differed on the level of comprehension tested, i.e., sentence (e.g.,

Demont & Gombert, 1996; Plaza & Cohen, 2003) versus passage level (e.g., Blackmore &

Pratt, 1997; Nation & Snowling, 2000), and on the mode of evaluation, with some asking literal

and inferential questions (e.g., Cain, 2007), others multiple-choice questions (e.g., Mokhtari &

Neiderhauser, 2013), others requiring story retelling as a means of demonstrating

comprehension (e.g., Blackmore & Pratt, 1997), and still others asking the child to select one of

four pictures that best illustrates the presented sentence (e.g., Plaza & Cohen, 2003). An

additional source of discrepancy is the age of participants across studies; literacy skills naturally

mature with age and the nature, relationship, and strength of the associations between the

various skills may change or grow over time (e.g., Cain, 2007). Given inconsistencies in the

measures and ages of participants, as well as the skills controlled for in predictive analyses of

14

syntactic awareness on reading comprehension, it is possible that a consistent pattern of results

has thus far been elusive. Altogether, however, despite some key exceptions, the monolingual

literature tends to present some compelling evidence for the role of syntactic awareness in

successful reading.

2.4 Syntactic Awareness and Reading Comprehension among Bilingual Children

Compared to the monolingual literature, fewer studies have investigated the contribution

of syntactic awareness to reading ability in the L2. Acquiring syntactic awareness – with its

requisite of appropriate word combination, grammaticality, word order, and context – may be a

more difficult task for bilingual children in their L2 than for monolingual children (Leider,

Proctor, Silverman, & Harring, 2013). Accordingly, the question arises as to whether syntactic

awareness contributes to reading comprehension in the L2 of bilingual children the same way it

does in monolinguals.

Consistent with the bulk of monolingual literature, a number of the extant studies have

revealed that syntactic awareness contributes to reading comprehension within a child’s L2.

Lefrançois and Armand (2003) reported that, at both the sentence and passage levels, French

reading comprehension was strongly correlated with French syntactic awareness among 9-to-

11-year old Spanish-speaking children in the beginning stages of learning French. Similar

associations, both correlational and/or predictive, between L2 syntactic awareness and L2

reading comprehension have been found in emerging Spanish-English bilinguals (Leider et al.,

2013; Proctor, Silverman, Harring, & Montecillo, 2012; Swanson, Rosston, Gerber, & Solari,

2008), Turkish-Dutch bilinguals (Verhoeven, 1990), Portuguese-French bilinguals (Simard,

Foucambert, & Labelle, 2014), and English Language Learners (ELLs) from diverse L1

backgrounds (Lesaux et al., 2006, Lesaux, Rupp, & Siegel, 2007; Low & Siegel, 2005). In the

15

case of Low and Siegel’s (2005) upper-elementary students, for instance, the ELL sample

performed comparably to their native English-speaking peers on measures of phonological

awareness, decoding fluency, and verbal working memory, but were significantly weaker on a

measure of syntactic awareness. Moreover, similar to the native English sample, not only was

the ELL children’s English (L2) syntactic awareness a significant predictor of their reading

comprehension, it also explained similar amounts of variance in the reading comprehension

model in both language groups (Low & Siegel, 2005).

A subset of bilingual studies, however, have revealed no correlations between syntactic

awareness and reading tasks in L2. For example, Chiappe and Siegel (1999) found that English

syntactic awareness was not related to English word reading in grade-one children who were

native-Punjabi speakers. Likewise, Armand (2000) found no correlation between syntactic

awareness and word recognition or reading comprehension in first-grade French L2 learners.

One reason for contradictory findings between the latter studies and those that successfully

report correlational evidence, such as Lefrançois and Armand (2003), may be the age

differences between the samples, resulting in differing levels of difficulty of reading material. It

is possible that, while the younger children in Armand’s (2000) study could comprehend simple

sentences without requiring syntactic awareness, the older readers in Lefrançois and Armand

(2003) were unable to comprehend the more syntactically-complex sentences without a basis in

syntactic awareness. However, despite correlations in the latter study, both failed to find

evidence of prediction; the authors thus suggest that, for syntactic awareness to predict reading

comprehension, a greater degree of L2 proficiency than that present in their sample may be

required. Thus, while Lefrançois and Armand’s (2003) participants were able to draw on

syntactic awareness when reading, hence demonstrating correlation, they may have yet to attain

16

the more advanced level of L2 proficiency that enabled the more L2-proficient samples of other

studies (e.g., Low & Siegel, 2005) to demonstrate not only a correlation, but also a significant

predictive relationship. Finally, Lefrançois & Armand (2003) also acknowledged that, given the

high correlations between syntactic awareness and oral competence in their study,

multicollinearity may have weakened the effect of syntactic awareness on reading

comprehension.

Thus, while findings in the L2 literature are less consistent than in L1, there appears to

be substantial evidence verifying the relationship between syntactic awareness and reading

comprehension in children’s L2.

2.5 Cross-Language Transfer of Metalinguistic Skills

The present thesis concerns the cross-language transfer of syntactic awareness among

bilinguals. Cross-language transfer, referring to the linguistic contribution of one language to

the development of the other, is a prime focus of interest within bilingual research.

Understanding how fundamental language and literacy skills are developed and relate to the

acquisition of an additional language is critical for informing educators on how best to develop

L2 instruction.

Traditionally, two influential hypotheses have been proposed to explain the nature of the

relationship between literacy skills within individuals’ first and second languages. The first, the

Linguistic Interdependence Hypothesis developed by Cummins (1979, 1981), posits that

multilingual acquisition is interdependent and reliant on common underlying cognitive and

linguistic abilities. High levels of development in the L1 are thought to facilitate similar levels

of competence in the L2. Meanwhile, poor L1 linguistic development that is further exposed to

17

intensive L2 instruction is likely to impede the ongoing development of both L1 and L2

(Cummins, 1979, 1981). The Linguistic Interdependence Hypothesis therefore focuses on the

underlying skills that enable cross-language transfer. Specifically, while surface-level skills of

phonology, syntax, or orthography are hypothesized to develop independently between

languages, the fundamental cognitive and academic proficiency is considered mutual across

languages and is responsible for facilitating the bidirectional transfer of literacy-related skills

(Verhoeven, 1994). Effective reverse transfer however, in which L2 skills contribute to L1, is

contingent upon satisfying certain conditions proposed by Cummins (1981): L2 instruction

must be adequate to support proficiency, there must be sufficient L1 exposure, and there must

be an adequate amount of motivation to learn the language.

According to the Linguistic Interdependence Hypothesis, students such as those in the

present study who have high levels of competency in English should also perform competently

in French. This L2 competency will, in turn, continue to support their proficiency in L1,

provided adequate exposure and motivation. Common, underlying cognitive and academic

proficiencies, such as implicit metalinguistic knowledge, comprehension monitoring, or

procedural knowledge (Genesee, Geva, Dressler, & Kamil, 2006), are hypothesized to facilitate

this transfer of literacy-related skills across English and French. I propose that syntactic

awareness is one of these underlying metalinguistic proficiencies that is transferable across

languages. In the present thesis, I test this hypothesis by examining whether syntactic awareness

can contribute cross-linguistically to reading comprehension in English and French.

The second theoretical orientation within which we can examine cross-language transfer

is the Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis (Lado, 1957, 1964). Unlike the Linguistic

Interdependence Hypothesis, which assumes a common, underlying cognitive and academic

18

proficiency that enables the transfer of literacy skills between languages, the Contrastive

Analysis Hypothesis is centred on the structural similarities and differences between languages.

Within this framework, linguistic elements of L2 that are similar to L1 will be relatively easy

for the emerging bilingual to acquire, whereas those that are different will prove to be more

challenging (Lado, 1957). Errors made in the acquisition of L2 could be attributed to

“interference” from L1 when an element of language that is different from the L1 is

encountered. Thus, the typological proximity of the two languages is a keystone to this

Hypothesis – languages that share many linguistic features (e.g., French and Spanish) will allow

for the transfer of skills from the L1 to the L2, whereas dissimilar languages (e.g., English and

Chinese) would be subject to greater interference during second-language acquisition. Despite

many contemporary enhancements and modifications to the original Contrastive Analysis

Hypothesis that have broadened its scope to include the transfer of developmental processes and

literacy proficiency, Genesee and colleagues (2006) note that the theory is still largely

concentrated on the structural components of languages. It attempts to explain the transfer of

grammatical features of languages, including syntactic, but is not sufficient for explaining the

more metalinguistic aspects of cross-language transfer (Genesee et al., 2006).

A third, more recent theory – and perhaps most relevant to the present thesis – was

proposed by Koda (2008). The Transfer Facilitation Model is explicitly reflective of the role of

L1 metalinguistic awareness in learning to read in the L2. Specifically, Koda (2008, p. 78)

defines transfer as the “automatic activation of well-established first-language competencies,

triggered by second-language input.” This Model involves three assumptions: first, successful

transfer requires that the transferable L1 competencies are automatized and, second, that the

transfer is continual and not to cease during the course of L2-acquisition. Finally, the Transfer

19

Facilitation Model assumes that, with continued exposure to and experience with L2 input, the

L1 competencies that are transferred will too continue to develop and evolve. In particular,

Koda’s (2008) Model pertains to the transfer of metalinguistic awareness, which is viewed as a

language-independent construct already available to second-language learners. Because of its

independence from any specific language, L1 metalinguistic awareness is expected to facilitate

L2 reading acquisition regardless of the typological nature of the L1 and L2. However, the

degree of linguistic distance is considered relevant insofar as the relative ease with which

transferred L1 awareness can evolve into L2-specific awareness. Linguistically-similar

languages are expected to require fewer adjustments to be made to transferred L1 competencies,

as well as less L2 input, before L2 metalinguistic awareness and related reading sub-skills can

develop.

Within the Transfer Facilitation Model, well-developed L1 metalinguistic awareness is

therefore believed to be a viable predictor of initial L2 reading development. With increased

exposure to L2 input and experience, metalinguistic awareness is expected to mature into

increasingly language-specific awareness. Thus, the development of L2 metalinguistic

awareness is a function of the ongoing interaction between transferred L1 metalinguistic

awareness and L2 input.

Altogether, Koda’s (2008) Transfer Facilitation Model proposes that, for L2 learners,

only already well-developed metalinguistic awareness may be transferred from the L1. Further,

the facilitation of L2 reading by these transferred L1 competencies is triggered and honed by

incoming L2 input. In the context of the present thesis then, Koda’s (2008) Model implies that

syntactic awareness represents a language-independent ability, already available to the

immersion students in the study from their English L1, that will become increasingly tailored

20

and adjusted to French-specific awareness with sustained French input. Although typological

distance is not a key determinant of successful transfer in this Model, the linguistic similarity

between English and French is expected to permit easier, faster adaptation of the transferred L1

to L2 syntactic awareness. Koda’s (2008) assumptions imply that the transferred metalinguistic

ability will successfully facilitate students’ French reading acquisition. However, the Model

does not hypothesize on matters of directionality; it is not clear what patterns of bidirectional

transfer might emerge among students receiving instruction solely in the L2, or whether

metalinguistic transfer from the L2 will facilitate L1 reading acquisition in return. In the present

thesis, it is hypothesized that the developing French-specific awareness will, over time,

contribute to participants’ L1 reading.

2.6 Cross-Language Transfer of Syntactic Awareness in Reading Comprehension

A number of studies have examined relationships between metalinguistic awareness

assessed in a speaker’s two languages or metalinguistic awareness assessed in one language and

reading-related skills in another. Of the metalinguistic skills, phonological awareness has been

most extensively explored. For example, a landmark study widely cited as evidence for the

cross-language transfer of phonological awareness is one by Durgunoğlu, Nagy, and Hancin-

Bhatt (1993). In their work, the authors demonstrated a strong relationship between Spanish

phonological awareness and English word reading. Specifically, significant correlations were

observed between emerging first-grade bilingual children’s Spanish (L1) phonological

awareness and English (L2) word reading and pseudo-word reading. Moreover, multiple and

hierarchical regression analyses revealed that L1 phonological awareness and word reading

proved to be the strongest predictors of L2 word and pseudo-word reading, compared to both

L1 and L2 measures of oral proficiency, word recognition, and letter recognition. Durgunoğlu,

21

Nagy, and Hancin-Bhatt (1993) propose that phonological awareness therefore represents

underlying metalinguistic awareness that is not language-specific and is accessible to a bilingual

in both his or her first and second languages. Similarly, among Moroccan Arabic- and Berber-

speakers schooled in Arabic since first grade and introduced to French starting in Grade 3, early

French reading ability was best predicted by Grade 1 Arabic decoding skill (Wagner, Spratt,

Ezzaki, 1989). Moreover, 40% of the total variance in French literacy was explained by Arabic

skills among this sample, and this relationship between first and second literacy increased with

time (Wagner et al., 1989). Research has also demonstrated evidence of cross-language transfer

among French immersion students; Comeau, Cormier, Grandmaison, and Lacroix (1999) found

that phonological awareness in English contributed to decoding in French among Grade 1, 3,

and 5 students in immersion schooling (Comeau et al. 1999).

Recent longitudinal work by Deacon, Wade-Woolley, and Kirby (2007) has uncovered

interesting trends in the cross-language transfer of another metalinguistic skill – morphological

awareness. For the French immersion students in this study, it was found that early English

morphological awareness contributed to French reading, whereas later French morphological

awareness contributed to English reading. Such a bidirectional pattern, in which L2

morphological awareness contributed to the same skill in L1, was also found among Hebrew-

English children (Bindman, 2004).

Compared to the phonological awareness (e.g., Comeau et al., 1999; Durgunoğlu et al.,

1993; Mumtaz & Humphreys, 2002; Wagner et al., 1989) and morphological awareness (e.g.,

Bindman, 2004; Deacon et al., 2007; Ramirez, Chen, Geva, & Kiefer, 2010) literature, fewer

studies have investigated the cross-language transfer of syntactic awareness between L1 and L2.

Still, a small body of research has begun to explore this aspect of metalinguistic awareness,

22

albeit with variable designs and obtaining variable outcomes. Durgunoğlu, Mir, and Ariňo-

Martí (2002) found that fourth-grade Spanish-English students who could accurately correct

syntactic errors in Spanish were also more likely to demonstrate this accuracy in English,

suggesting that there is a common underlying syntactic proficiency across the two languages

(Durgunoğlu et al., 2002). Similarly, in their 2002 work assessing bilingual Arabic-English

Canadian children, Abu-Rabia and Siegel found significant correlations between syntactic

awareness in both languages. Children who presented with syntactic awareness deficits in one

language did so in their second language also. Moreover, the relationship between word and

pseudoword reading and syntactic awareness was significant within, and across, each language,

indicating cross-language relationships. The strong correlations between syntactic awareness

and reading skills across languages suggests that word-level reading outcomes are due in part to

differences in underlying metalinguistic awareness, rather than to a language-dependent source,

supporting the hypothesis of linguistic interdependence (Abu-Rabia & Siegel, 2002).

Gabriele, Troseth, Martohardjono, and Otheguy (2009) explored the contribution of

syntactic skills to early reading skills in Spanish (L1) and English (L2) among–Spanish-

speaking English Language Learners in kindergarten. The authors demonstrated that syntactic

skills in both languages were significantly correlated with English listening comprehension,

with the strongest correlations between Spanish syntactic awareness and English listening

comprehension. Spanish syntactic awareness also emerged as the stronger predictor of

performance on English comprehension than the same construct measured in the children’s L2

(Gabriele et al., 2009).

Studies investigating transfer to reading comprehension specifically have produced

mixed results (Leider et al., 2013; Proctor et al., 2012; Siu & Ho, 2015; Swanson, Rosston,

23

Gerber, & Solari, 2008). Swanson et al. (2008) found that Spanish syntactic awareness

significantly predicted English reading comprehension in third-graders, but only when English

predictors were excluded from the model. Conversely, Proctor et al. (2012) found no

contribution of Spanish language measures to English reading comprehension in a sample of

students from Grades 2 to 4, although it should be noted that the syntactic measure in their

study also included some aspects of semantics and morphology.

In their recent analysis, Siu and Ho (2015) demonstrated cross-language contributions of

syntactic awareness to reading comprehension between two languages that are traditionally

considered very distant – Chinese and English. In their first- and third-grade samples of

emerging Chinese (L1) bilinguals, syntactic awareness assessed in each language was correlated

with, and predictive of, within-language reading comprehension at both the sentence and

passage levels. Most notably, however, syntactic awareness was also cross-linguistically

correlated with comprehension across both languages, and L1 syntactic skills emerged as

significant predictors of L2 comprehension, even after controlling for age, nonverbal

intelligence, working memory, vocabulary, and word reading. SEM mediation analyses

revealed that the relationship between L1 syntactic awareness and L2 reading comprehension

was fully mediated by L2 syntactic awareness, but not by L1 reading comprehension. These

results lend support to the idea of an underlying proficiency (Cummins, 1979, 1981) that allows

L2 learners to employ L1 proficiencies, despite the typological distance of the two languages.

At the same time, the results also validate Koda’s (2008) Transfer Facilitation Model, as word-

order skill in this study proved to be an earlier transferable skill to L2 (compared to

morphosyntactic skill, which only became predictive in the third grade), given Chinese and

English’s similar canonical word ordering of subject-verb-object (Siu & Ho, 2015).

24

Altogether, the limited literature on cross-language syntactic awareness’ contribution to

reading comprehension appears to be inconsistent. Moreover, even within the supporting

literature, methodological differences, such as the exclusion of English predictors (e.g.,

Swanson et al., 2008), inconsistent measures of syntactic awareness, and differing

operationalization of reading outcome, preclude conclusive generalizations. For example, what

some studies employ as a measure of syntactic awareness (e.g., Swanson et al., 2008) is very

similar in design to what others regard as a measure of reading comprehension (e.g., Proctor et

al., 2012; Siu & Ho, 2015). It is unclear, therefore, whether this component of L1 metalinguistic

awareness represents a robust predictor of L2 higher-order reading across contexts.

Furthermore, the specific nature of this relationship – and whether it is uni- or bidirectional –

remains an open question. What also persists to be elucidated is the developmental trajectory of

the L1-L2 transfer; specifically, further research is needed to address the question of differences

in the nature of the cross-language relationship between syntactic awareness and reading

comprehension over time. The purpose of the present research is to address these unresolved

questions and the dearth of literature that seeks to uncover the specific nature of this cross-

language relationship.

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Chapter 3: The Present Research

Recent research has begun to clarify the relationship between syntactic awareness and

reading comprehension. However, little is known about the specific development of this

relationship or the transfer of syntactic awareness in bilingual contexts. Furthermore, while

biliteracy has, as a whole, been a subject of intense research interest in recent years, immersion

education has enjoyed considerably less scientific study and documentation. Similarly, cross-

language research has focused primarily on linguistic and literacy skills other than

metalinguistic awareness, and even within the subset of literature on this subject, syntactic

awareness has received relatively little attention. Given the increased recognition and

understanding of its facilitative role in reading development, however, it becomes valuable to

assess its cross-linguistic operation and ascertain whether syntactic proficiency in the L1 can be

predictive of, and tapped into by, emergent L2 reading.

The present thesis seeks to fill the gap in the extant literature by examining the

contribution of syntactic awareness to reading comprehension in an immersion setting.

Specifically, the objectives of the thesis are as follows: first, it aims to determine the within-

and cross-language role of syntactic awareness in reading comprehension among French

immersion students. Second, it seeks to uncover the developmental trajectory of the relationship

between syntactic awareness and reading comprehension in this language-immersion

population. Finally, the present thesis also addresses the question of bidirectionality,

determining whether cross-language transfer exists between syntactic awareness in students’ L2

and reading comprehension in their L1. To achieve these objectives, I will investigate the nature

of the within-language and cross-language relationship cross-sectionally at two separate time

26

points within the span of early French immersion schooling. Thus, the thesis comprises two

related studies, each examining the interaction of skills within a different age group.

In Study 1, I examine whether French and English syntactic awareness is related within-

and across languages to French reading comprehension among first-grade French immersion

students. In Study 2, I address the same question in a sample of third grade students in order to

examine potential developmental differences in the within- and cross-language role of syntactic

awareness in reading comprehension. In addition, in Study 2, I assess the possibility of

bidirectional transfer among third grade students by evaluating the contribution of French

syntactic awareness to English reading comprehension. To the best of my knowledge, this is the

first study to examine the within- and cross-language role of syntactic awareness in reading

comprehension across multiple age groups in a French-immersion educational setting. I

anticipate that the findings of this works will contribute to our understanding of the

development of syntactic awareness and its role in reading comprehension among bilingual

students, contribute to educational and curriculum planning, and add to the limited research

surrounding the within- and cross-language transfer of metalinguistic awareness.

27

Chapter 4: Study 1

Method

4.1 Participants

146 first-grade students from two consecutive cohorts (n = 78 and n = 68 for each

cohort, respectively) were recruited for Study 1. The students were from multiple classrooms of

a French immersion public school located in a large, multicultural Canadian city. It was the first

year of French immersion schooling for all students, and French was the sole language of

instruction. 53% of the participants were male, and 47% were female. The average age of the

participants was 6 years, 9 months. A demographics and language background questionnaire

was completed by caregivers. None of the participants spoke French as their first language at

home. In addition, 90% of mothers had completed at least college- or university-level

education. 72% of parents reported reading daily with their child, indicating that the children

came from homes where literacy development was likely valued and encouraged.

4.2 Measures

Matrix Analogies Test. Children’s non-verbal reasoning was assessed via the Matrix

Analogies Test (MAT) (Naglieri, 1985), consisting of the following four subtests: Pattern

Completion, Reasoning by Analogy, Serial Reasoning, and Spatial Visualization. Each of the

four subtests is comprised of 16 items of increasing difficulty. On each item, children were

required to select one of six patterned options that best completed the standard progressive

matrix provided. The subtest was discontinued upon four consecutive errors. A total raw score

for the MAT was obtained by summing the correct responses of all four subtests.

28

English Language and Literacy Measures

Phonological Awareness. The Elision subtest of the Complete Test of Phonological

Processing (CTOPP; Wagner, Torgesen, & Rashotte, 1999) was used to assess phonological

awareness. In this task, children were asked to remove a given phonological segment from a

spoken word in order to form another word. To do this, the child was first instructed to repeat a

given word. Next, the child was asked to repeat the word again, but this time with a certain part

of the word omitted. Omitted segments included syllables (e.g., “Say sunshine. Now say

sunshine without saying sun.”) and phonemes (e.g., “Say cold. Now say cold without saying

/c/.”). Six practice items with corrective feedback, five test items with feedback regarding

accuracy, and 15 test items with no feedback were administered, in that order. Items were

presented in order of increasing difficulty, and the test was discontinued upon three consecutive

errors. The maximum possible score on this test was 20. Each participant’s total raw score for

this measure was obtained by summing the correct responses.

English Syntactic Awareness. English Syntactic Awareness was assessed via an error-

correction task developed by the research team. This error-correction task was adapted from

those often used in literature to measure children’s syntactic awareness, such as Bowey, 1986a

and Siegel & Ryan, 1988. However, sentences were modified to ensure that they did not require

corrections involving morphological awareness or semantics. The syntactic errors that were

assessed include word order, preposition, verb tense, and phrasal verb. An example sentence on

this sentence-correction task is as follows: “The girl the door opened,” to be corrected to “The

girl opened the door.” Children were presented each sentence visually and aurally, and then

asked to correct the error by repeating the sentence the correct way. Three training items were

followed by 16 test items for the first-graders. If a child made two consecutive errors, he/she

29

was reminded of the task requirements of correcting the incorrect sentence. Every item was

administered to every child, and the total raw score was obtained by summing the correct

responses. Appendix A presents all the items included on this task.

French Language and Literacy Measures.

French Receptive Vocabulary. l’Échelle de Vocabulaire en Images Peabody (EVIP).

French receptive vocabulary was assessed using Form A of the Échelle de Vocabulaire en

Images Peabody (Dunn, Theriault-Whalen, & Dunn, 1993). Because this test was intended for

French first-language users and was too difficult for our young sample in French immersion, the

task was administered from Item 1 for each child, rather than the age-appropriate starting point.

For each item, the experimenter read a target word and presented the child with four numbered

pictures. The child was required to point or verbally identify which picture best matched the

spoken target word. The test consists of three training items and 170 test items. The task was

discontinued when the child made six errors in a set of eight consecutive items. Each

participant’s total raw score was obtained by subtracting the total number of errors from the

ceiling item.

French Word Identification: French Word Identification was assessed using an

experimental task of a 120 isolated words, arranged in sets of eight, that increased in levels of

difficulty. The child was instructed to read the words by going horizontally across each row.

The task was discontinued at the end of a set in which the child had obtained fewer than five

correct responses. The total raw score for each participant was calculated by summing the

correct responses.

30

French Morphological Awareness. Two complementary tasks to measure French

morphological awareness were adapted from Carlisle (2000), one measuring French inflectional

awareness and the second measuring French derivational awareness. The inflectional awareness

task consisted of 16 items, whereas the derivational awareness task consisted of 17 items. On

each item, the child was aurally provided with a root word and then asked to change the word

into its inflected/derived form to complete the aurally-presented sentence. An example item on

the inflectional awareness task is as follows: “(Briller). Le soleil ____,” requiring the child to

produce the inflected verb “brille” to correctly complete the sentence. An example item on the

derivational awareness task is as follows: “(Dessiner). Sarah a fini son _____,” requiring the

child to produce the derived noun “dessin” to correctly complete the sentence. The standardized

scores (z-scores) of each task (i.e., inflectional and derivational) were summed and averaged to

produce a composite French morphological awareness score for each participant.

French Syntactic Awareness. French Syntactic Awareness was assessed via a similar

error-correction task developed by the research team. The French task consisted of two training

items and 18 test items presented the same way as the English task. A sample sentence from the

French sentence-correction task is as follows: “Marie a fait un gâteau, puis elle a mange le,” to

be corrected to “Marie a fait un gâteau, puis elle l’a mange.” The total raw score for each

participant was obtained by summing the correct responses. All items on this measure are listed

in Appendix B.

French Reading Comprehension. The Alpha-Jeunes (Barrett, Littleford, & Watson,

2004) was used as a measure of French reading comprehension. The test, administered

individually to each participant by trained classroom teachers, consisted of a succession of

leveled narrative and expository texts increasing in complexity. The text levels ranged from 1 to

31

24 and were designed for assessment of children in kindergarten through the early elementary

grades. The benchmarks for French immersion students at the end of each Grade were as

follows: Level 6 for Grade 1, Level 14 for Grade 2, and Level 21 for Grade 3. The complexity

of the text was established as a function of its length, story structure, vocabulary, and format

(i.e., font size, spacing, picture-text correlation, repetition of sentence patterns, and story

language). Teachers initiated testing by selecting a suitable entry-level text for each participant

based on prior reading performance; each participant was then asked to read the selected text

aloud while the teacher maintained a running record of word-reading accuracy. Following the

read-aloud, each participant was asked to respond orally to four standard comprehension

questions accessing both literal and inferential understanding of the passage. The total raw score

for this task was the participant’s text level at which both the following criteria were met: a)

oral reading accuracy between 90% and 95% and b) all four comprehension questions

accurately answered. If a participant failed to satisfy either criterion, the above steps were

repeated with text of decreasing complexity, as necessitated, until the required criteria were

satisfied. Conversely, if the participant performed above the set criteria, the teacher repeated the

above steps with text of increasing complexity.

4.3 Procedure

Participants were tested on their non-verbal reasoning in November of Grade 1. All

other measures in the present study were administered in the following Spring semester (April)

of Grade 1. Testing was conducted in two sessions of approximately 30 to 40 minutes each –

one in English, and one in French. Participants were assessed during school hours in a quiet

room, with the order of administration of measures within a session randomized for each

student. All measures, with the exception of French reading comprehension which was

32

administered by teachers, were administered individually by trained graduate students who were

native or native-like speakers of the respective testing languages. Instructions for the non-verbal

reasoning measure and all English tasks were provided in English; instructions for French tasks

were provided in French with an explanation in English to ensure understanding of task

requirements. All testers were native or native-like speakers of the respective testing languages.

4.4 Data Analysis

Data analysis involved five stages, performed via IBM SPSS Statistics, Version 20.

First, preliminary analyses to ensure the accuracy and completeness of the data were conducted.

Second, multivariate outliers were screened using the cut-off criteria of |2.58| standard

deviations and all independent and dependent variables were assessed for the assumptions of

normality, skewness, and kurtosis. Next, descriptive and correlational data were computed for

all variables: non-verbal reasoning, phonological awareness, French vocabulary, word reading,

morphological awareness, syntactic awareness, reading comprehension, and English syntactic

awareness. Due to observations of skewness and heteroscedasticity in the distribution,

hierarchical regressions, comprising the fourth stage of analysis, were conducted using the

bootstrapping method1 embedded into SPSS, a technique for deriving robust estimates of

confidence intervals, standard errors, and significance tests for regression coefficients (among

other statistics) when the fulfilment of the assumptions of normality is not met. All regression

bootstrapped estimates are based on the default bootstrap sample size of 1000. In the

1 The general concept of bootstrapping (i.e., not specific to regression) is defined as the following by Field (2009,

p. 782): “a technique from which the sampling distribution of a statistic is estimated by taking repeated samples

(with replacement) from the data set (so, in effect, treating the data as a population from which smaller samples are

taken). The statistic of interest (e.g. the mean, or b coefficient) is calculated for each sample, from which the

sampling distribution of the statistic is estimated. The standard error of the statistic is estimated as the standard

deviation of the sampling distribution created from the bootstrap samples. From this, confidence intervals and

significance tests can be computed.”

33

hierarchical regression model, control variables were entered first, followed by within-language

French predictors, which were succeeded by English syntactic awareness entered as the final

step. In the fifth and last stage of data analysis, hierarchical linear regression was followed by

mediation analyses through bootstrapping, using the procedure developed by Preacher and

Hayes (2008). The bootstrapping procedure for estimating direct and indirect effects, which

allows for the testing of multiple mediators in the model, generates 5000 random samples from

the existing data, replacing each sampled value and computing the effects in each generated

sample (Preacher & Hayes, 2008). The effect of each mediator is then reported while the other

mediators and covariates are controlled for. Bias-corrected 95% confidence intervals are

produced for the total indirect effect as well as for each mediator; the indirect effect (i.e., the

difference between the total and direct effects) is considered statistically significant if the value

of zero is not contained within the upper and lower bounds of the interval. It is suggested that

multiple mediation analyses include two stages: investigation of the total indirect effect and

investigation of the indirect effects of the individual mediators in the multiple mediator model,

without the former being a prerequisite for the latter (Preacher & Hayes, 2008). Thus, in the

event of a total indirect effect that is nonsignificant (i.e., its confidence interval contains a zero),

Preacher and Hayes (2008) purport that it is still fully possible to observe significant specific

indirect effects of one or more mediators.

Mediation analyses in the present study were conducted for both within- and cross-

language transfer of syntactic awareness to reading comprehension.

4.5 Results

Preliminary analyses to identify multivariate outliers revealed that one data point

exceeded the accepted criteria of |2.58| standard deviations from the mean and was excluded

34

from further analyses. Thus, 145 participants were included in the final sample for the present

study. Table 1 summarizes ranges, means, and standard deviations, as well as internal

consistency reliability (Cronbach’s alpha), for the cognitive, linguistic, and reading measures

administered to the 145 participants in Grade 1.

Table 1

Descriptive Statistic and Reliabilities (α) for All Measures in Grade 1

Measure Min Max M SD α

Non-Verbal Reasoning 3 51 22.64 10.96 .93

French Phonological Awareness 5 25 13.35 5.95 .92

French Vocabulary 13 81 38.77 14.14 .91

French Word ID 1 115 46.40 21.52 .98

French Morphological Awareness .76

French Inflectional Awareness 0

0

10 5.53 1.93 --

French Derivational Awareness 0 14 7.31 3.24 --

French Syntactic Awareness 0 9 3.01 2.30 .66

English Syntactic Awareness 1 14 7.29 3.05 .74

French Reading Comprehension 1 17 7.00

(median)

3.71 --

The Relationship between English and French Syntactic Awareness and

Reading Comprehension in Grade 1

Table 2 presents a Pearson correlation matrix of bivariate correlations between all the

measures used in the analyses of Study 1. The correlations indicate that the majority of the

variables are significantly correlated. It is noteworthy to mention that syntactic awareness levels

in both languages were moderately correlated with one another (r = .336, p < .01), as well as

with French reading comprehension (all r’s ≥ .405, p < .01).

35

Table 2

Pearson Correlations among all Measures of Study 1

Measure 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

1. Non-Verbal Reasoning --

2. French Phonological Awareness .237** --

3. French Vocabulary .150 .180* --

4. French Word ID .224** .497** .300** --

5. French Morphological Awareness .189* .350** .323** .405** --

6. French Syntactic Awareness .126 .322** .274** .431** .421** --

7. English Syntactic Awareness .281** .371** .412** .438** .448** .332** --

8. French Reading Comprehension .162 .485** .344** .686** .401** .414** .492**

Notes. * p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01.

36

The Role of French and English Syntactic Awareness in French Reading Comprehension

in Grade 1

In order to determine whether English syntactic awareness predicts French reading

comprehension, a hierarchical linear regression analysis was conducted. Non-verbal reasoning

was entered as the first step and English phonological awareness as the second step to control

for potentially spurious effects of third variables. It is well-documented that phonological

awareness is a language-general skill that transfers from an individual’s primary language to

his/her additional languages (Geva, Yaghoub-Zadeh, & Schuster, 2000; Jean & Geva, 2009;

Lesaux & Siegel, 2003; Lipka & Siegel, 2007; Melby-Lervag & Lervag, 2011). Moreover,

Tingley et al. (2004) have demonstrated that Anglophone children schooled in both English and

French show no differences on tests of English and French phonological awareness. Hence, the

use of English phonological awareness here, as opposed to a comparative French measure,

serves as a common, language-general control for children’s overall awareness of phonology.

These control variables of non-verbal reasoning and phonological awareness were followed

sequentially by French vocabulary, French word identification, French morphological

awareness, and French syntactic awareness. These comprised the within-language controls for

French reading comprehension, following Deacon et al. (2009). English syntactic awareness

was entered as the final step of the regression model in order to examine its contribution to

French reading comprehension, after taking into account all other variables.

The regression analysis predicting French reading comprehension is presented in Table

3. All together, this model explained 56% of the total variance. Non-verbal reasoning explained

approximately 2% of the variance, while phonological awareness explained another 33%. The

within-language control variables of French vocabulary, word identification, and morphological

37

awareness accounted for an additional 4%, 15%, and 1% of variance, respectively.

Interestingly, French syntactic awareness did not significantly predict the outcome variable,

contributing a nonsignificant 1% of variance. This indicates that French syntactic awareness

was unable to predict within-language comprehension. English syntactic awareness, however,

entered into the last step of the regression, significantly predicted French reading

comprehension, contributing a small but significant 1% of variance to the overall model.

Therefore, our results provide evidence of cross-language transfer of English syntactic

awareness to French reading comprehension among Grade 1 students in French immersion.

38

Table 3

Hierarchical Linear Regression Predicting French Reading Comprehension in Grade 1

Step 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Predictor B

(SE)

β B

(SE)

β B

(SE)

β B

(SE)

β B

(SE)

β B

(SE)

β B

(SE)

β

NVR .06

(.03

)

.16 .00

(.03)

.01 -.00

(.02)

-.01 -.01

(.02)

-.04 -.02

(.02)

-.05 -.02

(.02)

-.05 -.02

(.02)

-.07

English PA .44**

*

(.05)

.60**

*

.41**

*

(.05)

.55**

*

.22**

*

(.05)

.29**

*

.22**

*

(.05)

.30**

*

.22**

*

(.05)

.29**

*

.20**

*

(.05)

.27**

*

French Voc .05**

(.02)

.21** .03

(.02)

.13 .03

(.02)

.10 .03

(.02)

.09 .02

(.02)

.06

French ID .08**

*

(.01)

.49**

*

.08**

*

(.02)

.44**

*

.07**

*

(.02)

.42**

*

.07**

*

(.02)

.40**

*

French MA .56*

(.26)

.13* .46

(.26)

.10 .30

(.26)

.07

French SA .14

(.10)

.09 .13

(.10)

.08

English SA .18*

(.09)

.15*

Adjusted R2 .02 .35*** .39** .53*** .54* .55 .56*

∆ R2 .03 .33*** .04** .15*** .01* .01 .01*

Notes. * p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.001; NVR = Non-Verbal Reasoning; PA = Phonological Awareness; Voc = Vocabulary;

ID = Word Identification; MA = Morphological Awareness; SA = Syntactic Awareness; B (SE) = unstandardized, bootstrapped estimates;

β = standardized non-bootstrapped estimates.

39

Within- and Cross-Language Mediation Analyses Predicting French Reading Comprehension

in Grade 1

To gain a more comprehensive understanding of the within- and cross-language

relationship between syntactic awareness and reading comprehension in Grade 1, a mediation

analysis through bootstrapping was conducted. The purpose of this analysis was to further

explore the nature of the cross-language relationship, as well as to account for the lack of direct

within-language effect that was observed in the hierarchical regression analysis above.

The present mediation analyses estimated both the direct effect of syntactic awareness

on French reading comprehension, as well as the indirect effect that is mediated by within-

language French variables. The analysis is conducted for both the within- and cross-language

relationship between syntactic awareness and reading comprehension. In both models, non-

verbal reasoning and phonological awareness constituted the covariates and were statistically

controlled for in the mediation models.

Tables 4a and 4b present the results of the within-language mediation model, testing the

effects of French syntactic awareness on French reading comprehension. The total effect (c-

path) between French syntactic awareness and French reading comprehension was statistically

significant (B = 0.43, SE = 0.11, t = 3.99, p = .000). Upon taking into account the three

potential mediators, however, the relationship between French syntactic awareness and reading

comprehension (c’-path) was reduced to nonsignificance (B = 0.14, SE = 0.11, t = 1.34, p =

.182), suggesting full mediation. Based on the bootstrapped results, the total indirect effect (ab-

path) of French syntactic awareness on French reading comprehension was statistically

significant, as its 95% confidence interval (CI) did not contain zero (B = 0.28, CI = 0.16 to

0.45). Closer inspection to determine the specific indirect effects revealed that French word

40

identification was a mediator (B = 0.19, CI = 0.09 to 0.33), but French Vocabulary (B = 0.03, CI

= - 0.01 to 0.12) and morphological awareness (B = 0.06, CI = - 0.01 to 0.15) were not. Thus,

an indirect within-language effect exists between French syntactic awareness and reading

comprehension in Grade 1, wherein the relationship is fully mediated by French word

identification.

Table 4a

Unstandardized Coefficients for the Mediation Model of French Syntactic Awareness and

French Reading Comprehension in Grade 1

Mediator Path a B (SE) Path b B (SE)

French Vocabulary 1.32 (.51)** 0.03 (.02)

French Word Identification 2.66 (.62)*** 0.07 (.01)***

French Morphological Awareness 0.14 (.03)*** 0.46 (.29)

Notes. * p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.001; B = unstandardized estimate; SE = Standard Error.

Table 4b

Indirect (Mediated) Effects of French Syntactic Awareness on French Reading Comprehension

in Grade 1

Mediator Bootstrapped B (SE) BC 95% CI

Lower Upper

Total 0.28 (0.07) -.0023 .0720

French Vocabulary 0.03 (.03) -.0116 .1183

French Word Identification 0.19 (0.06) .0942 .3259

French Morphological Awareness 0.06 (0.04) -.0054 .1472

Notes. * p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.001; B = unstandardized estimate; SE = Standard Error;

BC = Bias-Corrected; CI = Confidence Interval.

Below, Tables 5a and 5b present the cross-language mediation model, testing the effects

of English syntactic awareness on French reading comprehension. Note that French syntactic

awareness has been entered into the model alongside French vocabulary, word identification,

and morphological awareness as a potential mediator.

41

As above in the within-language model, the total effect (c-path) between English

syntactic awareness and French reading comprehension was statistically significant (B = 0.39,

SE = 0.09, t = 4.54, p = .000). Unlike the previous model, however, once the potential

mediators, French vocabulary, word identification, morphological awareness, and syntactic

awareness, were added to the model, the relationship between English syntactic awareness and

French reading comprehension (c’-path) remained statistically significant (B = 0.18, SE = 0.09,

t = 2.16, p = .033), suggesting partial mediation. Based on the bootstrapped results, the total

indirect effect (ab-path) of English syntactic awareness on French reading comprehension was

statistically significant (B = 0.20, CI = 0.08 to 0.34). Once again, the partial mediator that

emerged in the analysis was French word identification (B = 0.12, CI = 0.04 to 0.23), while

French vocabulary, morphological awareness, and syntactic awareness were not. Thus, the

cross-language relationship between English syntactic awareness and French reading

comprehension is partially mediated by French word identification in Grade 1.

Table 5a

Unstandardized Coefficients for the Mediation Model of English Syntactic Awareness and



French Vocabulary 1.70 (.39)*** 0.02 (.02)

French Word Identification 1.70 (.51)*** 0.07 (.01)***

French Morphological Awareness 0.11 (.02)*** 0.30 (.29)

French Syntactic Awareness 0.20 (.07)*** 0.13 (.11)


42

Table 5b

Indirect (Mediated) Effects of English Syntactic Awareness on French Reading Comprehension

in Grade 1


Lower Upper

Total 0.20 (.07) .0786 .3371

French Vocabulary 0.03 (.04) - .0371 .1115

French Word Identification 0.12 (.05) .0367 .2277

French Morphological Awareness 0.03 (.03) - .0200 .1081

French Syntactic Awareness 0.03 (.02) - .0088 .0883



Figures 1 and 2 display a graphical representation of the mediated relationship between

French reading comprehension and within- and cross-language syntactic awareness,

respectively.

43

Figure 1. Indirect (full mediation) effects of French word identification on the within-language relationship between

French syntactic awareness and French reading comprehension in Grade 1, while controlling for non-verbal reasoning

and phonological awareness (n = 145). * p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.001.

44

Figure 2. Indirect (partial mediation) effects of French word identification on the cross-language relationship between

English syntactic awareness and French reading comprehension in Grade 1, while controlling for non-verbal reasoning and

phonological awareness (n = 145). * p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.001.

45

4.6 Discussion

Study 1 investigated the within- and cross-language transfer of syntactic awareness to

French reading comprehension among Grade 1 students in French immersion. It was found that

although syntactic awareness in French was moderately correlated with within-language reading

comprehension, it did not uniquely predict the outcome after controlling for nonverbal

intelligence, English phonological awareness, French vocabulary, French word reading, and

French morphological awareness. On the other hand, a significant cross-linguistic relationship

was found: English syntactic awareness, entered as the final step in the regression model, was

found to significantly predict French reading comprehension among Grade 1 students.

The absence of direct within-language prediction in French may be related to the

developmental stage of the participants. Since the participants in the present study were

beginning L2-learners in the first year of their immersion schooling, they had yet to develop

syntactic awareness in their new language to a sufficient level to contribute to reading

comprehension. This finding is consistent with that of Lefrançois and Armand (2003), who also

tested beginning French L2-learners. In both studies, while moderately to strongly associated

with reading comprehension, syntactic awareness was not a unique predictor of the former after

substantive controls. Although the sample recruited by Lefrançois and Armand (2003) was

several years older, the students had approximately seven months of L2 instruction, an amount

comparable to the Grade 1 French immersion sample in this study. The emergent L2 status of

the participants may also explain why the present findings differ from those of Leider et al.

(2013), Low and Siegel (2005), and Swanson et al. (2008), all of whom examined older L2-

learners with lengthier exposure to, and instruction in, the L2. Therefore, it is possible that L2

46

syntactic awareness contributes to L2 reading comprehension only among more proficient L2-

learners.

Analyses of indirect effects revealed that the relationship between French syntactic

awareness and French reading comprehension is mediated entirely by word identification ability

in French. This is consistent with the results of the hierarchical regression analysis, in which

French word identification and English phonological awareness explained a large proportion of

variance in French reading comprehension. The mediating role of French word identification is

also in line with the Simple View of Reading (Gough & Tunmer, 1986; Hoover & Gough,

1990), which posits that word identification plays a crucial role in reading comprehension

among beginning readers.

Cross-linguistically, hierarchical regression analyses revealed that English syntactic

awareness significantly predicted French reading comprehension, over and above the effects of

within-language controls. In addition to the direct cross-language effect, there was also

evidence of an indirect relationship between English syntactic awareness and French reading

comprehension in which French word identification emerged as a partial mediator. This finding

of a cross-language relationship between syntactic awareness and word identification

corroborates that of Abu-Rabia and Siegel (2002), who demonstrated significant correlations

between syntactic awareness and word and pseudo-word reading within and across languages

among Arabic-English bilinguals. From a theoretical perspective, the Simple View of Reading

(Gough & Tunmer, 1986; Hoover & Gough, 1990) accounts for the role of language

comprehension and word reading ability in the emergence of reading comprehension.

Grammatical understanding of sentences is a component of language comprehension (Catts,

Adlof, & Weismer, 2006) and a market of oral language development. The findings of the

47

present mediation analysis therefore expand the Simple View, in that they demonstrate a

relationship between syntactic awareness and word identification and reveal the contribution of

that relationship to early L2 reading comprehension.

The findings of cross-language transfer in the present study indicate that where L2

exposure is limited, young learners may draw on L1 skills to support L2 reading comprehension

(Siu & Ho, 2015). In other words, because their French syntactic awareness was still largely

underdeveloped, students relied on syntactic awareness developed in English, their more

proficient language, to support text-level comprehension in their L2. The current study is

notable because it corroborates the results of Siu and Ho (2015) by demonstrating transfer of

syntactic awareness in very young children in the early stages of L2 acquisition. It also extends

their Chinese-English findings of transfer to an English-French immersion population,

suggesting that this specific type of metalinguistic transfer may be possible across various

language pairs.

Taken together, these findings indicate that syntactic awareness in the L1 contributes to

reading comprehension in the L2 among young bilingual learners. The importance of this

contribution cannot be overstated, as sensitivity to grammatical structure is essential for

comprehension-monitoring and comprehension-recovery in readers (Baker & Brown, 1984, p.

355 cited in Tunmer et al., 1987; Bowey, 1986b; Cain, 2007; Durgunoğlu, 2002; Tunmer et al.,

1987;). Syntactic awareness is also useful in deciphering the meaning of unknown words in

sentences by referring to surrounding contextual clues (Durgunoğlu, 2002; Rego & Bryant,

1993a,b cited in Rego, 1997), as well as in distinguishing between homographic words (Demont

& Gombert, 1996). Better-developed syntactic skills in English therefore allowed the young

48

participants in the present study to monitor their comprehension and interpret unfamiliar words

when reading in their newly-developing language, French.

49

Chapter 5: Study 2

Method

5.1 Participants

Sixty-nine third-grade students were recruited for Study 2. Participants attended the

same French immersion school described in Study 1, in which the sole language of instruction

was French. 46% of the participants were male, and 54% were female. The average age of the

participants was 8 years, 7 months. A demographics and language background questionnaire

was completed by caregivers. None of the participants spoke French as their first language at

home. As of participants’ first year of testing, at least 83% of mothers had completed at

minimum college- or university-level education, and at least 77% of parents reported reading

daily with their child at the time.

5.2 Measures

Participants completed all of the measures described in Study 1. In addition, several new

English measures were administered: receptive vocabulary, word identification, morphological

awareness, and reading comprehension. Only these four additional tasks are described below.

Reliability statistics for all measures administered in Study 2 are displayed in Table 6.

English Receptive Vocabulary. Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-IV (PPVT-IV).

Children’s receptive vocabulary was assessed using Form A of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary

Test (Dunn & Dunn, 2007). On each item, the experimenter read a target word and presented

the child with four numbered pictures. The child was required to point or verbally identify

which picture best matched the spoken target word. The test consisted of two training items and

228 test items, divided into 19 sets of 12 items each. The task was discontinued when the child

50

made eight errors in a set of 12 consecutive items. Each participant’s total raw score was

obtained by subtracting the total number of errors from the ceiling item.

English Word Identification. Woodcock Johnson-III (WJ-III). Letter and word

identification was assessed via a subtest of the Woodcock Johnson-III Test of Achievement

(Woodcock, McGrew, & Maher, 2001). The child was instructed to point to correct answers or

to read presented letters and words. The task consisted of 76 items, and was discontinued when

the child made six errors on a page. The total raw score was obtained by summing the correct

responses.

English Morphological Awareness. A task parallel to the French derivational awareness

task described in Study 1 was developed by the researchers to measure English derivational

awareness. The task consisted of 16 items. On each item, the child was required to produce a

derived word in order to complete an aurally-presented sentence. An example item is as

follows: (Mystery). The dark glasses made the man look_____,” requiring the child to produce

the derived term “mysterious” to correctly complete the sentence. As English inflectional

awareness was not measured in this sample, English derivational awareness constituted the sole

English morphological awareness measure in Grade 3.

English Reading Comprehension. The comprehension subtests of Form 3 of Level C

(48 items) of the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Tests Second Canadian Edition (GMRT-II;

MacGinitie & MacGinitie, 1992) were used to assess English reading comprehension. The

subtest was administered in a group format and students were allotted 20 minutes to complete

as many items as possible. The task required students to answer several multiple choice

questions after reading a passage. Each participant’s raw score was the total number of correct

answers.

51

5.3 Procedure

Participants were tested on non-verbal reasoning in November of their first year of

testing only (i.e., in Grade 1). All other measures in the present study were administered in the

Spring semester (April) of Grade 3. Participants were assessed during school hours in a quiet

room. The order of administration of measures within a session was randomized for each

student. All measures were administered individually, except for the English reading

comprehension task, which was administered in a quiet group setting. Measures were

administered by trained graduate students, except for French reading comprehension, which

was administered by trained teachers. Instructions for the non-verbal reasoning measure and all

English tasks were provided in English; instructions for French tasks were provided in French

with an explanation in English to ensure understanding of task requirements. All testers were

native or native-like speakers of the respective testing languages.

5.4 Data Analysis

The stages of Data Analysis in Study 2 were similar to Study 1. Preliminary analyses to

ensure the accuracy and completeness of the data were followed by descriptive and

correlational data for all variables: non-verbal reasoning, phonological awareness, and both

English and French vocabulary, word reading, morphological awareness, syntactic awareness,

reading comprehension, and syntactic awareness. Data were then screened separately for each

of the two regression analyses and multivariate outliers were removed using the cut-off criteria

of |2.58| standard deviations. Each regression analysis was conducted using the bootstrapping

method described in Study 1. In the first hierarchical regression model, predicting third-grade

French reading comprehension, control variables were entered first, followed by within-

language French predictors, which were succeeded by English syntactic awareness entered as

52

the final step. In the second hierarchical regression, predicting English reading comprehension,

control variables were followed by within-language English predictors, with French syntactic

awareness as the final step. The final stage of analysis involved four mediation analyses through

bootstrapping using the Preacher and Hayes (2008) procedure described in Study 1. The

analyses tested for mediation in the within- and cross-language relationship of syntactic

awareness to reading comprehension in both English and French.

5.5 Results

Descriptive statistics and internal consistency reliability (Cronbach’s alpha) for all the

measures administered in Study 2 are presented in Table 6.

Table 6

Descriptive Statistics and Reliabilities (α) for All Measures in Study 2

Measure Min Max M SD α

Non-Verbal Reasoning 1 48 19.03 11.58 .94

English Phonological Awareness 6 20 16.07 4.14 .91

English Measures

Vocabulary 92 164 140.29 15.75 .95

Word ID 24 71 52.35 8.76 .93

Derivational Awareness 5 16 10.84 2.13 .63

Syntactic Awareness 2 16 10.96 3.03 .73

Reading Comprehension 7 45 25.07 10.03 .93

French Measures

Vocabulary 0 112 77.93 26.102 .97

Word ID 36 119 81.39 22.76 .98

Morphological Awareness .51

Inflectional Awareness 6 14 9.14 1.67

Derivational Awareness 6 15 11.43 2.00

Syntactic Awareness 0 10 4.93 2.439 .64

Reading Comprehension 7 24 23

(median)

4.76

53

The Relationship between Syntactic Awareness and Reading Comprehension in English and

French in Grade 3

Table 7 presents a Pearson correlation matrix of bivariate correlations between the

measures used in Study 2. As in Study 1, the majority of the variables are significantly

correlated. Notably, syntactic awareness in English was moderately correlated with syntactic

awareness in French (r = .462, p < 0.01) and reading comprehension in English (r = .496, p <

0.01) and in French (r = .486, p < 0.01). Likewise, French syntactic awareness was strongly

correlated with English reading comprehension (r = .584, p < 0.01) and French reading

comprehension (r = .562, p < 0.01). English and French reading comprehension were also

strongly correlated (r = .552, p < 0.01).

54

Table 7

Pearson Correlations among all Measures of Study 2

Measure 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

1. Non-Verbal Reasoning --

2. French Phonological

Awareness

.246* --

3. French Vocabulary .275* .386*

*

--

4. French Word ID -.003 .639 .297* --

5. French Morphological

Awareness

.147 .519*

*

.315*

*

.288* --

6. French Syntactic Awareness .240* .410*

*

.403*

*

.411*

*

.458*

*

--

7. English Syntactic

Awareness

.319*

*

.462*

*

.477*

*

.428*

*

.288* .462*

*

--

8. French Reading

Comprehension

.232 .666*

*

.487*

*

.673*

*

.432*

*

.562*

*

.486*

*

--

9. English Phonological

Awareness

.150 .778*

*

.261* .574*

*

.452*

*

.379*

*

444*

*

.581*

*

--

10. English Vocabulary .400*

*

.498*

*

.515*

*

.225 .362*

*

.433*

*

.490*

*

.562*

*

.463*

*

--

11. English Word ID .347*

*

.560*

*

.260* .572*

*

.232 .333*

*

.513*

*

.640*

*

.575*

*

.448*

*

--

12. English Derivational

Awareness

.244* .167 .392*

*

.086 .355*

*

.165 .348*

*

.367*

*

.268* .542*

*

.332*

*

--

13. English Reading

Comprehension

.370*

*

.496*

*

.587*

*

.366*

*

.357*

*

.584*

*

.496*

*

.552*

*

.408*

*

.593*

*

.496*

*

.330*

* Notes. * p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01.

55

The Role of Syntactic Awareness in French Reading Comprehension in Grade 3

As in Study 1, preliminary analyses to identify multivariate outliers were conducted.

Standardized residuals from two data points exceeded the |2.58| criteria and were excluded from

further analyses, leaving 67 participants. Furthermore, for consistency and to correct for any

deviations from normality, hierarchical regressions were conducted using the bootstrapping

method described in Study 1.

As stated above, the purpose of Study 2 was to examine potential developmental

differences in the cross-language transfer of syntactic awareness to reading comprehension. To

determine whether the within- and cross-language contribution of syntactic awareness to

reading comprehension differed between younger (Grade 1) and older (Grade 3) emergent

bilinguals, a hierarchical linear regression analysis identical to Study 1 was conducted.

The regression analysis predicting French reading comprehension amongst Grade 3

participants is presented in Table 8. Altogether, this model explained 75% of the total variance

in French reading comprehension. The control variables of non-verbal reasoning and

phonological awareness explained a combined 44% of variance. Next, French vocabulary

contributed 13% of variance to the model, followed by French word identification contributing

15%. French morphological awareness contributed a small but significant 2% of variance to the

model. French syntactic awareness was also a significant predictor, explaining a significant 2%

of the variance accounted for in the model. Thus, evidence was found for within-language

prediction of reading comprehension. Unlike the younger sample, however, English syntactic

awareness, entered into the last step of the regression, did not make an independent contribution

in predicting French reading comprehension. As such, there appears to be no evidence of cross-

56

language transfer between English syntactic awareness and French reading comprehension

among Grade 3 students in French immersion.

57

Table 8

Hierarchical Linear Regression Predicting French Reading Comprehension in Grade 3

Step 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Predictor B

(SE)

β B

(SE)

β B

(SE)

β B

(SE)

β B

(SE)

β B

(SE)

β B

(SE)

β

NVR .10*

(.05)

.24

*

.06

(.04)

.13 .02

(.03)

.04 .05

(.03)

.11 .04

(.03)

.10 .03

(.03)

.08 .04

(.03)

.10

English PA .77**

*

(.11)

.64**

*

.68**

*

(.10)

.57**

*

.38**

*

(.10)

.32**

*

.32**

*

(.10)

.26**

*

.31**

*

(.10)

.26**

*

.33**

(.11)

.27**

French Voc .07**

*

(.02)

.39**

*

.06**

*

(.01)

.30**

*

.05**

*

(.01)

.27**

*

.04**

*

(.01)

.24**

*

.05**

*

(.01)

.27**

*

French ID .10**

*

(.02)

.47**

*

.10**

*

(.02)

.47**

*

.09**

*

(.02)

.43**

*

.10**

*

(.02)

.45**

*

French MA .91*

(.44)

.15* .62

(.43)

.10 .60

(.43)

.10

French SA .31*

(.15)

.16* .34*

(.16)

.17*

English SA -.15

(.14)

-.10

Adjusted R2 .04* .44*** .57*** .72*** .73* .75* .75

∆R2 .06* .40*** .13*** .15*** .02* .02* .01

Notes. * p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.001. NVR = Non-Verbal Reasoning; PA = Phonological Awareness; Voc = Vocabulary;

ID = Word Identification; MA = Morphological Awareness; SA = Syntactic Awareness; B (SE) = unstandardized, bootstrapped

estimates; β = standardized non-bootstrapped estimates.

58

As in Study 1, mediation analyses via the Preacher and Hayes (2008) procedure were

conducted to better understand the direct and indirect relationships between syntactic awareness

and French reading comprehension. The results of the mediation analysis testing the effects of

French syntactic awareness on French reading comprehension are presented in Tables 9a and

9b. The total effect (c-path) between French syntactic awareness and French reading

comprehension was statistically significant (B = 0.74, SE = 0.18, t = 4.20, p = .000). When the

three potential mediators, French vocabulary, word identification, and morphological awareness

were entered into the model, the relationship between French syntactic awareness and reading

comprehension (c’-path) remained significant (B = 0.31, SE = 0.15, t = 2.04, p = .046),

suggesting partial mediation. Based on the bootstrapped results, the total indirect effect (ab-

path) of French syntactic awareness on French reading comprehension was statistically

significant, (B = 0.42, CI = 0.19 to 0.74). The specific indirect effects were driven by French

word identification (B = 0.21, CI = 0.04 to 0.47) and French vocabulary (B = 0.15, CI = 0.04 to

0.32) as partial mediators. French morphological awareness, however, did not mediate the

relationship (B = 0.07, CI = -0.00 to 0.22). Thus, in addition to its direct effect, an indirect

within-language effect exists between French syntactic awareness and reading comprehension

in Grade 3, wherein the relationship is partially mediated by students’ French word

identification and vocabulary. Figure 3 displays a graphical representation of this partially

mediated relationship.

59

Table 9a




French Vocabulary 3.37 (1.32)** 0.04 (.01)***

French Word Identification 2.33 (1.01)* 0.09 (.02)***

French Morphological Awareness 0.11 (.04)** 0.62 (.46)


Table 9b

Indirect (Mediated) Effects of French Syntactic Awareness on French Reading Comprehension

in Grade 3


Lower Upper

Total 0.42 (.14) .1866 .7444

French Vocabulary 0.15 (.07) .0349 .3181


French Morphological Awareness 0.07 (.05) -.0037 .2185



60

Figure 3. Indirect (partial mediation) effects of French word identification and vocabulary on the within-language relationship

between French syntactic awareness and French reading comprehension in Grade 3, while controlling for non-verbal reasoning

and phonological awareness (n = 67). * p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.001.

61

Tables 10a and 10b present the cross-language mediation model predicting French

reading comprehension in Grade 3, with English syntactic awareness as the independent

variable and non-verbal reasoning and phonological awareness continuing to serve as

covariates. Note that French syntactic awareness is entered into the model with French

vocabulary, word identification, and morphological awareness as the potential mediators. Like

the within-language model, the total effect (c-path) of English syntactic awareness on French

reading comprehension was statistically significant (B = 0.35, SE = 0.16, t = 2.14, p = .037).

Unlike the previous model, however, the relationship between English syntactic awareness and

French reading comprehension was reduced to nonsignificance (B = - 0.15, SE = 0.13, t = -

1.13, p = .263) once the potential mediators were entered (c’-path). This pattern of results

suggests full mediation. The total indirect effect (ab-path), obtained from bootstrapping, of

English syntactic awareness on French reading comprehension was statistically significant (B =

0.51, CI = 0.20 to 0.83). French word identification (B = 0.20, CI = 0.02 to 0.44), vocabulary (B

= 0.19, CI = 0.05 to 0.37), and syntactic awareness (B = 0.09, CI = 0.01 to 0.24) emerged as

mediators. Morphological awareness was not a mediator (B = 0.02, CI = - 0.01 to 0.09). Thus,

the cross-language relationship between English syntactic awareness and French reading

comprehension is fully mediated by French word identification, vocabulary, and syntactic

awareness in Grade 3. This mediated relationship is presented in Figure 4.

62

Table 10a




French Vocabulary 3.75 (1.09)*** 0.05 (.01)***

French Word Identification 2.13 (.86)* 0.10 (.02)***

French Morphological Awareness 0.03 (.03) 0.60 (.46)

French Syntactic Awareness 0.28 (.10)** 0.34 (.15)*

Notes. * p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.001; B = unstandardized coefficient; SE = Standard Error.

Table 10b

Indirect (Mediated) Effects of English Syntactic Awareness on French Reading Comprehension

in Grade 3


Lower Upper

Total 0.51 (.16) .2011 .8334

French Vocabulary 0.19 (.08) .0518 .3737


French Morphological Awareness 0.02 (.02) -.0084 .0894

French Syntactic Awareness 0.09 (.06) .0122 .2439

Notes. * p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.001; B = unstandardized coefficient; SE = Standard Error;


63

Figure 4. Indirect (full mediation) effects of French word identification, vocabulary, and syntactic awareness on the cross-

language relationship between English syntactic awareness and French reading comprehension in Grade 3, while

controlling for non-verbal reasoning and phonological awareness (n = 67). * p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.001.

64

The Role of Syntactic Awareness in English Reading Comprehension in Grade 3

To explore the bidirectional relationship of syntactic awareness and reading

comprehension, a second, parallel set of regression and mediation analyses were conducted with

English reading comprehension as the outcome variable.

Preliminary analyses revealed no data points exceeding the specified |2.58| criteria,

resulting in all 69 participants in the sample predicting English reading comprehension. The

bootstrapping method was once again applied in the hierarchical linear regression to correct for

evidence of skewness in the distribution. The regression analysis was parallel to the above

analysis predicting French reading comprehension. To predict English reading comprehension

outcomes, English predictors were followed by French syntactic awareness in the analysis.

Specifically, non-verbal reasoning and English phonological awareness were entered first as

control variables. These were followed sequentially by English vocabulary, word-identification,

derivational (morphological) awareness, and syntactic awareness, as within-language controls.

French syntactic awareness was entered as the final step of the regression model in order to

examine its unique contribution to English reading comprehension.

The regression analysis predicting English reading comprehension among third-graders

is presented in Table 11 and explains 48% of the total variance. In the model, non-verbal

reasoning explained approximately 12% of the variance, while phonological awareness

explained another 13%. The English within-language control variable of vocabulary was also a

significant predictor of English reading comprehension, accounting for 13% of variance.

English word-identification, derivational, and syntactic awareness did not significantly predict

the outcome variable, and thus there was no evidence of within-language transfer between

English syntactic awareness and comprehension. As the last step of the regression, however,

65

French syntactic awareness significantly predicted English reading comprehension, contributing

8% of variance to the overall model. Therefore, while English syntactic awareness does not

contribute to French reading comprehension in the older sample, the results provide evidence of

the reverse relationship: there was cross-language transfer of French syntactic awareness to

English reading comprehension among Grade 3 students in French immersion.

66

Table 11

Hierarchical Linear Regression Predicting English Reading Comprehension in Grade 3

Step 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Predictor

B

(SE)

Β B

(SE)

β B

(SE)

β B

(SE)

β B

(SE)

β B

(SE

)

β B

(SE)

β

NVR .32**

*

(.10)

.37**

*

.27**

*

(.10)

.32**

*

.14

(.10)

.17 .10

(.10)

.11 .10

(.10)

.11 .08

(.10

)

.10 .07

(.09)

.08

English PA .87**

*

(.21)

.36**

*

.43

(.23)

.18 .16

(.27)

.07 .16

(.27)

.06 .09

(.28

)

.04 -.03

(.27)

-.01

English Voc .28**

*

(.08)

.45**

*

.26**

*

(.08)

.41**

*

.27**

(.10)

.42

**

.25*

*

(.10

)

.39*

*

.19*

(.09)

.29*

English ID .27

(.15)

.23 .27

(.16)

.24 .22

(.15

)

.19 .22

(.14)

.19

English MA -.11

(.55)

-

.02

-.17

(.55

)

-.04 .06

(.49)

.01

English SA .58

(.43

)

.17 .24

(.41)

.07

French SA 1.42**

* (.41)

.35**

*

Adjusted R2 .12*** .24*** .37*** .39 .39 .40 .48***

∆R2 .14*** .13*** .13*** .03 .00 .02 .08***

Notes. * p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.001; NVR = Non-Verbal Reasoning; PA = Phonological Awareness; Voc = Vocabulary;

ID = Word Identification; MA = Morphological Awareness; SA = Syntactic Awareness; B (SE) = unstandardized, bootstrapped estimate;

β = standardized non-bootstrapped estimate.

67

Within- and Cross-Language Mediation Analyses Predicting English Reading Comprehension

in Grade 3

The within-language mediation analysis predicting English reading comprehension

among third-graders is presented in Tables 12a and 12b. The total effect (c-path) between

English syntactic awareness and English reading comprehension was statistically significant (B

= 1.05, SE = 0.39, t = 2.71, p = .009) until the addition of English vocabulary, word

identification, and derivational awareness into the model reduced the relationship between

English syntactic awareness and reading comprehension (c’-path) to nonsignificance (B = 0.58,

SE = 0.39, t = 1.46, p = .149). This indicates full mediation. Based on the bootstrapped results,

the total indirect effect (ab-path) of English syntactic awareness on English reading

comprehension was significant, (B = 0.48, CI = 0.12 to 0.96). Closer inspection of the specific

indirect effects revealed that English vocabulary was the only significant mediator (point

estimate = 0.35, CI = 0.04 to 0.86). English word identification (point estimate = 0.16, CI = -

0.01 to 0.57) and English derivational awareness (B = - 0.03, CI = - 0.30 to 0.17), however,

were not mediators. There is, therefore, evidence for an indirect within-language effect between

English syntactic awareness and reading comprehension in Grade 3, mediated entirely by

English vocabulary.

Table 12a


English Reading Comprehension in Grade 3


English Vocabulary 1.40 (.59)* 0.25 (.08)**

English Word Identification 0.75 (.31)* 0.22 (.15)

English Derivational Awareness 0.17 (.09) -0.17 (.53)


68

Table 12b

Indirect (Mediated) Effects of English Syntactic Awareness on English Reading Comprehension

in Grade 3


Lower Upper

Total 0.48 (.21) .1164 .9561

English Vocabulary 0.35 (.20) .0427 .8640

English Word Identification 0.16 (.13) -.0125 .5645

English Derivational Awareness -0.03 (.11) -.2958 .1669

Notes. * p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.001; B = unstandardized coefficient; SE = Standard Error; BC

= Bias-Corrected; CI = Confidence Interval.

Figure 5 displays a graphical representation of the mediated relationship between

English syntactic awareness and English reading comprehension in Grade 3.

69

Figure 5. Indirect (full mediation) effects of English vocabulary on the within-language relationship between English

syntactic awareness and English reading comprehension in Grade 3, while controlling for non-verbal reasoning and


70

Results from the cross-language mediation model, testing the effects of French syntactic

awareness on English reading comprehension in Grade 3, are presented in Tables 13a and 13b.

Note that English syntactic awareness comprises a potential mediator in the model, alongside

English vocabulary, word identification, and derivational awareness. Non-verbal reasoning and

phonological awareness are entered as covariates. The total effect (c-path) between French

syntactic awareness and English reading comprehension was statistically significant (B = 1.86,

SE = 0.42, t = 4.39, p = .000). This significant relationship persisted even when the potential

mediators were entered into the model (c’-path; B = 1.42, SE = 0.43, t = 3.00, p = .002),

suggesting partial mediation. Based on the bootstrapped results, the total indirect effect (ab-

path) of English syntactic awareness on French reading comprehension was not statistically

significant, as it included a zero between its bias-corrected confidence intervals (B = 0.46, CI =

- 0.00 to 0.96). However, as alluded to earlier, it is possible to have specific indirect effects in

the absence of a total indirect effect (Preacher & Hayes, 2008). Further examination confirms

that, as in the within-language model, English vocabulary was a significant mediator (B = 0.29,

CI = 0.01 to 0.75). English word identification, derivational awareness, and syntactic

awareness, however, were not mediators. An addition to its direct effect, then, there is also

evidence for an indirect cross-language effect between French syntactic awareness and English

reading comprehension in Grade 3.

71

Table 13a


English Reading Comprehension in Grade 3

Mediator Path a (SE) Path b (SE)

English Vocabulary 1.54 (.70)* 0.19 (.08)*

English Word Identification 0.29 (.38) 0.22 (.14)

English Derivational Awareness 0.03 (.11) 0.06 (.50)

English Syntactic Awareness 0.37 (.14)** 0.24 (.38)


Table 13b

Indirect (Mediated) Effects of French Syntactic Awareness on English Reading Comprehension

in Grade 3

Mediator Bootstrapped Point

Estimate (SE)

BC 95% CI

Lower Upper

Total 0.46 (.25) -.0010 .9621

English Vocabulary 0.29 (.19) .0143 .7526

English Word Identification 0.06 (.10) -.0630 .4147

English Derivational Awareness 0.02 (.06) -.0981 .1315

English Syntactic Awareness 0.09 (.15) -.1845 ,4551

Notes. * p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.001; B = unstandardized coefficient; SE = Standard Error; BC

= Bias-Corrected; CI = Confidence Interval.

Figure 6 displays a graphical representation of the partially mediated relationship

between French syntactic awareness and English reading comprehension in Grade 3.

72

Figure 6. Indirect (partial mediation) effects of English vocabulary on the cross-language relationship between French

syntactic awareness and English reading comprehension in Grade 3, while controlling for non-verbal reasoning and


73

5.6 Discussion

Study 2 explored within- and cross-language relationships between syntactic awareness

and reading comprehension among third-grade students in French immersion. Results revealed

that, unlike in their first-grade peers, French syntactic awareness was significantly predictive of

French reading comprehension in third-graders. English syntactic awareness in the same

sample, however, was not predictive of English reading comprehension. Cross-linguistically, it

was found that English syntactic skills failed to explain any additional variance in French

reading comprehension in Grade 3 after controlling for within-language French predictors. This

study is notable in that it investigated the possibility of transfer from L2 syntactic awareness to

concurrent L1 reading comprehension, in addition to exploring transfer from L1 English

syntactic awareness to L2 French reading comprehension. The results of this analysis revealed

evidence of cross-language transfer between French syntactic awareness and English reading

comprehension.

The finding of within-language contribution of syntactic awareness to reading

comprehension in French was as expected. The results of Study 1 suggested that, in Grade 1,

French syntactic awareness was underdeveloped, and as a result, did not contribute to French

reading comprehension over and above the effects of relevant controls, such as English

phonological awareness and French word reading. By Grade 3, however, French syntactic

awareness was developed to the point of positively influencing French reading comprehension.

This direct evidence of within-language prediction in the older sample confirms the findings of

Leider et al. (2013), Swanson et al. (2008), Lesaux et al. (2006, 2007) and Low and Siegel

(2005), all of whom demonstrated that L2 syntactic awareness predicted L2 reading

comprehension among students ranging between Grades 2 to 6. Notably, while the L2 of

74

participants in each of the latter studies was English, the present study extends these findings to

a French L2 sample.

In addition to the direct effect, there is also evidence of an indirect contribution of

French syntactic awareness to French reading comprehension through French word

identification and French vocabulary. In the present study, these two within-language skills

emerged as partial mediators in the relationship between syntactic awareness and reading

comprehension in French. While word identification was the lone mediator in Grade 1,

improvements in French oral proficiency and metalinguistic awareness by third grade made it

possible for vocabulary and syntactic awareness to emerge as factors that support French

reading comprehension outcomes. From a theoretical perspective, the interaction of these three

predictors – French word identification, French vocabulary, and French syntactic awareness – in

the mediation model corroborates the Simple View of Reading (Gough & Tunmer, 1986;

Hoover & Gough, 1990), which postulates that reading comprehension is the product of oral

language skills and word recognition.

The same within-language pattern, however, was not observed in English, the students’

L1. Despite a significant correlation between English syntactic awareness and English reading

comprehension, syntactic awareness did not explain unique variance in reading comprehension

within-language when other English predictors were accounted for. Rather, the effect of English

syntactic awareness on English reading comprehension was mediated entirely by students’

English vocabulary. This full mediation by English vocabulary is consistent with the results of

the hierarchical regression model that found English vocabulary to be a significant predictor of

English reading comprehension. Instructional factors provide a possible explanation for the

surprising lack of a within-language finding between syntactic awareness and reading

75

comprehension in the present study. In the early elementary years, French immersion students

are taught exclusively in French, and French language and literacy skills are a primary focus of

instruction. Teaching and assessment materials, such as grammar exercises, writing tasks, and

reading assessments, are often concentrated on correction and accuracy. English proficiency,

meanwhile, is developed in less formal contexts outside of school, and perhaps alongside

additional languages. It is therefore expected that students’ English syntactic awareness will not

receive the same level of fine-tuning during the early elementary years as French, and as a

result, has less impact on their English reading comprehension skills. Nonetheless, the lack of a

direct within-language finding between L1 syntactic awareness and L1 reading comprehension

in this study merits future research and attempts should be made to replicate this outcome,

particularly in a larger sample of students.

With respect to cross-language transfer, English syntactic awareness failed to predict

French reading comprehension in Grade 3. These results corroborate those of Swanson et al.

(2008), who also observed a within-language, but no cross-language, prediction of L2 reading

comprehension by syntactic awareness among third-grade Spanish-English bilinguals. One

explanation for this finding is that, by the time students reach Grade 3, they have acquired and

successfully consolidated language and literacy skills in their L2; consequently, syntactic

awareness in French eclipsed the same skill in English in its contribution to French reading

comprehension. However, the results revealed an indirect effect, in that the relationship

between English syntactic awareness and French reading comprehension was fully mediated by

French word identification, French vocabulary, and French syntactic awareness in Grade 3. This

mediation effect concurs with the results of the regression analysis in which Grade 3 French

reading comprehension was best explained by within-language vocabulary and word reading,

76

skills which evidently serve as the mediators between these facets of English and French

literacy.

In the present study, French syntactic awareness also had a significant cross-over effect

on English reading comprehension after controlling for cognitive and within-language

predictors. It is speculated that the greater influence of French syntactic awareness on English

reading comprehension is a consequence of the more systematic and transparent nature of

French syntax, compared to English syntax. French grammar is complex; for example, it

features gender and systematic noun-verb agreement, and allows for somewhat more variation

in word order than English. However, French syntax is also largely rule-bound with few

exceptions. Moreover, its awareness is necessary in order to correctly comprehend text. For

example, the French phrases il partage (“he shares”) and ils partagent (“they share”) are

phonetically identical, but semantically distinct, requiring awareness of third-person singular

and plural forms of the verb partager in order to be fully understood. Furthermore, the suffix –

ent is pronounced in all French words, except when occurring in third-person plural verbs. In

order to access the appropriate pronunciation of the suffix –ent in the third-person plural verb

partagent, and hence the word’s meaning, the reader must be able to recognize it as a

conjugated verb. Indeed, children studying French receive explicit, systematic grammar

instruction from an early stage, due to the complexity of French syntax. By having their

attention drawn to the complexities of French grammar, it is possible that the French immersion

students in the present study may have become sensitized to the importance of grammatical

features in determining meaning. Syntactic awareness. developed as a result of exposure to

French language and literacy instruction, may then transfer to English reading comprehension,

even though awareness of syntax is not as critical to semantics in English as it is in French.

77

In addition, French syntactic awareness indirectly contributed to English reading

comprehension through English vocabulary. The mediation is consistent with models of

relatedness between vocabulary, a component of oral language, and syntactic awareness, a

metalinguistic skill closely tied to oral language. Both receptive vocabulary and understanding

of language structure are necessary in order to accurately comprehend text and the results of the

present mediation analysis point to an interaction between these two skills. The increased

influence of vocabulary in third-graders is also consistent with the Simple View (Gough &

Tunmer, 1986; Hoover & Gough, 1990), which emphasizes the greater role of oral language in

upper-grade reading comprehension.

Taken together, these findings indicate that syntactic awareness in the L2 contributes to

reading comprehension in the L2 and L1 among mid-elementary school students in French

immersion. As suggested above, access to syntactic awareness is conducive to successful

reading by allowing readers to consistently monitor their reading comprehension (Baker &

Brown, 1984, p. 355 cited in Tunmer et al., 1987; Bowey, 1986b; Cain, 2007; Durgunoğlu,

2002; Tunmer et al., 1987) and to decipher and disambiguate words based on contextual clues

(Demont & Gombert, 1996; Durgunoğlu, 2002; Rego & Bryant, 1993a,b cited in Rego, 1997). I

am aware of no cross-language transfer studies to date that have examined the bidirectional

nature of the relationship between syntactic awareness and reading comprehension, and the

present study helps to fill this gap in the extant literature.

78

Chapter 6: General Discussion

Two important findings emerged across the two studies. First, with respect to within-

language prediction, L2 syntactic awareness was predictive of L2 reading comprehension, over

and above the effects of cognitive and within-language controls, in third-graders only. Evidence

for within-language L2 prediction (i.e., French syntactic awareness to French reading

comprehension) in Grade 1 and within-language L1 prediction (i.e., English syntactic awareness

to English reading comprehension) in Grade 3 was indirect only; the relationship was mediated

wholly by L2 word identification in Grade 1 and by L1 vocabulary in Grade 3. Second, turning

to cross-language prediction, there was evidence of direct transfer of L1 syntactic awareness to

L2 reading comprehension in Grade 1, and direct transfer of L2 syntactic awareness to L1

reading comprehension in Grade 3. Transfer of L1 syntactic awareness to L2 reading

comprehension in Grade 3 was indirect only, mediated in full by L2 word identification,

vocabulary, and syntactic awareness.

These findings speak to a gradual development of L2 syntactic awareness in French

immersion students and a shift in its relative contribution to within- and cross-language reading

comprehension across Grades 1 and 3. This shift was expected; Grade 1 participants were still

new to French syntactic awareness, having only recently begun to learn French vocabulary,

morphology, and syntax. Their lack of French proficiency therefore prompted first-grade

students to draw on parallel awareness and skills that were more fully developed in English in

order to appropriately interpret text. By Grade 3, however, French syntactic awareness among

Study 2 participants was developed to the point of contributing to both within- and cross-

linguistic reading. Furthermore, the interaction between syntactic awareness and other reading-

related skills also shifted across age groups. Indirect within- and cross-language contributions

79

of syntactic awareness to reading comprehension in Grade 1 were mediated by word

identification, while an indirect contribution in Grade 3 was mediated either solely by

vocabulary or by a combination of vocabulary, syntactic awareness, and/or word identification.

The increased role of vocabulary, both within and across languages, in Grade 3 parallels the

increased role of syntactic awareness in Grade 3, given that syntactic awareness is more closely

aligned with oral language than it is with word decoding. Their increased interaction is also

consistent with the Simple View of Reading (Gough & Tunmer, 1986; Hoover & Gough, 1990),

which posits a growing role for oral language competency in reading comprehension over the

elementary years.

The present results concur with and extend the theories proposed by both Cummins

(1979, 1981) and Koda (2008), in that syntactic awareness constitutes a language-general skill

that is conducive to transfer between languages. Cummins (1979, 1981) proposes that, despite

differences in surface-level features of languages, cross-language transfer is possible due to

underlying proficiencies that are shared across all languages. The results of the present studies

provide convincing evidence that syntactic awareness represents an underlying metalinguistic

proficiency which transfers between English and French, despite surface-level differences

between the two languages.

In a similar vein, Koda’s (2008) Transfer Facilitation Model explicitly theorizes the role

of L1 metalinguistic awareness in L2 reading development. She views metalinguistic awareness

as language-independent; children draw on awareness developed in their first language in

acquiring a second language. In the context of this study, the assumption is that L1 syntactic

awareness was developed to the point of automaticity in Grade 1, enabling its transfer to the L2,

where it was expected to facilitate reading acquisition. The results of Study 1 demonstrate

80

exactly this; after controlling for within-language predictors including French syntactic

awareness, English syntactic awareness continued to explain a signification portion of the

variance in French reading comprehension outcomes. This finding not only provides evidence

for transfer, but also indicates that by Grade 1, children had achieved a degree of development

and robustness of L1 syntactic awareness. This maturity of English awareness is vital, as L1

metalinguistic sophistication is a precondition for transfer in Koda’s (2008) Model, as it

provides top-down assistance in the development of corresponding L2 awareness.

Koda (2008) purports that increased exposure and experience with L2 input is expected

to hone metalinguistic awareness into language-specific L2 awareness, causing its growth to be

a function of increasing interaction between transferred L1 metalinguistic awareness and

incoming L2 input. The results of Study 2 provide both a confirmation, as well as extension, of

this proposition. Consistent with the hypotheses of the Model, it was indeed observed that

French syntactic awareness in third-graders made a unique contribution to French reading

comprehension. Conversely, relatively less-developed French syntactic awareness in first-grade

was unable to contribute to concurrent reading comprehension performance in French. Thus, as

per Koda’s (2008) Model, three years of exclusive L2 instruction promoted the development of

L2-specific syntactic awareness, allowing it to become a more prominent contributor to

advanced reading skills. Moreover, because L2 input supported the development of L2

metalinguistic awareness, L2 syntactic awareness in Grade 3 overshadowed the contribution of

L1 syntactic awareness, which ceased to predict L2 reading comprehension as it had in the first-

grade.

While supporting its existing tenets, however, Study 2 also expands the proposals

offered by Koda’s (2008) theory by demonstrating bidirectionality in cross-language transfer.

81

This finding challenges the unidirectional hypothesis suggested by Koda (2008). The overall

pattern of results that emerged across the two studies was as follows: while English syntactic

awareness predicted French reading comprehension in Grade 1, it failed to do so in Grade 3. On

the other hand, French syntactic awareness, which made no direct within-language contribution

to reading comprehension in Grade 1, began to make both within- and cross-language

contributions by Grade 3. Evidently, once L2 syntactic awareness was established in Grade 3, it

began to influence higher-order reading abilities not only within but across language, thereby

contributing to outcomes in the L1 from which it initially developed. In other words, L2

syntactic awareness supported L1 reading comprehension over and above the effect of L1

syntactic awareness. This bidirectional transfer is consistent with the pattern observed by

Deacon et al. (2007) with respect to the role of morphological awareness in word reading in

French immersion students assessed longitudinally between Grades 1 to 3. In their study,

whereas English morphological awareness contributed to French reading in the early grades, the

reverse pattern – wherein French morphological awareness played a role in English reading –

appeared in the later grades (Deacon et al., 2007). Consequently, in both studies, the pattern of

transfer eventually reversed from L1 to L2 into L2 to L1 in the upper grades. The present study

therefore extends the findings of Deacon et al. (2007) to a different dimension of metalinguistic

awareness, syntactic awareness, and points to similarities in patterns of transfer. It appears that,

as children gain proficiency in the L2, L2 metalinguistic awareness becomes transferable to the

native language while transfer of L1 awareness ceases (Deacon et al., 2007). This pattern may

be specific to situations where L1 instruction is absent, such as in the French immersion context

of both these studies. Thus, while Koda’s (2008) Model suggests unidirectional transfer from a

82

more literacy-advanced L1 to a developing L2, the results of the present two studies, together

with the results of Deacon et al. (2007), offer evidence for bidirectional transfer.

The present thesis explored the transfer of syntactic awareness between English and

French, languages with comparable syntactic structures. In this regard, while typological

distance between languages is not a precondition for transfer in Koda’s (2008) Model, it is

considered relevant insofar as the relative rate of transfer and the degree of adjustment that is

required to fine-tune L1 awareness into L2-specific awareness. Given the relative linguistic

similarity between English and French syntax, participants in Study 1 were able to draw on L1

syntactic awareness to support L2 reading comprehension, despite limited L2 exposure by the

Spring of Grade 1. The fact that French syntactic awareness did not contribute to the prediction

model at this stage further strengthens the conclusion that English syntactic awareness provided

a superior, more reliable contributor to French reading comprehension. Likewise, given that

English L1 reading comprehension in Grade 3 was able to draw on concurrent L2 syntactic

awareness despite the absence of English instruction, it is clear that the typological proximity of

the two languages facilitated the cross-linguistic transfer of syntactic awareness between them.

Future studies should expand upon these findings by assessing more typologically-distant

languages in order to confirm the status of syntactic awareness as universal and entirely

language-independent.

The present findings clarifying the influential role of syntactic awareness in higher-order

reading offer important implications for educational practice. The results verify that its

contribution to reading comprehension makes syntactic awareness an important language skill

that deserves greater academic attention. For example, with respect to cross-language training,

Siu and Ho (2015) suggest that it may be strategic to target students’ L1 syntactic knowledge

83

and map it onto their L2 syntactic knowledge, in order to augment L2 reading. They propose

that a second-language curriculum that explicitly compares L1 and L2 syntactic structures and

draws on their likeness may enhance the transferability of syntactic awareness from the L1 to

the L2 (Siu & Ho, 2015). Exploring the success of this line of reading instruction and

remediation bears particular implications for language-minority students studying in dominant

language schools, such as English as a Second Language (ESL) learners, who typically receive

the same instruction within the classroom as a native speaker but for whom the effectiveness of

this shared form of instruction is yet unclear (Chiappe & Siegel, 1999). In this population, it

may be worthwhile targeting students’ existing L1 knowledge and skills, such as syntactic

awareness, in order to promote development in L2 proficiencies, such as reading

comprehension. It should be clarified, however, that considering the role of prior L1 experience

in L2 instruction does not necessarily always equate to teaching in the L1; Genesee et al. (2006)

assert that accounting for L1 experience entails acknowledging its influence in matters such as

when tracking the progress of L2-learners, identifying individual sources of difficulties in

struggling L2-learners, and formulating academic programs and curriculums that are cognizant

of and appropriate for their language-minority experiences.

Instruction in syntactic awareness may be particularly beneficial for poor reading

comprehenders. Difficulties in reading comprehension in the early grades have by and large

been attributed to deficiencies in phonological ability, decoding, and word reading, among other

skills (Xiuli Tong et al., 2014). However, as Xiuli Tong et al. (2014) emphasize, there is a

subpopulation of children – approximately 10% of students – who present with reading

comprehension difficulties with uncompromised decoding, word reading, and phonological

skills (Yuill & Oakhill, 1991 cited in Xiuli Tong et al., 2014). It is possible that deficits in

84

syntactic awareness, a factor that emerged as a predictor of reading comprehension both within

and across languages in the present studies, may contribute to poor reading comprehension in

these students. Plaza and Cohen (2003) note that integrating the variables of phonological

processing, naming speed processes, and syntactic awareness together into a theoretical model

of operational criteria defining children with dyslexia can be valuable in executing instructional

and remediation programs that target all three features in students with reading disabilities.

However, whereas many studies attest to the efficacy of phonological awareness training in

promoting literacy achievement, the potential benefits of syntactic awareness training on

reading comprehension are yet unexplored (Mokhtari & Neiderhauser, 2013; Tunmer et al.,

1987). Future studies should assess the impact that explicit instruction in syntactic knowledge

and awareness can have on within- and cross-language reading comprehension.

Future research should also take a closer look at developmental trajectories in the

development and transfer of syntactic awareness in bilingual children. Because of the cross-

sectional design of the present thesis, it is difficult to claim robust developmental patterns in

this population. A longitudinal design will be important in establishing a causal relationship and

further disentangling the directionality in the cross-language relationship between syntactic

awareness and reading comprehension. An additional limitation of the present studies relates to

the lack of standardized assessments intended specifically for bilingual students. Specific

challenges and limitations of evaluating French immersion students should also be noted. In

particular, French immersion populations are self-selecting in nature (Allen, 2004); incoming

students tend to be screened by both parents and educators for immersion readiness, which

likely results in the admittance of students who have greater language development and a

likelihood of responding well to the acquisition of an additional language. As well, the

85

relatively restricted range of the socioeconomic status (SES) of the samples in the present

studies is another limitation; participants attended a school located in a relatively high SES

neighbourhood of a Canadian metropolitan city, and over 80% of their mothers had completed

at least post-secondary education. This narrow SES range may preclude generalizations of

results to French immersion and bilingual students raised in lower SES contexts, who may

receive less exposure to home literacy stimulation, possibly resulting in differential impact on

their English and French development. Future studies should recruit participants from across a

broader range of SES backgrounds.

Notwithstanding these limitations, the results of the studies that comprise the present

thesis provide compelling evidence for the within- and cross-language role of syntactic

awareness in reading comprehension among French immersion students. The interpretation of

these findings lends support for hypotheses on the transferability and underlying nature of

syntactic awareness, indicating that metalinguistic awareness developed in the L1 contributes to

higher-order reading skills in the L2, and that developing L2 awareness can, in turn, facilitate

L1 reading outcomes in this population. These results expand our understanding of L2 literacy

development and add to the limited body of research on the cross-language transfer of

metalinguistic awareness. They call for increased theoretical consideration of this dimension of

metalinguistic awareness in models of bilingual reading comprehension, and suggest the

possible benefit of syntactic awareness training on the development of L1 and L2 reading

comprehension.

86

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Appendix A

Practice and Test Items of the English Syntactic Awareness Task in Grades 1 and 3

Practice Items

Sentence to Present Correct Response

The girl opened door The girl opened the door.

What he is doing? What is he doing?

She brushed them teeth. She brushed her teeth.

Test Items


The boy jumped over log. The boy jumped over the log.

He cleaned him shoes. He cleaned his shoes.

The boy found the book what you lost. The boy found the book that you lost.

What the girls are doing? What are the girls doing?

John gave the crayon for Mary. John gave the crayon to Mary.

Peter goes sometimes to church. Peter sometimes goes to church.

OR

Peter goes to church sometimes.

I wonder how old is he. I wonder how old he is.

The boy forgot his uniform who plays

baseball.

The boy who plays baseball forgot his

uniform.

OR

The boy who forgot his uniform plays

baseball.

The teacher the story read to the children. The teacher read the story to the children.

She will be angry if you will break it. She will be angry if you break it.

Herself likes to dress Celina. Celina likes to dress herself.

Found in the ocean are whales. Whales are found in the ocean.

Interested in music Mary wasn’t. Mary wasn’t interested in music

She swims not. She doesn’t swim.

Were eaten by the dog the cookies. The cookies were eaten by the dog.

94


With Alex the girl is going to the party. The girl is going to the party with Alex.

OR

The girl is going with Alex to the party.

95

Appendix B

Practice and Test Items of the French Syntactic Awareness Task in Grades 1 and 3

Practice Items


La fille ouvre le porte. La fille ouvre la porte.

Mon maman est gentille. Ma maman est gentille.

Test Items


Ce crayon est mon. Ce crayon est le mien.

Il a donné le cadeau à lui. Il lui a donné le cadeau.

Marie a fait un gâteau puis elle a mangé le. Marie a fait un gateau, puis elle l’a mangé.

J’ai voyagé sur un train. J’ai voyagé en train.

En automne, j’aime regarder les rouges

feuilles.

En automne, j’aime regarder les feuilles

rouges.

Je dois laver mes mains. Je dois me laver les mains.

Nous allons à le parc ce matin. Nous allons au parc ce matin.

Elle pas fait son travail. Elle ne fait pas son travail.

OR

Elle n’a pas fait son travail.

La jupe est vert. La jupe est verte.

Le garçon a regardé à mon livre. Le garçon a regardé mon livre.

L’enfant est triste qui a perdu son chat. L’enfant qui a perdu son chat est triste.

L’ami de moi a un chien. Mon ami a un chien.

Quoi avez-vous fait aujourd’hui? Qu’avez-vous fait aujourd’hui?

OR

Qu’est-ce que vous avez fait aujourd’hui?

Tout mangé as-tu? As-tu tout mangé?

OR

Est-ce que tu as tout mangé?

L’école que je vais est loin de la maison. L’école où je vais est loin de la maison.

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Elle a vu le roi et reine. Elle a vu le roi et la reine.

Je ne sais pas qu’est-ce qu’il veut. Je ne sais pas ce qu’il veut.

On va à la maison très vite. On va très vite à la maison.

THE WITHIN- AND CROSS-LANGUAGE ROLE OF SYNTACTIC …...syntactic awareness and French reading comprehension in Grade 3 .....63 Figure 5 Indirect (full mediation) effects of English

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