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5 Second-Language Oral Proficiency and Second- Language Literacy

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5

Second-Language Oral
Proficiency and Second-
Language Literacy
Esther Geva

In this chapter, we examine studies pertaining to the relationship between English oral
language proficiency (vocabulary, grammar, and listening comprehension) and various
English reading skills among English-language learners. Although oral language
proficiency is one of the many components that influence the development of literacy, it
is reported on separately in this chapter, rather than as part of chapter 4, because of the
important role it is presumed to play in the development of literacy in language-minority
students. The chapter is organized according to literacy outcomes. We begin by
reviewing studies that examine the relationship between diverse aspects of English oral
proficiency and word-level reading skills in English, including word and pseudoword
reading and spelling. This is followed by an examination of research on the relationships
between various aspects of oral language proficiency in English and text- or discourse-
level skills (i.e., reading comprehension and writing). Each of these skill sets is addressed
within a developmental framework.
Quantitative studies often measure one or two aspects of oral language proficiency
(e.g., vocabulary, grammatical skills). The use of such measures enables researchers to
compare performance among groups in a systematic way.
Qualitative studies often use elicitation techniques to obtain speech samples from a
relatively small number of participants. Some researchers believe that where oral
language proficiency is concerned, the whole is bigger than the sum of the parts, and that
naturalistic, authentic language samples provide more valid assessments of language
proficiency. Both types of studies are included in this chapter.
The following research questions are addressed in this chapter:
1. What is the relationship between English oral proficiency and English word-
level skills?
2. What is the relationship between English oral proficiency and English
text-level skills?
5. SECOND-LANGUAGE LITERACY 2

WORD-LEVEL SKILLS

Relationship Between English Oral Proficiency and English Word and

Pseudoword Reading
This section focuses on research on the relationship between English oral language
proficiency and second-language word and pseudoword reading. Examining this
relationship in English-language learners is important so that we can examine whether
English-language learners are at a disadvantage relative to their monolingual, native-
speaking peers in the development of word and pseudoword reading skills because of
their limited English proficiency (Geva & Wade-Woolley, 2004).
The largest number of studies examining the relative contribution of English oral
proficiency in English to the development of word-level and pseudoword reading skills in
English, the students’ second language, involved elementary school-age children. Some
of these studies found that oral language proficiency in English (typically conceptualized
in terms of vocabulary or grammatical knowledge) is not a unique or, for that matter,
robust predictor of word-level reading skills in English. Some studies that used a
regression approach found that, although English oral language proficiency may correlate
positively and significantly with word and pseudoword reading skills in English and may
explain some unique variance in these reading skills, certain aspects of phonological
processing (e.g., phoneme deletion and rapid automatized naming [RAN]) in English are
more robust and consistent predictors of English word and pseudoword reading.
A study by Jackson and Lu (1992) provides indirect evidence for a lack of association
between oral language proficiency in English and English word reading skills. This study
involved a group of English-language learners from a variety of first-language
backgrounds who demonstrated advanced reading comprehension skills in English before
beginning Grade 1. These precocious English-language learners scored more than 1
standard deviation below the native-speaking comparison group on two measures of oral
language proficiency—oral cloze and sentence memory. Yet they were just as fluent as
the monolingual group on word reading. Thus, these precocious readers were able to read
better than might be expected on the basis of their oral language skills in English.
Three studies involved Latino children. In the first study, Durgunoglu, Nagy, and
Hancin-Bhatt (1993) found that English oral proficiency was not a significant predictor of
English word and pseudoword reading skills, whereas Spanish phonological awareness
was significant in a group of beginning (firstgrade) readers of low socioeconomic status
(SES). English oral proficiency was measured with the Pre-Language Assessment Scales
(Pre-LAS), in particular, subtests that examine expressive and receptive language skills in
three domains of oral language—morphology, syntax, and semantics.
A recent study (Quiroga, Lemos-Britten, Mostafapour, Abbott, & Berninger, 2002)
also examined predictors of word reading skills in Spanish–English bilingual students in
Grade 1. This study found that English oral language proficiency measured with the Pre-
LAS) did correlate moderately with word reading and pseudoword decoding in English.
In addition, the correlation of phonological awareness (a phoneme-deletion task) with
English word reading and pseudoword decoding skills was high. However regression
analyses showed that phonological awareness explained significant and unique propor-
tions of the variance in the students’ English word reading and pseudoword rending
scores, but scores on the Pre-LAS test did not explain unique variance in these reading
5. SECOND-LANGUAGE LITERACY 3

skills when they were entered into the regression after phonological awareness and letter
knowledge in English.
In another study involving Spanish-speaking children, Gottardo (2002) also reports a
significant but small correlation between English oral language proficiency measures and
word reading measures in English. More specifically, she examined the relationship
between a number of language skills (semantic and syntactic processing), phonological
awareness, and word reading skills in primary-level, Mexican American, English-
language learners of low SES. The children were being taught in English. Correlational
analyses showed that English oral proficiency measures of vocabulary and syntactic
processing correlated significantly with the children’s performance on an English word
reading test. Regression analysis revealed further that performance on a word reading
task in English was related most strongly to performance on a pheneme deletion task, but
that knowledge of English vocabulary maintained a significant relationship with reading
and explained a unique proportion of the variance (3%) even after the effects of
phonological processing were taken into account. One possible explanation for the
difference between the Durgunoglu et al. (1993) study and the Quiroga et al. (2002) and
Gottardo (2002) study with regard to the role of vocabulary and syntactic processing in
word and pseudoword reading skills is this: In the latter study the children were being
taught in English so that their English language skills were more developed, whereas in
the former study the children were in a transitional bilingual education program and
presumably had had less exposure to English and fewer opportunities to develop their
English-language proficiency at the time of the study.
The other studies reviewed here involved children from a range of linguistic, ethnic,
and educational backgrounds. Muter and Diethelm (2001) examined the association
between various aspects of phonological awareness and vocabulary knowledge in
English, on the one hand, and early reading development in English, on the other hand, in
a group of middle-class children from multilingual backgrounds at the International
School in Geneva. Students were administered measures of English phonological
awareness, letter knowledge, vocabulary, and single-word reading. Vocabulary
knowledge measured at age 5 did not predict word reading skills a year later when the
children were 6 years old. Two aspects of phonological awareness measured when the
children were 5 years old, rhyming and phonemic segmentation, significantly predicted
word reading skills a year later, as did letter knowledge. Multiple-regression analyses
conducted with data from the first-grade students showed that, after general cognitive
ability had been partialed out, the two skills that contributed most significantly to word
reading ability were English letter knowledge followed by phonological segmentation in
English; English vocabulary, entered last, was also significant and explained 4% of the
unique variance.
A longitudinal study conducted by Geva, Yaghoub-Zadeh, and Schuster (2000) also
suggests that there is a weak relationship between English oral language proficiency and
word reading in English-language learners coming from various first-language
backgrounds, and a relatively strong association between phonological processing skills
measured in the second language and second-language word reading. Regression
analyses revealed that English oral language proficiency, assessed with a vocabulary test
(Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test–Revised [PPVT–R]) at the end of Grade 1 and the
beginning of Grade 2, did not predict English word recognition and pseudoword
5. SECOND-LANGUAGE LITERACY 4

decoding skills at the end of Grade 2. At the same time, two aspects of phonological pro-
cessing (phonemic awareness and rapid automatized naming of letters), which were
assessed in English at the end of Grade 1 and the beginning of Grade 2 and were entered
after the vocabulary measure, were significant predictors of word and pseudoword
reading at the end of Grade 2. This study also reports analyses that examined the shared
variance among the predictor variables. The results indicate that phonemic awareness and
RAN shared variance with each other, but also that each explained unique variance on
word reading skills. However, vocabulary knowledge did not explain any unique variance
and did not share variance with phonemic awareness and RAN.
Gottardo, Yan, Siegel, and Wade-Woolley (2001) conducted a study in Canada with
Grade 1 to 8 English-language learners whose home language was Chinese and who were
attending schools where English was the language of instruction. The authors used a
statistical control—covarying age—to handle the large age range in the sample. The
authors found that the correlations of English oral proficiency, as measured by a
grammatical sensitivity cloze task, and English word or pseudoword reading skills did
not reach significance. At the same time, the correlations of an English phoneme-deletion
task with word reading tasks were all positive and significant. Of relevance to the
discussion of the relative contributions of various aspects of English oral language skills
to word reading skills in English is the fact that the correlation between the English cloze
task (the measure of oral English proficiency) and the English phoneme-deletion task was
positive and significant. However, because the English cloze measure did not correlate
with the word reading skills, it was not entered into the regression analyses. The
regression analyses indicated that English phoneme deletion was a unique and significant
predictor of word reading in English even when the effects of Chinese phonological
processing skills (measured with a rhyme recognition task) were statistically controlled.
Other studies have found a significant but relatively small association between oral
vocabulary knowledge in English and English word reading in primary-grade students.
For example, Arab-Moghaddam and Sénéchal (2001) studied Grades 2 and 3
Farsi–English speakers living in Canada. These children’s schooling was in English, and
they also attended heritage language programs in Farsi. Their English vocabulary scores
correlated significantly with their English word reading scores. However, the correlation
between vocabulary knowledge in English and word reading skills was in the moderate
range, whereas the correlation between phonological processing skills (assessed with
1
pseudoword decoding) and English word reading skills was high. Regression analysis
showed further that, even after vocabulary knowledge in English was taken into account,
explaining 15% of the variance, phonological processing skills in English, entered next,
explained an additional 43% of the variance in word recognition in English.
Essentially the same conclusion was reached by Da Fontoura and Siegel (1995) in a
study involving slightly older children. The authors examined the relationships between

1
According to the authors (Arab-Moghaddam & Senechal, 2001), “pseudoword reading tasks can be a
valid indicator of children’s use of phonological skills because it measures children’s ability to decode
nonsense words for which they presumably have no lexical knowledge (p. 143)” Typically, researchers do
not use pseudoword reading to assess phonological awareness; however, findings from studies that use this
measure to assess phonological awareness are in line with findings from studies that assess phonological
awareness with orally presented tasks. Moreover, in order to decode psedowords, students must already
have developed phonological awarness.
5. SECOND-LANGUAGE LITERACY 5

English oral language proficiency (as assessed by an oral grammatical sensitivity cloze
task) and English word reading skills in Grades 4 to 6 Portuguese–English bilingual
children of low SES attending a Portuguese heritage language program in Canada. The
correlation between the students’ oral language scores in English and their word reading
scores in English was positive but moderate. However, the correlation between their
pseudoword decoding scores in English (and Portuguese) and their word reading scores
in English was positive and high. That is, children who had good command of
phoneme–grapheme correspondence rules in English (as measured by the pseudoword
decoding task) also had good word reading skills in English.
Only one study in our database examined the relationship between English oral
language proficiency and English word reading skills in high school students. This study,
conducted by Abu-Rabia (1997), involved 60 tenth-grade students of English as a foreign
language whose first language was Hebrew. Abu-Rabia reports that English oral language
proficiency, measured with a grammatical sensitivity cloze task, correlated significantly
with performance on word reading skills in English. Although Abu-Rabia’s findings
could be taken as evidence that oral language proficiency in English is related to word
reading skills in high school students of English as a foreign language, the picture may be
more complex: In a number of studies reviewed in this chapter, the oral cloze task used to
assess oral language proficiency also correlated significantly with working memory (e.g.,
Abu-Rabia, 1997; Da Fontoura & Siegel, 1995) and, in the case of the Abu-Rabia study,
with arithmetic skills. The results of these studies suggest that the oral cloze task may be
tapping into grammatical sensitivity as well as more general, underlying cognitive
abilities.
In summary, studies that used regression techniques and examined the relative
contributions of English oral language proficiency and phonological processing skills to
English word and pseudoword reading skills have found that the measures of oral
language proficiency in English explained a significant, although modest, proportion of
unique variance (usually 3%–4%) in students’ English word and pseudoword reading
scores. At the same time, phonological processing skills (including phonemic awareness
and rapid automatized naming) and measures of working memory in English tend to be
more robust and consistent predictors of English word and pseudoword reading skills,
and they explain a larger proportion of unique variance than do measures of English oral
language proficiency. These conclusions emerged from studies that assessed a variety of
oral language proficiency skills (e.g., vocabulary knowledge or grammatical sensitivity);
used cross-sectional and longitudinal correlational designs or between-group designs; and
involved elementary, middle school, and high school English-language learners who
came from different language and instructional backgrounds. It is important to note,
however, that the number of studies examining the relative contributions of oral
proficiency and phonological processing skills to word-level reading skills in English-
language learners declines considerably as one moves from the lower to the upper grades.
Therefore, these conclusions can be drawn with more certainty for younger than for
older English-language learners. However, the relationship between English oral
proficiency and word reading skills (both real words and pseudo-words) has been found
to be variable, due, at least in part, to factors related to the assessment of oral proficiency.
Some measures of oral language proficiency like the oral cloze tests may be assessing
other skills such as working memory and general mental ability, not only oral language
5. SECOND-LANGUAGE LITERACY 6

proficiency. Furthermore, not all measures of English proficiency are sensitive to the full
range of proficiency levels, such as measures of grammatical sensitivity. Thus, in some
studies, the lack of relationship between English oral language proficiency and word
reading skills may be due, in part, to a restriction in range in the measure of oral language
proficiency; this is less likely to be the case for older learners who started their schooling
in English at an earlier age and thus display a wider range of proficiency levels. Finally,
some oral language skills may be more related to word and pseudoword reading than
others. For example, lexical knowledge is more predictive of word reading than is
syntactic knowledge. Thus, we must be cautious not to overgeneralize when discussing
the relationship between oral proficiency and word-level reading skills.
In addition, in assessing the results of correlational studies, it is also important to
distinguish between the bivariate relation between predictors and outcomes and the
unique relations among these same measures. For example, a positive correlation often
exists between measures of phonological awareness and measures of oral language
proficiency, both of which are also positively related to measures of word-level reading
skill. In such cases, some portion of the relation between each of the predictors (i.e.,
phonological awareness and oral language proficiency) and the outcome (i.e., word-level
reading skill) is shared with the other predictor, and some portion of the relation is
unshared with the other predictor. The latter represents a unique relation between the
predictor and the outcome. If the pair of predictors is used in a regression model to
predict outcomes in word-level reading skill, care must be taken not to misinterpret the
meaning of the respective regression coefficients, which are measures of the predictors’
unique associations with the outcome. To base conclusions on regression coefficients
without taking into account bivariate correlations can lead to invalid inferences about the
relations among predictors and outcomes. In addition, one must be extremely cautious in
considering the order in which variables are added to prediction models when such
orderings are based on the data rather than theory. Because data-based orders of entry of
variables in regression equations are greatly affected by individual sample statistics, such
orderings often do not replicate from one sample to another unless sample sizes are large
and representative.

Relationship Between English Oral Proficiency and English Spelling

Despite the demonstrated importance of foundational skills such as phonological skills
(e.g., Bradley & Bryant, 1983; Liberman, Shankweiler, Fischer, & Carter, 1974;
Lundberg, Olofsson, & Wall, 1980; Perfetti, 1999), mastery of the association between
printed and spoken forms of language (e.g., Adams, 1990; Ehri, 1998; Foorman, Francis,
Fletcher, Schatschneider, & Mehta, 1998; Mann, 1993; Moats, 1994; Stanovich & Siegel,
1994), and knowledge of letter names (Treiman & Cassar, 1997), little research is
available on the developmental foundations of spelling in English-language learners in
general, and on the role of oral language proficiency and phonological processing in the
spelling performance of English-language learners in particular.
A handful of studies have addressed the relationship between oral language proficiency
in English and the development of spelling skills in English among English-language
learners. Overall, the findings of these studies indicate that phonological awareness
assessed in English correlates significantly with the English spelling skills of English-
language learners. There is little evidence that aspects of English oral language
5. SECOND-LANGUAGE LITERACY 7

proficiency such as vocabulary or grammatical skills play a crucial role in the

development of English spelling skills in English-language learners.
Studies providing indirect assessments of the role of English oral language proficiency
in spelling in English are documented by Wade-Woolley and Siegel (1997) and Everatt,
Smythe, Adams, and Ocampo (2000). The former study (discussed previously) compared
the spelling performance of young native English speakers and English-language learners
as a function of their first- and second-language status and their English reading skills.
Grade 2 children classified as average or poor readers, based on their performance on a
word recognition task, were given a battery of word and pseudoword spelling and reading
tests in English, along with a host of phonological processing tasks (phonological aware-
ness, phonological memory, and rapid naming). Their oral language proficiency in
English was assessed by using a grammatical sensitivity cloze task. The native-English-
speaking children significantly outperformed their English-language learner counterparts
on the cloze task, as well as on two tests of phonological processing skills—sound
mimicry and phoneme deletion. However, there was no difference between the two
groups on the spelling tasks, suggesting that there is no direct link between oral
proficiency (assessed with a grammatical sensitivity cloze task) and spelling accuracy in
English for English-language learners. Regression analyses further revealed similar
processing profiles for the two groups: In both groups, real-word spelling was
significantly correlated with both phoneme deletion and pseudoword decoding, and
pseudoword spelling was correlated significantly with pseudoword decoding.
Similar results are reported by Everatt et al. (2000), who also compared the
performance of primary-level native-English-speaking children and English-language
learners who were either good or poor spellers. Average spellers in each language group
exhibited similar profiles, as did poor spellers in each group. Compared with the good
spellers, poor spellers in each group performed significantly less well on measures of
word recognition and pseudoword reading, as well as on phonological processing
measures (rhyme detection, rhythm sequencing, and reverse memory span). One group
was English proficient and one was not, yet both groups had similar profiles with regard
to spelling and phonological processing skills. This implies that language proficiency was
less relevant to spelling performance than phonological processing.
In a study reviewed previously, Jackson and Lu (1992) also examined the orthographic
skills of a small sample of children from a variety of linguistic backgrounds who, before
beginning first grade, had demonstrated an advanced ability to comprehend written
English. The English-language learners had lower scores than the native-English-
speaking comparison group on the oral proficiency tests, but were just as accurate and, in
fact, faster than the monolingual group on an orthographic matching task. More
specifically, the bilingual group outperformed the monolingual group in the speed with
which they were able to access orthographic knowledge and distinguish between real
words and sound-alike pseudowords, suggesting again that there may be little association
between oral language proficiency and orthographic skills in English among English-
language learners.
Only one study focused on spelling skills in high school English-language learners.
This study, by Abu-Rabia (1997) (discussed previously), involved 60 tenth-grade
students of English as a foreign language whose first language was Hebrew. The study
found that oral language proficiency in English, measured with a grammatical sensitivity
5. SECOND-LANGUAGE LITERACY 8

cloze task, did not correlate with performance on an assessment of orthographic

conventions in English. However, oral proficiency in English did correlate positively and
significantly with a task that measured spelling recognition of real words in English.
More specifically, the orthographic conventions task required the students to judge which
word in each pair of pseudowords was a legitimate spelling pattern in English. The
spelling recognition task assessed students’ ability to recognize the correct spelling of
real words. The findings of this study may be taken to suggest that oral English
proficiency measured with a grammatical sensitivity cloze task is not related to
knowledge of the orthographic conventions of English spelling. while it is related to
spelling recognition of real words. However, there may have been measurement problems
with the latter measure. In particular, unlike consistent differences between skilled and
less skilled readers on all other language and reading tasks in both English and Hebrew,
there were no differences between the reading groups on this assessment of orthographic
conventions, and the performance in both groups was rather low, suggesting chance
performance. In contrast, performance on the grammatical sensitivity cloze task is
significantly related to high school students’ spelling recognition. As noted earlier, the
grammatical sensitivity cloze task appears to capture more than grammatical knowledge.
Finally, one study (Arab-Moghaddam and Sénéchal, 2001) examined the relative
contribution of phonological processing skills and vocabulary knowledge to English
spelling skills. In this study (discussed previously), the authors studied Grades 2 and 3
Farsi–English speakers living in Canada. The correlation between children’s English
vocabulary scores and English spelling scores was positive and moderate. At the same
time, the correlation between spelling and phonological skills assessed with a
pseudoword reading task (i.e., reading pronounceable letter strings) was very high.
Regression analysis showed further that vocabulary knowledge in English explained 17%
of the variance, and phonological processing skills in English, entered into the equation
in a subsequent step, explained an additional 40% of the variance in spelling English
words.
In summary, with one exception, the review indicates that grammatical skills in
English are not strongly related to spelling skills in English-language learners in
elementary and middle school. However, this conclusion must be regarded as tentative
given the small number of studies that addressed this issue. Moreover, little can be said
about the relationship between English oral language proficiency and English spelling in
higher grades. One study of high school students did find a correlation between
grammatical skills and spelling recognition. However, the task used to measure oral
language proficiency may have been capturing more than oral language proficiency
because it was highly and significantly correlated with a measure of memory and math
performance. There is some evidence that, unlike grammatical knowledge, vocabulary
knowledge in English may be correlated with spelling skills in English, but this
possibility, based on one study, requires replication. Finally, the existing evidence
indicates that phonological processing skills play a significant role in the spelling skills of
English-language learners; furthermore the evidence suggests that native English
speakers and English-language learners who are poor spellers have similar cognitive
profiles despite differences in their vocabulary and grammatical proficiency in English.

Word-Level Skills: Overall Summary

5. SECOND-LANGUAGE LITERACY 9

A number of conclusions emerged from our review with regard to word-level skills:

• English oral language proficiency skills explain a modest proportion of unique

variance (usually 3%–4%) in students’ word reading scores.
• Phonological processing skills (including phonemic awareness and rapid
automatized naming) and working memory in English are more robust and
consistent predictors of accurate English word reading skills and explain a larger
proportion of unique variance than do aspects of English oral language
proficiency such as vocabulary and grammatical skills. This may be especially
true when aspects of oral language proficiency, such as vocabulary knowledge,
grammatical sensitivity, and discourse knowledge, are not developed sufficiently
because of restriction of range issues.
• The review of studies on the relationship between second-language oral
proficiency and spelling suggests that there is not a strong relationship between
grammatical sensitivity in English and the English spelling skills of elementary-
level English-language learners, but that vocabulary skills in English may be
related to spelling skills in English.
• The review also appears to indicate that spelling accuracy among English-
language learners is predicted by various phonological processing skills (such as
phoneme deletion, rapid naming, phonological memory) and pseudoword
decoding.

TEXT-LEVEL SKILLS

Relationship Between English Oral Proficiency and

English Reading Fluency
Recent research on monolingual English-speaking children emphasizes the dynamic,
developmental nature of the acquisition of reading fluency (Fuchs, Fuchs, Hosp, &
Jenkins, 2001; National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000; Wolf
& Katzir-Cohen, 2001). According to recent research, reading fluency in the early stages
entails gradual acquisition of the ability to execute accurately and automatically relatively
low-level skills involved in reading (e.g., decoding). Once readers have achieved fluency
with these skills so that they are effortless, further development of fluency entails a shift
to prosodic features of language and the allocation of attention to comprehension.
Dysfluent reading can be the result of impairment in any of these component processes
(Wolf, Bowers, & Biddle, 2000; Wolf & Katzir-Cohen, 2001). The rate at which children
decode affects their reading comprehension. Thus, poor reading fluency can reflect
decoding skills that are not automatized, limited knowledge of text structure, and/or a
limited repertoire of text processing strategies, such as use of context clues. Dysfluent
reading also can be the result of inadequate oral proficiency with which to map written
language. Questions about the role of oral language proficiency in reading fluency are
particularly pertinent in second-language contexts. Because of the first-language focus of
the theories on fluency, less attention has been given to the potential role of oral English
proficiency in facilitating reading fluency.
We identified only one relevant study involving elementary school English-language
5. SECOND-LANGUAGE LITERACY 10

learners. Jackson and Lu (1992) studied children from a variety of first-language

backgrounds who demonstrated an advanced ability to comprehend text in English
(assessed with the Peabody Individual Achievement Test [PIAT]) before beginning
Grade 1. The authors report that these precocious readers had lower scores than native-
English-speaking comparison students on English oral language tests, but were just as
fluent as that group on oral text reading and as proficient on word recognition and
orthographic tasks. Thus, these advanced English-language learners were able to read
more fluently than might have been expected given their oral language skills in English.2
We identified no relevant research on the relationship between English oral language
proficiency and reading fluency in middle or high school English-language learners.

Relationship Between Oral English Proficiency and English Reading

Comprehension
Overall, studies of English-language learners in elementary school have found
consistently that oral language proficiency in English and English reading comprehension
are positively correlated. Dufva and Voeten (1999) assessed the language and literacy
development of native-Finnish-speaking students learning English as a foreign language
from Grades 1 to 3. They report that third-grade English reading comprehension skills
and oral vocabulary were highly correlated.
Beech and Keys (1997) examined the reading comprehension, oral vocabulary, and
decoding skills of 7- and 8-year-old bilingual, poor, inner-city Asian children living in
the United Kingdom. The authors report that the English-language learners scored
significantly lower than the native English speakers on tests of English oral vocabulary
and on a cloze-type test of reading comprehension (whereas the differences on word
reading were not significant). This finding provides indirect evidence that reading
comprehension is related to oral language proficiency. Because the researchers did not
include oral vocabulary scores in their regression analyses, however, this study fails to
inform us about the relative contributions of oral vocabulary and docoding skills to read-
ing comprehension in these students.
Carlisle, Beeman, Davis, and Spharim (1999) examined the link between oral
vocabulary skills and reading comprehension in a group of language-minority elementary
school students whose English reading achievement was below average. The authors
report that the ability to provide formal and informal definitions for nouns in English (and
Spanish) was related to vocabulary knowledge in English and, in accord with the findings
of the other studies reviewed in this section, that vocabulary knowledge in English (and
Spanish) contributed significantly to reading comprehension in English.
Peregoy and Boyle (1991) examined the relationship between a variety of English oral
language skills and reading comprehension in six Mexican-American third-grade children
who were English-language learners. Using a simulated science lesson about seashells
(Wong Fillmore’s Shell Game), the children’s oral language proficiency was evaluated
with respect to grammatical complexity, well-formedness, informativeness, and listening

2
A study of native-English-speaking children who attended a bilingual English–Hebrew program (Geva,
Wade-Woolley, & Shany, 1997) showed that, although language proficiency in Hebrew (the second
language) did not explain variance in word reading fluency in Hebrew, it played a significant role in
explaining variance in Hebrew text reading fluency
5. SECOND-LANGUAGE LITERACY 11

comprehension. The authors explored the relationship between these oral proficiency
skills and reading comprehension evaluated on the basis of responses to multiple-choice
questions presented after each of four short passages. Nonparametric analyses revealed
that those English-language learners with better developed reading comprehension skills
significantly outperformed low comprehenders on all oral language measures. Moreover,
the high comprehenders performed significantly better than intermediate comprehenders
on well-formedness and informativeness. There was no statistically significant difference
on any of the measures between low and intermediate readers. Stated differently, English-
language learners who were better comprehenders had more sophisticated oral language
skills than did students with less well-developed reading comprehension skills. The
results of this study suggest that oral language proficiency in young English-language
learners in the elementary grades is positively linked to reading comprehension.
Peregoy (1989) conducted a study at the middle-grades level to examine the
relationship between oral language proficiency and reading comprehension of six
Mexican-American, bilingual fifth-grade children who attended a Spanish– English
bilingual program. The oral production measure required children to tell a story about a
four-frame picture sequence; it was scored in terms of fluency (number of words
produced), total number of propositions produced, grammatical complexity, and well-
formedness. The reading comprehension assessment was based on three passages taken
from the Stanford Diagnostic Reading Test, followed by multiple-choice comprehension
questions. One of these passages was administered in Spanish. In general, there was a
correspondence between language proficiency in English and reading comprehension in
English; those children whose scores on the oral language proficiency indexes were high
also had better scores on reading comprehension.
Evidence for a positive relationship between oral language proficiency measured by a
listening comprehension task and reading comprehension in middle-grades students is
provided by a study conducted by Royer and Carlo (1991). These authors examined the
relationship between the English listening comprehension and reading comprehension
skills of Spanish–English English-language learners who were attending transitional
bilingual programs. The researchers tracked the students’ performance from Grade 5 to
Grade 6 and used two versions of the Sentence Verification Technique to evaluate
listening comprehension (i.e., oral language proficiency) and reading comprehension.
The results reveal that listening comprehension skills in English, the second language,
assessed in Grade 5 were one of the best predictors of English reading comprehension a
year later.
Also at the middle-grades level, one study (Jiménez, García, & Pearson, 1996)
examined the influence of Spanish-speaking English-language learners’ understanding of
cognate relationships on their reading comprehension. Jiménez et al. (1996) report that
bilingual students in Grades 6 and 7 who had a better awareness of the relationships
between English and Spanish cognates used more successful strategies to infer word
meanings, which in turn enabled them to comprehend texts better. This study illustrates
the importance of considering individual differences among English-language learners
from the same language backgrounds in explaining variances in reading comprehension.
Further, it illustrates that language background may influence reading performance;
children from first-language backgrounds that do not share cognates with English would
not have the possibility of being advantaged in this way.
5. SECOND-LANGUAGE LITERACY 12

Carlisle, Beeman, and Shah (1996) examined the relationship between English oral
language proficiency and English reading comprehension in Mexican American students
who ranged in age from 14 to 20. Their primary measures of oral language proficiency
were (a) tests of listening comprehension, grammatical knowledge, and vocabulary; and
(b) a “definitions” test, in which students were asked to provide definitions for high-
frequency words. Reading comprehension was assessed in English and Spanish by using
a sentence verification technique. Of particular relevance to the present discussion was
the finding that performance on two different aspects of oral language
proficiency—English listening comprehension and quality of vocabulary
definitions—jointly explained 50% of the variance in English reading comprehension
scores.
In a test of Cummins’ (1979, 1990) threshold hypothesis, Lee and Schallert (1997)
examined the relationship of two aspects of English oral language proficiency
(vocabulary knowledge and grammaticality judgments) and first-language reading ability
to English reading comprehension in 9th- and 10th-grade Korean students of English as a
foreign language. Both oral language proficiency in English and first-language reading
comprehension skills correlated with reading comprehension in English. However,
English oral language proficiency made the greater contribution. Moreover, the
correlations between first- and second-language reading rose with higher second-
language oral proficiency scores.
Finally, one study explored the relationship between oral storytelling skills and
comprehension. Oral storytelling skills can be viewed as an advanced aspect of oral
language proficiency.3 Goldstein et al. (1993) investigated the oral storytelling skills of
Mexican American students in Grades 7 to 9 and the relationships between those skills
and reading comprehension in English; they found a significant correlation. Specifically,
the students’ ability to present the goals of the protagonist (which may include planning
and consequences, as well as other story elements), as opposed to simply offering
descriptions of the characters and their actions without indicating causal relationships,
was associated with superior performance on a standardized reading comprehension test.
In summary, the findings from the available research on second-language learners
suggest that having well-developed oral language proficiency in English is associated
with well-developed reading comprehension skills in English. More specifically, the
available research suggests that comprehension is related to diverse components of
English-language proficiency, including oral vocabulary knowledge, awareness of
cognates, listening comprehension, oral storytelling skills, and syntactic skills. In
addition, the study by Carlisle, Beeman, and Shah (1996) indicates that the ability to
handle decontextualized aspects of language (such as providing definitions of words)
appears to be related to enhanced reading comprehension. It should be noted that the
majority of studies we reviewed focused on relatively young school-age children, and not
much is known about older school-age students.
These findings, however, need to be put into perspective. As noted in chapter 4, to be
capable comprehenders, children also need to acquire the precursor literacy skills in

3
At the same time, it is important to acknowledge that oral storytelling captures not only
the language skills necessary to tell a story but also cultural knowledge and opportunities
to become familiar with story genres.
5. SECOND-LANGUAGE LITERACY 13

either the first or second language, such as the skills underlying accurate and effortless
recognition of printed words. Differences in the reading comprehension abilities of
English-language learners can also be attributed to cognitive ability and memory. Finally,
findings of the few multivariate studies that are available suggest that the relationship
between English oral language proficiency and English reading comprehension is also
mediated by contextual factors, such as home language use and literacy practices and
SES, as well as by differences in instructional and other educational experiences (see
chaps. 10–12 for a discussion of the former and chaps. 13–18 for a discussion of the
latter).

Relationship Between English Oral Proficiency and General Measures

of English Reading Performance.
Three studies examined the relationship between English oral proficiency and general
measures of reading performance. Wilkinson, Milosky, and Genishi (1986) examined
English oral language proficiency by assessing the ability of Hispanic English-language
learners in Grade 3 to make requests and receive adequate responses during interactions
in all-student instructional groups. Their results show positive correlations between the
ability to make successful requests and reading achievement scores as measured by total
scores on the Metropolitan Achievement Test (i.e., decoding, spelling, and reading
comprehension subtests).
In another study, Pérez (1981) demonstrated that systematic daily instruction in
receptive and expressive vocabulary skills improved reading comprehension skills in
third-grade, Mexican American English-language learners. The vocabulary instruction
that focused on synonyms, antonyms, multiple-meaning words, and idiomatic expressions
enhanced the students’ reading skills as assessed by the Prescriptive Reading Inventory, a
test that includes decoding, word recognition, written vocabulary, and reading
comprehension subtests (see chap. 15 for a description of this study).
That oral vocabulary knowledge is crucial for reading comprehension was documented
two decades ago by Saville-Troike (1984). She conducted a retrospective analysis to
ascertain why a group of children matched for English proficiency at the beginning of the
school year differed in their academic achievement at the end of the year. Children in
Grades 2 to 6 were given a series of oral language tests (covering syntactic knowledge
and vocabulary knowledge) and the reading subtest of the Comprehensive Test of Basic
Skills (CTBS).4 The correlation between the students’ syntactic knowledge and reading
test scores was nonsignificant; however, there was a significant correlation between their
vocabulary knowledge and performance on the reading test. Because the author failed to
specify the components of the reading test (CTBS) that were included in the analysis, it is
not possible to determine the exact nature of students’ general reading performance.

Relationship Between English Oral Proficiency and English Writing

As mentioned in chapter 4, writing is a multidimensional process. It involves word-level
4
4
The CTBS includes a number of reading-related subtests—reading comprehension,
language, punctuation, and writing
5. SECOND-LANGUAGE LITERACY 14

skills (e.g., letter production, spelling), cognitive abilities (e.g., working memory,
attention), and higher order skills (e.g., planning, metacognition, strategy use, and self-
regulation). Developing and orchestrating the various writing skills present many
challenges to first-language learners (Berninger & Swanson, 1994; Graham & Harris,
2000; Scott, 1989; Snelling & Van Gelderen, 2004; Whitaker, Berninger, Johnston, &
Swanson, 1994; Wong, Wong, & Blenkinsop, 1989). Few studies of English-language
learners have examined the relationship between English oral language proficiency and
writing in general or with specific skills involved in the writing process. Nevertheless, the
available research suggests that well-developed oral language skills in English are
associated with better writing skills in English.
In one of two studies at the elementary level, Davis, Carlisle, and Beeman (1999)
investigated individual differences in the English and Spanish writing development of
young Hispanic English-language learners in Grades 1 to 3 who were receiving
instruction in both English and Spanish. The students were given listening and reading
comprehension tests and were also asked to write two compositions, one in English and
one in Spanish. Their writing samples were analyzed with respect to productivity,
linguistic complexity (as assessed by number of t units), spelling, word length (including
variety and sophistication of vocabulary), and level of discourse. Significant correlations
were found between the students’ English listening comprehension scores and their
writing scores (specifically, productivity, spelling, use of long words, and discourse), but
correlations between these listening scores and an index of linguistic complexity (t units)
in writing were not significant. Lack of linguistic complexity is related to the fact that, on
the whole, these Hispanic children did not produce very long texts. The researchers
attributed this reluctance to lack of experience and motivation.
A study conducted by Dufva and Voeten (1999), reviewed previously, also examined
the relationship between a more restricted writing task and two aspects of oral language
proficiency: listening comprehension and vocabulary knowledge. Writing was assessed
with a cloze procedure, in which students were asked to fill in missing sentences or words
pertaining to a story that was initially presented to them orally. Both tasks were
administered in English to a sample of native-Finnish-speaking students in Finland when
the children were in Grade 3. Correlational analyses revealed that vocabulary knowledge
and listening comprehension in English (concurrent predictors) and phonological
memory (longitudinal predictor) were all significant predictors of writing in English.
Only two studies in our database examined the relationship between oral language
proficiency and writing in middle-school English-language learners. A consistent and
alarming observation emerging from these studies is the generally poor quality of these
students’ writing. The two studies attempted to trace the source of these difficulties.
Indirect evidence of a lack of association between oral language skills and certain aspects
of writing comes from a study by Lanauze and Snow (1989). In particular, these authors
conclude that dis-course-level indexes of quality of writing may not be linked directly to
oral language proficiency. They studied the development of these writing skills in a group
of Grades 4 and 5 Spanish–English bilingual children from working-class backgrounds.
On the basis of teacher ratings of oral language proficiency, the children, who were
attending a bilingual program, were classified as good in English and Spanish (GG), poor
in English and Spanish (PP), or poor in English but good in Spanish (PG). As would be
expected, the students in the PP group, whose language skills were poor in both the first
5. SECOND-LANGUAGE LITERACY 15

and second languages, were writing poorly in both languages. Interestingly, however, the
performance of students in the GG and PG groups was highly similar on the English
quality-of-writing indexes. The authors conclude that students who had relatively better
developed writing skills in Spanish were able to use that knowledge in English, although
their oral language skills in English were less well developed than those in Spanish.
Additional information about the role of oral language proficiency in second-language
writing comes from a correlational study conducted by Lumme and Lehto (2002). These
authors administered a variety of expressive and receptive oral language proficiency tasks
in English (auditory discrimination, vocabulary, listening comprehension, conversational
skills) and phonological awareness to Grade 6 native-Finnish-speaking students who
were learning English as a foreign language in a school in Finland. Of primary interest is
the finding that students’ scores on the writing subtest of the Finnish National Test of
English correlated with those on other subtests assessing vocabulary and grammar skills.
Moreover, the writing scores correlated positively with basic phonological–orthographic
skills in Finnish and with academic achievement in Finnish. The latter results suggest that
the link between second-language oral proficiency and second-language writing skills
may be mediated by underlying phonological processing skills. It is not possible to
disentangle the precise role of each factor, however, because only simple correlations are
reported. It should also be noted that the students were learning English as a foreign
language rather than English as a second language. The results must be interpreted within
this context.
We identified one relevant study at the high school level (Yau & Belanger, 1985) that
examined the relationship between oral language proficiency in English and writing skills
in students learning English as a foreign language. This study provides indirect evidence
that English oral proficiency is related to writing quality. Cross-sectional groups of
Cantonese high school students in Grades 9, 11, and 13 wrote narrative and expository
texts in English that were then analyzed with respect to the presence and frequency of
syntactic structures of varying complexity. The authors report that the participants
performed less well than English native speakers in Grade 9, but comparably by the time
they reached Grade 13. The performance level of English native speakers was established
from previous research. Unfortunately, the authors do not report students’ proficiency in
English or attrition rates by grade level, nor did they include a control group of first-
language students. The findings suggest that as these English-as-a-foreign language
students reached a more advanced level of second-language proficiency (e.g., in the case
of the Grade 13 students), they were better able to combine sentences (as can be seen by
their increased t-unit length, clause length, and number of clauses per t unit). However,
one cannot assume that the older students were more proficient in oral English.
Moreover, if they were more English proficient, it cannot be assumed that this improve-
ment in writing was related to oral proficiency; it may also have been related to cognitive
maturation.
In general, research on the role of oral English proficiency in the development of
English writing skills in English-language learners is limited. It suggests that well-
developed oral language skills, including vocabulary and grammatical knowledge, as well
as phonological awareness, are related to various indexes of writing quality. We know
from the first-language literature that developing and orchestrating the various writing
components presents many challenges to first-language learners because writing is a
 5. SECOND-LANGUAGE LITERACY 16

complex activity. Writing may present a special challenge to English-language learners,

and having well-developed language skills may be necessary but not sufficient for
ensuring writing proficiency in English as a second language. The acquisition of
proficient writing skills probably also entails good spelling skills; decontextualized
language skills; the use of cohesive devices, such as anaphora, relativization, temporal
reference, and conjunctions that enable the writer to express ideas not limited to the here
and now; metacognitive skills, such as audience awareness; and familiarity with and
opportunities to practice writing different text genres. At present, however, there is scant
evidence of the role and development of these kinds of skills in English-language learners
of any age group.

Text-Level Skills: Summary

The following conclusion emerged from our review with regard to text-level skills:

• The available research suggests that English oral language proficiency is

consistently implicated when larger chunks of text are involved, whether in
reading comprehension or writing.

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