Accions d'Internacionalització a Casa de la Facultat de Psicologia i Logopèdia de la UV

13:00h, xarrada online.

Idioma: anglès

Aquesta xarrada, impartida en anglès, s'ha proposat dins el marc de les Accions d'Internacionalització a Casa de la Facultat de Psicologia i Logopèdia de la UV.

Reading comprehension in children who speak English as an additional language​

Holly Joseph

University of Reading

Children who speak English as an Additional Language (EAL) make up around 20% of all children in English primary schools and the number is growing year on year. Although a very diverse group, these children tend towards a particular profile of reading skills: good decoding and word reading accuracy but generally poorer vocabulary and comprehension skills than children who speak only English. However, despite these weaknesses in vocabulary and reading comprehension skill, EAL children make faster progress in literacy at school than English-speaking monolingual children (Strand et al., 2015), suggesting that they may employ particular skills or strategies that enable their rapid improvement. While we do not currently know what these skills are, it is critical to understand more about why this group of children tends to succeed against the odds.

In this talk I will discuss what we know about EAL children’s reading comprehension, with a particular focus on how they learn vocabulary through the process of reading. We know that the primary source for vocabulary development in later childhood is through reading and most new words are learned simply through repeated exposure in this way. While a number of previous studies have examined word learning in bilingual children using explicit learning tasks, incidental learning of novel words through reading has not been studied in EAL children. It is therefore important to examine incidental learning during reading in EAL children to see if their fast progress at school is partly due to efficient learning of novel words they encounter as they read. 

Reporting two experiments that examine EAL and monolingual’s learning of new words through reading them repeatedly in texts as their eye movements are monitored, I will show that EAL children show relatively rapid vocabulary learning through reading and argue that this may be due to their experience in learning new words with fewer encounters (by virtue of using each language only part of the time) and their experience encountering words in more diverse contexts (i.e. language environments). The results are encouraging for educators working with EAL children seeking to improve their vocabulary knowledge.

Bio

Holly Joseph és professora d’Educació Lingüística i Desenvolupament d’Alfabetització a l’Institut d’Educació a la Lectura i codirectora de Bilingualism Matters @ Reading. La seva investigació se centra en la lectura i les dificultats de lectura en nens que parlen anglès com a idioma addicional (nens EAL). En els seus estudis, utilitza el seguiment ocular, que és una tècnica que permet captar els processos subjacents a la comprensió lectora. Més informació sobre els seus interessos de recerca i afiliacions aquí.