ABSTRACT

The present study explored the role of vocabulary and decoding skills in predicting reading comprehension, utilizing data from 322 first- grade children from four elementary schools in Kenya. The children were administered a comprehensive battery of tests to assess pseudo-word reading skills, oral reading fluency, reading comprehension, and receptive vocabulary in English and Kiswahili. The results showed that receptive vocabulary and pseudo-word reading in English played a significant role in English reading comprehension. Kiswahili decoding explained a statistically significant unique variance of Kiswahili reading comprehension. An examination of the cross-linguistic variability showed that pseudo-word decoding in English and Kiswahili explained unique variance in reading comprehension cross-linguistically, while receptive vocabulary did not explain additional variance in reading comprehension across languages. These results add to the important evidence of receptive language skills and decoding skills in reading comprehension among multilingual children from low-middle income countries.

摘要

本研究利用肯尼亚四所小学的322名一年级儿童的数据，探索了词汇和解码技能在预测阅读理解中的作用。对孩子们进行了一系列全面的测试，以评估伪单词阅读技能，口语阅读流利度，阅读理解能力和英语和斯瓦希里语的接受词汇。结果表明，英语中的接受词汇和伪单词阅读在英语阅读理解中起着重要的作用。斯瓦希里语解码解释了斯瓦希里语阅读理解的统计学上显着的独特方差。对跨语言变异性的研究表明，英语和斯瓦希里语中的伪单词解码解释了跨语言阅读理解中的独特差异，接受词汇并不能解释跨语言阅读理解的其他差异。这些结果为低收入国家多语言儿童的阅读理解能力提供了重要的证据。