How syntactic awareness might influence reading comprehension in English–French bilingual children

This study evaluates the extent to which syntactic awareness contributes to reading comprehension in English–French bilinguals, considering both the potential for a direct relation, as well as an indirect one, through word reading. Participants were 146 first-grade students enrolled in early French immersion programs in Canada. While the children received all school instruction in French, English was their stronger language and the language of the broader community. Given this dual language context, we examined relations from syntactic awareness in each of English and French to children’s French reading comprehension. Path analyses showed that within French, the language of school instruction, syntactic awareness contributed to reading comprehension indirectly through word reading. The findings suggest that novice readers rely more heavily on basic reading skills, such as word reading, to comprehend texts and syntactic awareness facilitates reading comprehension through word reading. Across the two languages, English syntactic awareness contributed both directly to French reading comprehension and indirectly through French word reading. The cross-language findings suggest that English syntactic awareness is related to French to support French reading comprehension. These findings help fill in a developmental picture in early bilinguals, particularly given studies of older, more skilled monolingual readers showing evidence for solely a direct relation between syntactic awareness and reading comprehension.