The influence of native Spanish reading comprehension on English second language reading comprehension of adults

Abstract

Foreign students enrolled in intensive language institutes in the United States exhibit differences in the time it takes them to achieve levels of reading comprehension that will enable them to study successfully at college level. Whereas the reading universals hypothesis states that one learns to read once, there are conflicting opinions among reading researchers as to the influence of first language reading ability on second language reading. This study attempted to determine whether first language reading comprehension skills influence the acquisition of second language reading comprehension skills. The study was limited to 79 Latin American students enrolled in the English Language Institute at Texas A&M. Pretests and posttests were given in English and Spanish. The Spanish tests were the InterAmerican Series Reading Comprehension Test, and a Spanish cloze test. The English tests were the TOEFL, the Michigan English Language Proficiency Test, the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Comprehension Test, and an English cloze test. Not all students took all tests. The test results were then compiled and correlation coefficients obtained. The gains made in one semester on the English tests were then calculated for the top Spanish readers and the bottom Spanish readers. The difference in gain scores was significant at .01. The significant correlations between the student's entering Spanish score and his post scores in English (.61, .65, .68; p < .01) also support the influence of first language reading comprehension on the acquisition of second language reading comprehension. The cloze tests were found to have higher correlations with the TOEFL and Michigan total test scores than with the reading scores. The Spanish cloze, except for the most difficult portion, generally had low correlations with other tests, indicating that perhaps the test was testing too low a level of reading as compared to the other tests. The InterAmerican Spanish test and the Gates test had significant correlations with most of the other tests.