Abstract
This study describes the validation of a reading assessment developed for speakers of Scottish Gaelic, an endangered language spoken in Scotland. The test is designed to investigate the areas of reading for understanding, reading errors and reading speed. This study will present the data on a group of Gaelic/English speakers on both the Gaelic and the English version of the test and of a group of English speakers on the English version of the reading test, aiming at comparing reading abilities in children attending a Gaelic medium education (GME) and children in English medium education (EME) living in the same urban area. The paper reports two studies. The first study presents data on 77 children bilingual in Gaelic/English recruited across four levels of primary school on reading in Gaelic. The second study looks at the performance on a version of the test adapted for English, comparing the performance of two groups of children (bilinguals Gaelic/English and monolinguals English) on several linguistic skills, including sentence comprehension and reading. About 40 monolingual English subjects in EME, living in the same urban area, were administered the English version. The reading abilities of the children attending EME and GME schools were comparable, supporting the idea of no disadvantage on reading from attending a school with the medium of a minority language. If differences were found, these were in favour of the bilingual Gaelic/English children, who attained better results in all linguistic tasks in English in the older groups.
Highlights
Reading is an intellectual activity that comprises the interplay of a linguistic dimension and a cognitive dimension with profound alterations in the brain circuitry during its acquisition in primary school (Dehaene 2009)
The results reported in the raw data on the Gaelic reading test provide interesting information on the ability to read in Gaelic from a group of children attending a Gaelic medium education and studying reading in English as a subject
The results show an effect of class whereby the performance improves in later school years (β = 0.25, p = 0.003), and an interaction of class with group showing that children in Gaelic-language schools improve even more as they progress in school years (β = 0.35, p = 0.04)
Summary
Reading is an intellectual activity that comprises the interplay of a linguistic dimension and a cognitive dimension with profound alterations in the brain circuitry during its acquisition in primary school (Dehaene 2009). According to Bishop and Snowling (2004), the common broader characteristics of dyslexia include a mix of linguistic and cognitive difficulties, including memory problems, writing difficulties, organizational and time management difficulties. Other factors, such as socioeconomic causes, have recently emerged as having an impact on dyslexia opening interesting investigations in communities that are more isolated or are learning reading in a minority language with few opportunities for consistent daily reading in the minority language. In children with learning difficulties, reading can be affected in different ways, with problems dealing with the linguistic level (e.g., understanding the meaning of a sentence) and the cognitive level (e.g., remembering or focusing on the information), making crucial tracking reading abilities in school and promoting testing the of reading for understanding information and not just reading aloud
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