This study aimed at investigating the extent and pattern of reading development in Korean elementary school learners of English. To this end, the study examined the performances of 206 grades 4 to 6 students on various reading measures, including lett ...
This study aimed at investigating the extent and pattern of reading development in Korean elementary school learners of English. To this end, the study examined the performances of 206 grades 4 to 6 students on various reading measures, including letter naming, phonemic awareness, vocabulary knowledge, word decoding, listening comprehension, and reading comprehension. The participants were drawn from three elementary schools located in three different regions (i.e., metropolitan city, middle-size city, and rural area) in order to gain a more comprehensive understanding of reading development in elementary school English learners. Reading measures were adapted or modified from the following sources: standardized measures of reading such as DIBELS, Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, and Woodcock Reading Mastery Test; National Assessment of Educational Achievement; previous studies which investigated student performances on sub-components of reading. The final measures developed for the study were administered to the participants either in groups or individually from October 2016 to February 2017. Data analyses comprised of calculating descriptive statistics (e.g., mean and standard deviation) for the results from the measures, comparing participant performances on all measures across grades, schools, and reading ability groups using ANOVA, calculating Pearson correlations between reading comprehension and other variables, and identifying predictors of student reading comprehension through multiple regression analyses. The main findings of this study can be summarized as follows. First, student performances increased across the grades on all measures with sharper increases between grade 4 and grade 5, which might indicate the importance of establishing necessary foundation from early on. Second, an in-depth analysis of student performances on phonemic awareness and word decoding indicated that correct response rates for the items had to do with syllable structures of target words and the complexity of spelling-sound relationships within the words. It was thus surmised that the overall pattern of word reading development could be similar to that of L1 English speakers identified in previous L1 reading research. Third, there were significant differences in student performances across the three schools. In particular, student performances were significantly lower at school B where there was a larger number of late starters in learning English as well as students without private English tutoring. Forth, when divided into three ability groups by reading comprehension scores, high achievers displayed better performances on all measures than low achievers, and low achieving groups scored significantly lower than the other two groups. Fifth, a correlation analysis identified positive, significant correlations between reading comprehension and other variables. Student listening comprehension was most strongly related to reading comprehension, which confirms the significant role of oral language in reading development. Sixth, multiple regression analyses revealed that listening comprehension was the strongest predictors of reading comprehension followed by oral vocabulary, letter naming, word decoding, and phonemic awareness. Based on these findings, the study concluded with theoretical and educational implications.