dc.contributor.advisor | Dal Maso, Serena | |
dc.contributor.author | Festi, Francesca | |
dc.date.accessioned | 2023-08-23T11:09:33Z | |
dc.date.available | 2023-08-23T11:09:33Z | |
dc.date.issued | 2023-09-07 | |
dc.description.abstract | This dissertation explores reading comprehension abilities with a special focus on language minority bilingual children (LMBC). This population is often found to display lower scores than their monolingual peers and this gap in performance can negatively affect their future educational experience. Our goal was to shed light on the origins of these comprehension difficulties. To do so, we carried out an experimental study that involved 109 pupils attending 4th and 5th grade of primary school. The participants were 61 language minority bilingual and 48 monolingual students. We assessed their performance in reading comprehension and in a series of linguistic and non-linguistic abilities that are considered potential predictors of reading comprehension, i.e., general cognitive abilities, decoding skills, receptive vocabulary, and receptive grammar. We conducted an analysis to determine which ones were the best predictors for the two groups. The outcomes highlighted that while monolingual students relied primarily on their vocabulary knowledge during reading comprehension, for LMBC grammar knowledge, speed during decoding, and general cognitive abilities were also influencing their performance.
Moreover, using three Self-Paced Reading Tasks (SPRT), we explored on-line language processing to verify whether there were qualitative or quantitative differences between groups. The analysis of reading times revealed that both groups followed similar processing patterns, but monolinguals obtained significantly higher scores in terms of accuracy. These results seem to suggest that processing complex structures in Italian is cognitively more demanding for the LMBC.
The last part of the project was dedicated to the implementation of pedagogical practices that focused on teaching grammar and practicing the ability to make inferences using methods that aimed to stimulate the pupils’ metalinguistic awareness instead of using abstract rules. | en_US |
dc.description.abstract | Questa tesi esplora le abilità di comprensione della lettura con una particolare attenzione ai bambini bilingui con background migratorio. Questa popolazione mostra spesso punteggi più bassi rispetto ai loro coetanei monolingui e questa discrepanza nei risultati può influire negativamente sulla loro esperienza scolastica. Il nostro obiettivo è quello di fare luce sulle origini di queste difficoltà di comprensione. Per farlo, abbiamo condotto uno studio sperimentale che ha coinvolto 109 alunni frequentanti il quarto e quinto anno di scuola primaria. I partecipanti includevano 61 studenti bilingui con background migratorio e 48 studenti monolingui.
Abbiamo valutato le loro capacità nella comprensione della lettura e in una serie di abilità linguistiche e non linguistiche considerate potenziali predittori della comprensione della lettura (abilità cognitive generali, abilità di decodifica, vocabolario recettivo e grammatica recettiva). Inoltre, abbiamo condotto un'analisi per determinare quali fossero i migliori predittori per i due gruppi. I risultati hanno evidenziato che, mentre gli studenti monolingui si affidavano principalmente alla loro conoscenza lessicale durante la comprensione della lettura, per i bilingui anche la conoscenza grammaticale, la velocità durante la decodifica e le abilità cognitive generali influenzavano i loro punteggi.
Con tre Self-Paced Reading Tasks (SPRT), abbiamo esplorato le loro capacità di processing on-line per verificare se ci fossero differenze di tipo qualitativo o quantitativo tra i gruppi. L'analisi dei tempi di lettura ha rivelato che entrambi i gruppi hanno seguito strategie di processing simili, ma i monolingui hanno ottenuto punteggi significativamente più alti in termini di accuratezza. Questi risultati sembrano suggerire che l'elaborazione di strutture complesse in italiano richieda maggiori risorse cognitive per gli studenti bilingui.
La parte finale del progetto è stata dedicata all'implementazione di pratiche pedagogiche incentrate sull'insegnamento della grammatica e sulla pratica dell'abilità di fare inferenze utilizzando metodi volti a stimolare la consapevolezza metalinguistica degli alunni invece di utilizzare regole astratte. | en_US |
dc.description.doctoraltype | ph.d. | en_US |
dc.description.popularabstract | Language minority bilingual children (LMBC) are often found to encounter more obstacles during their educational experience. Consequently, they tend to obtain lower grades and face higher drop-out rates. Difficulties during reading comprehension and tasks that require higher linguistic competences are identified as one of the main factors affecting the pupil’s performances. Thus, the first goal of this dissertation is to investigate reading comprehension and its potential predictors to understand in more detail what skills and knowledge support monolingual and LMBC during this activity. Moreover, we aimed to explore how the two groups behave during on-line reading and processing of complex grammar structures in order to understand whether there were qualitative or quantitative differences between the two groups. Ultimately, the long-term goal of this study is to propose more inclusive teaching practices that can respond more effectively to the needs of multilingual classes.
Reading is a complex activity that requires the mastery and the control of several sub-skills, such as decoding and recognising words automatically, interpreting the syntactic relations between the constituents, and reconstructing the literal meaning of the sentences. Moreover, to achieve good comprehension of a written text, readers have to engage in other activities that will help them building the general meaning of the whole text and developing a critical opinion. At this stage of reading comprehension, they will also need to use effective strategies to extrapolate pieces of information which are not explicitly mentioned in the text.
Given these premises, in order to examine what skills determine more advanced reading comprehension abilities, we assessed a series of linguistic and non-linguistic skills, and we analysed their impact on reading comprehension. In particular, we considered general cognitive abilities, decoding skills, receptive vocabulary, and receptive grammar. Furthermore, we measured the pupils’ reading comprehension abilities in Italian using grade-appropriate standardised tests. The outcomes of this assessment showed that there is indeed a difference in performance between LMBC and monolingual students during reading comprehension, and the bilinguals achieved lower scores than their peers. When we consider the tests investigating the predictors of reading comprehension, the two groups showed homogeneous abilities in all domains with the exception of receptive vocabulary. As it is frequently found, in fact, the bilingual group displayed reduced vocabulary knowledge compared to the monolingual children. In addition, we wanted to explore what the most reliable predictors were during reading comprehension for the two groups. This analysis highlighted that bilinguals and monolinguals use different skills and knowledge during this task. More specifically, the monolinguals’ performance in reading comprehension is determined only by lexical knowledge whereas the bilingual group also made use of their grammar knowledge, general cognitive abilities, and decoding speed abilities.
Since grammatical knowledge was found to be an important predictor of reading comprehension success for the bilingual group, in the second part of the study, we focused on investigating the syntactic processing abilities of the two groups. In particular, we wanted to verify whether there were differences between groups during processing and whether these differences were qualitative or quantitative. To do so, we administered three Self-Paced Reading Tasks (SPRT) in which we investigated how the students processed complex structures such as object relative clauses and the passive voice. These tasks aimed to answer the following research questions:
(i) how does morphological information facilitate the interpretation of sentences during processing?
(ii) how does the presence of pragmatically implausible situations influence processing?
(iii) how do semantic violations affect processing?
The results obtained from the analysis of the reading times showed that both groups followed similar processing patterns. However, when accuracy rates are considered, we found that the monolingual group tended to achieve significantly higher scores.
The fact that similar reading patterns did not match with similar accuracy rates seems to support the idea that non-native processing is quantitatively different from native processing. In other words, syntactic processing of complex structures would require greater cognitive effort for the bilingual group.
These results have also pedagogical implications because they highlight the importance of implementing teaching activities that support students in the development of a richer and more efficiently organised vocabulary and grammar knowledge. We tried to develop a teaching intervention aimed at developing the ability to use their grammatical skills in order to understand and produce meaningful language, instead of limiting language teaching to the presentation of a series of abstract rules to be practiced in formal exercises. Lastly, we also carried out a series of experimental activities that aimed to practice the ability to make inferences, a skill employed during global text-processing. All the didactic activities developed and tested during the intervention aimed to stimulate the students’ metalinguistic awareness and encourage peer-to-peer interactions. | en_US |
dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/10037/30238 | |
dc.language.iso | eng | en_US |
dc.publisher | UiT Norges arktiske universitet | en_US |
dc.publisher | UiT The Arctic University of Norway | en_US |
dc.rights.accessRights | openAccess | en_US |
dc.rights.holder | Copyright 2023 The Author(s) | |
dc.rights.uri | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0 | en_US |
dc.rights | Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) | en_US |
dc.subject | VDP::Humanities: 000::Linguistics: 010::Applied linguistics: 012 | en_US |
dc.subject | Reading Comprehension | en_US |
dc.title | Reading Comprehension in L2 Italian: Connecting Psycholinguistic Research and Pedagogical Practice | en_US |
dc.type | Doctoral thesis | en_US |
dc.type | Doktorgradsavhandling | en_US |