The simple view of reading in monolingual and language-minority bilingual children learning to read in French or Italian: Evidence from a direct cross-linguistic comparison study

Background: We investigated how the language of schooling (French vs. Italian) and linguistic status [monolinguals vs. language-minority bilingual children (LMBC)] interact with the main dimensions of the simple view of reading (SVR), namely, decoding (D) and listening comprehension (LC). Method: We examined 265 children [French: n = 113; Italian: n = 152; monolinguals: n = 149; LMBC: n = 116; mean age in months: 116.91 (SD = 9.41), range of age in months: 88-136] attending Grades 3, 4 and 5 while performing oral language (i.e., verbal knowledge and morphosyntactic comprehension), reading (i.e., word, pseudowords and comprehension) and cognitive tasks (i.e., nonverbal intellectual functioning). Results: LC emerged as the unique significant predictor of reading comprehension (RC). No significant interactions were observed between the language of schooling and linguistic status. Also, nonverbal reasoning resulted in concurrently predicting RC, together with LC. Ultimately, while the linguistic status did not have a direct impact on RC, its effect was mediated by LC. Conclusions: SVR similarly applies to monolinguals and LMBC schooled in French and Italian. Further, adding nonverbal reasoning can improve the explained variance of the model. Lastly, our results suggest that children's oral language skills mediate the impact of bilingualism on RC. This understanding can inform educational practices for bilingual students.