How SES May Affect Reading Comprehension and Vocabulary in Language Minority Bilingual and Monolingual Children

We investigated the role of socioeconomic status (SES) in the unfolding of vocabulary and text-comprehension skills in language minority bilingual children, who are educated exclusively in their L2. For comparison, a monolingual control group was also tested, consisting of children of the same age and schooling. We administered a synonyms task to measure vocabulary and an inference test to measure reading comprehension. Socioeconomic status scores were obtained through the Hollingshead Four Factor Index questionnaire. Our results showed that being bilingual did not influence vocabulary and text-comprehension skills in the age group being tested (9-11 years). Whereas, SES played a significant role in relation to age and schooling. Interestingly, two different mediation analyses demonstrated that vocabulary knowledge accounted for a significant portion of the causal relationship between SES and reading comprehension, and that reading comprehension itself can explain part of the relationship between SES and vocabulary. The social and educational implications of the findings are discussed.