Phonological awareness and reading acquisition in English- and Punjabi-speaking Canadian children

This study examined whether the same component processes are involved in re ading acquisition for native and nonnative speakers of English in the Ist g rade. The performance of 88 children was examined on tasks assessing readin g skill, phonological processing, and syntactic awareness. Fifty children w ere native English speakers (L1), and 38 children were from Punjabi-speakin g families (ESL). Although measures of word recognition and phonological pr ocessing successfully discriminated between average and poor readers, they did not discriminate between the 2 language groups. Analyses of word readin g errors revealed similar error patterns for ESL and L1 children, yet diffe rent error patterns for average and poor readers. For both L1 and ESL child ren, reading difficulties appear to be strongly linked with impaired phonol ogical processing.