The first objective of this study was to examine the differences and similarities in the
reading comprehension performance between ESL and English L1 grade 7 students.
When the two groups were compared, there were no significant differences on any of
the reading comprehension tests. In grade 7 the ESL students in this district were able
to perform in a similar manner to the L1 students on reading comprehension tests. In
grade 6, the ESL speakers showed comparable performance on word reading, but
lower performances on reading comprehension and the Oral Cloze task. In addition,
there were no differences between the two language groups on the experimental
reading comprehension task that minimized the effects of vocabulary and prior
knowledge. There was however differences between the groups on the standardized
reading comprehension task and the L1 performed better than the ESL students (Low
& Siegel, 2005). There can be several explanations for the differences between the
performances in grade 6 and grade 7. First, the ESL students in grade 6 performed in
a similar way to their L1 English peers on the experimental tasks that were untimed
and required significantly less background and vocabulary knowledge. It may be the
case that in grade 6 one of those components (time, background knowledge or
vocabulary) or the combination of those components contributed to the lower
performance of the ESL students on the SDRT standardized test. Second, perhaps the
ESL students needed more practice and exposure to text in English in order to
perform in a similar way to their peers and therefore required an additional year in
order to improve and perform equally to their L1 peers. In the grade 6 study there
were a number of ESL students who had entered the district in the previous year so it
appeared to take these students more time to catch up to the L1 students. It is
important to note that the ESL students were supported by phonological awareness
and reading comprehension instructional programs during their elementary schooling. With appropriate instruction, it is possible that ESL students may perform in a
manner similar to native speakers. This study demonstrated that ESL students who
receive good word reading and reading comprehension instruction are capable of
developing word reading and reading comprehension skills that are as strong as their
L1 peers after 8 years of schooling in English